Nature's Archive Podcast

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[00:00:00] Michael Hawk: Have you ever watched documentaries like Planet Earth and wondered how they get that amazing footage of elusive and wild animals? Well get ready to learn about that and much more today. Wildlife photographer Jake Davis shares his incredible journey from being a 10 year old with a disposable camera to capturing stunning footage for Planet Earth.

[00:00:18] Jake dives into the challenges and triumphs of filming elusive snow leopards in the Gobi Desert of all places, including the technical intricacies of setting up camera traps and much more. He also recounts dramatic encounters with Alaskan brown bears and, with the help of some biologists, the unique experience of placing a GoPro in a wolf den. Throughout. Jake emphasizes the importance of persistence, deep observation, the need to thoroughly understand wildlife behavior, and he even shares his connection between nature and mental health.

[00:00:49] You can find Jake on Instagram at Revealed in nature, or on his website Jake Davis tv. So without further delay, Jake Davis.

[00:00:59] Jake. Thanks so much for joining me today.

[00:01:01] Jake Davis: Hey happy to be here Michael

[00:01:03] Michael Hawk: So I, I’m just going to jump right in and, people that are listening to this, they’ve already heard a little bit of the intro here at the beginning, but as a, as a wildlife photographer, as a I’m sure you’ve had plenty of encounters with nature that your childhood self would probably never have believed that you would have had.

[00:01:22] So I’m wondering if you could go back and say, visit your 10 year old self, What’s one of the stories that you would tell yourself that, Hey, you’re going to experience this thing in the future.

[00:01:33] Jake Davis: yeah, that’s a, it’s a crazy thing to think about because, the 10, 10, 12 year old version of me was just, that was when I was just getting into wildlife photography. I was already hooked on it and I was around then that the first planet Earth came out, the very first planet Earth that kind of was like the game changer for the natural history industry.

[00:01:54] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And myself, along with, I’m sure many other kids watch that show like crazy. And but I do distinctly remember seeing the Snow Leopard footage in there, which in Planet Earth One was like, that was the first time it had really, a Snow Leopard had really been filmed well, where it was like, where maybe they had been filmed, but like, that was the first like proper sequence of a Snow Leopard.

[00:02:17] And man, I just watched that mountains episode countless times. And so I think probably I have to answer that question by, by saying, yeah, it was the, all the Snow Leopard stuff that I got to do over the past couple years. For Planet Earth 3 would be like the ultimate, like, Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’m, I can’t believe I’m here.

[00:02:35] Like happy, I definitely happen to pinch myself at times. Like this is insane. Yeah.

[00:02:40] Michael Hawk: Well, that’s a great teaser because I’m going to ask you about the snow leopards here in a few

[00:02:44] minutes. So we’ll get into that a little bit more. So I, maybe filling in the gaps a little bit, you mentioned that you were just getting into nature photography around that timeframe when you’re, 10, 12 what did it look like for you at that point?

[00:02:56] Like, what were you shooting with? What were you, what were your subjects? What got you interested?

[00:03:02] Jake Davis: Well, at that point it was nothing special. It was just a disposable camera. That’s what I started with, but I, so my family would, travel to Jackson, Wyoming every summer, which is where I live now. And we would spend a couple months there. My dad would work. And so we just had a couple months just to, be in the national park.

[00:03:23] And so I very early on was just like obsessed with trying to get pictures of animals. And yeah, so it started with, my mom would give me a disposable camera and she, she would give me and my brother a disposable camera. And I think I would usually like burn through my first camera, like on the plane, before we even got there.

[00:03:40] And so I think they knew early on that probably there was something there. And then it ended up being, I would use her old Canon Rebel, zoom 70 to 300 lens. those early years, it was just don’t have a lot of autonomy when you’re that age. So it’s if your parents want to go out in the park and look for animals, you can do it.

[00:03:59] And so my mom would go out with me a lot and do that. But it wasn’t until I think like, I remember when I got my driver’s license, it was just like the most exciting thing in the world to me because I could go like I could go drive around and look for bears. Like I could go, I could get up early and I didn’t have to worry about what other people were doing.

[00:04:15] I was like free to go take pictures and like. I think for me, I think about like that probably was like 16, 17 as okay, that’s when I like really started. Cause I was able to just have the opportunities to do it. Yeah,

[00:04:32] Michael Hawk: but anyway, I’ll probably cut that out. But yeah, I, I think that’s really a relatable story because I, I started out, I obviously. Not a professional photographer, but started out with a disposable camera and pretty much limited to my backyard.

[00:04:45] So I have so many squirrel pictures in my collection from when I was a kid. So did you, you got your driver’s license. You’re in a incredible place on, at times Jackson, Wyoming. How else did you cultivate this interest? Just, just practice. Did you attend school seminars? How did you grow as a photographer?

[00:05:06] Jake Davis: I never had any formal training. I think it was just experience and just a lot of time. I think it just, it was just a lot of years of taking really bad photos. And then every year it just gets a little bit better. I, so as a kid I would, there’s a photographer you may have heard of Tom Mangelson, who’s a very well known wildlife photographer.

[00:05:24] At one point he had, many galleries across the country.

[00:05:27] Michael Hawk: I think he has one

[00:05:28] Jake Davis: just a pioneer. He does have one in Jackson. Yeah. And just a pioneer, like a real pioneer in, in like wildlife photography. And yeah, he had one in Jackson and that was like, that was my, as a kid, my biggest inspiration.

[00:05:39] my parents could go grocery shopping. Whatever they needed to do in town and they could leave me for three hours in that gallery. And I would just, I would walk around and I would do that like regularly. And so I think probably it was more, I learned probably more from visually, right? Just like seeing stuff that I like and then other photographers and other stuff.

[00:05:57] I think I just, over time just saw what I liked and saw what worked and what didn’t work and developed my own approach to things. But I think, yeah, just experimenting with it.

[00:06:07] Michael Hawk: side note on, on Thomas Mangelson. I believe he’s from Omaha, Nebraska, which is where I’m from. He had a gallery in, in Omaha, which is how I became exposed to him. And I was surprised on a vacation to Jackson to see he had one there as well.

[00:06:21] Jake Davis: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He lives here. So yeah.

[00:06:25] Michael Hawk: So why don’t we, Jump into that snow leopard discussion.

[00:06:30] So that’s how, how you hit my radar was, the incredible snow leopard footage in planet earth three. And you mentioned the original planet earth. I’ve always been fascinated by those series and wondered how they’re produced. So before we get in specifically to like how you captured the footage, I’m How do you even begin?

[00:06:52] Like, is there a specific type of scene or dramatic interaction that you’re trying to get? Or is it more like any Snow Leopard footage is good Snow Leopard footage and we’ll take what we get.

[00:07:06] Jake Davis: I would, I would be lying if I said that there wasn’t an element of like, just get something on the camera when you’re starting, especially with a cat as elusive as a snow leopard. But you do go in with you’re working with, like, I was working with the producer director, Theo Webb, who directed the episode that I worked on, and so he will have had, like, a rough storyboard and kind of an idea of where we would like to go with this, and so we do have, we have a starting point And every shoot is quite, is quite different.

[00:07:36] Sometimes you might show up to something that’s actually quite predictable and that has been figured out. Other times, like this one for Snow Leopards, this is a place that had never really been filmed before. And so there was a lot to figure out. So it was It took me a lot of time on the ground just hiking and spending a lot of time with a local herder there who, who knew some of the cat behaviors and areas that they liked.

[00:07:57] And we also had the benefit of being on, I was there for five months. I did about five and they were five different trips. And so one of those trips, I was able to be there with a snow leopard researcher. Who she had had some trail cameras out as part of their study, they can identify individuals actually from trail camera footage.

[00:08:16] And so that helped me a lot. Cause that can, that helped me direct me in the right areas to look. But it’s still a lot of just, trying to take a massive mountain range and then you have to narrow it down. Where am I going to put, I had 26 cameras. So where are these 26 cameras going to go in this vast place?

[00:08:32] I do remember like distinctly. When I first got there and was like hiking around that first week, that, that feeling of just feeling a little bit overwhelmed, like, wow, this is this place is big. It’s huge. And I’ve got to put these cameras in where maybe like 12, there’s maybe 12 snow leopards or so living in this mountain range and I’ve got to guess exactly where they’re going to be. It’s definitely like finding a needle in a haystack. But you you work through that and slowly you narrow it down and there’s a science to it and yeah, you get to a place where you can build out a sequence.

[00:09:07] Michael Hawk: I’m going to guess that a lot of people listening haven’t seen the footage. So we’ll hopefully you can describe a little bit about what you were able to achieve here in a moment, but, but before we get there what was, can you tell me what was storyboarded? Like, what was your objective?

[00:09:22] Jake Davis: So this episode was called extremes. That’s like the theme of the episode. and for all of the planet earth, it’s like, since snow leopards were such a significant part of planet earth one, there’s been like, we want a snow leopard bit for each, planet earth.

[00:09:36] And so they’ve been filmed a lot and these kind of higher, like if in the Himalayas, we’re in. Bigger mountains in the snow, like where you think about the snow leopard living. But what’s really interesting is that they also live here in the Gobi desert, which is like hot and dry.

[00:09:51] And there’s a real lack of water in the summer. And so that was the main angle that we had was, it was more about the place and the behavior and stuff like that was fleshed out once I got there. And once I realized, okay, here’s a mom with cubs and maybe I can get some interactions, I was like.

[00:10:08] a building block that was added later on. But the starting place was like, let’s see if we can just film them in a way that anchors them in a place that is really striking. Like a snow leopard on a landscape that looks like Mars, right? It’s just not, it’s not what you would expect. Even for me the whole time, I was just like, how, this is not what you think about when you think of snow leopards,

[00:10:29] Michael Hawk: Gotcha. So then you’re in the Gobi desert and you know, A little bit about where they’ve been seen based on some of this collaboration you’ve done with the other folks you mentioned.

[00:10:38] So now you have to pick a place to set up your cameras. Like, what does that look like? How many cameras are you putting

[00:10:45] up in any individual places?

[00:10:46] Is it all 12 in one spot? Or are you splitting the improving your odds by splitting the cameras to different locations?

[00:10:53] Jake Davis: Well, that’s the, that’s the dilemma always, right? So it’s so these are, right, these are camera traps, right? So these are like it’s you think about it like somebody’s hunting trail cameras or something like that, but fancy versions with nice Sony cameras in each one. And. so I rarely put less than two or three in one spot because you’re, I often need more than just one shot. Like I, you can’t, you’re trying to build like a sequence out. So you need, I might want to close up and then like a wide and then like maybe a cross angle. So you need to, just so you can cut it together.

[00:11:21] So let’s say I’m just putting three down in each spot. So now I don’t have very many places to put them. So it does get, it does get really tricky. Yeah. And so starting off, I just tried to pick the spots that I felt like were the most likely. to get one, but also where I could see the landscape, right?

[00:11:39] Because there’s a lot of places I could have put a camera that were just maybe a canyon or something indiscreet where it was like, this could be anywhere. And that wasn’t as useful as like, I needed to find a ridge that had the vast Gobi steppe in the background. And so that took a lot of work. but ultimately what it comes down to is I’m looking for these, what we would call like scrape sites. And so cats, all cats, but like snow leopards and mountain lions will they will leave their scent in the ground and then they’ll make a little pile of dirt where they push their, their back feet and push up the earth.

[00:12:14] And it’s like leaving a little signpost, right? it’s a way of kind of marking their territory, letting the other cats in the area know, know who’s there. And so I’m just mostly just hiking, looking for these spots and they just look like little piles of rock up there. they’d be easy to walk right over, And, and I don’t really want one, cause if I just see one, it means, well, there’s one cat was here once. I’m looking for sites that I see a bunch and I can tell that over time, maybe over the couple of years different cats have been coming here and scraping. And maybe I can see a little bit of grass growing up through one of them.

[00:12:46] That tells me this has been here for a while. And what that means is that that particular spot is probably either a territorial overlap, or maybe there’s multiple cats nearby. There’s some reason that they, they, different individuals keep coming back and forth here to say, hey, I’m here, hey, I’m here. And so those are like the money sites.

[00:13:04] So I found a few of those, and that’s where I started. and yeah, we ended up getting some just really incredible stuff. Just from that, and then it’s, that’s like the first step, like, Okay, we got some awesome stuff. We got a snow leopard in a beautiful place. And that’s nice, and that could be the whole sequence.

[00:13:22] And then, the way to level it up from there is, Okay. Can we get any kind of behavior? Like, can we get them doing anything that’s interesting or unusual? And in this case, it was like, okay, maybe we can find a mother in cubs. Cause if there’s multiple cats, they’ll interact with each other, which ultimately led to, I set them up on this little water hole.

[00:13:41] That we found that there was hardly any water everywhere in August. It was like no snow in the mountains and not much rain. And so the Ibex and the snow leopards have to go to these few spots. And there’s this one little spot that this mother and her two cubs like to visit and turned out she would, she went and left the cubs there all day for multiple days.

[00:14:02] And so it was just incredible. We got them running and playing and chasing each other on the rocks. Yeah, it was just like real, like something like that is just a holy grail for camera trapping.

[00:14:12] Michael Hawk: Yeah, that’s, it’s incredible to think about that. That’s all with camera traps as well. So it’s like playing the lottery in some respects. So you go and you set up these cameras and how often do you check them? Are you getting any kind of telemetry that they’ve been triggered or do you just have to like come back in, I don’t know, six weeks, a month?

[00:14:30] Like how long do you wait before checking on them?

[00:14:32] Jake Davis: Yep. I left them anywhere from six weeks to two months. Sometimes even sometimes we left them for almost three that’s a long time, but, so they have to be set up really well. So it’s, and that’s why I would spend a lot of time there on the ground, like. It’s a weird thing, like, it’s hard enough to just, you have to see everything, like, visualize the future in advance to, like, ridiculous detail, right?

[00:14:55] not only you have to figure out where might this cat be, you have to, within the frame of the camera, you also are, in most cases, I’m setting the focus manually. And so I’m having to figure out where will it be in focus. within a few inches, I have to guess where it might spend the majority of the time in that frame.

[00:15:12] And then, you’re having to guess, okay, where is it going to enter this, this scene that I have the cameras on, how is it going to get here? Because, I have, I basically have to set up, like, you can think about it like little trip wires, sensors, all around, wherever I think a snow leopard might walk through to turn all the cameras on.

[00:15:29] that whole process is, it takes a while. And there’s also little things that can, like, the sun can maybe be coming up at a weird angle and hit one of the sensors and all the cameras start recording. And so like, you have to work out those little bugs over maybe a few weeks. And then I, then I’ll get it to a place where I’m like, okay, I think I can leave this for a few months.

[00:15:48] And it will still be running when I come back. But you never know. That stuff, I had a snow leopard steal a camera. that’s the one variable you have no control over is what the animals might do.

[00:15:58] Michael Hawk: Imagine the clips you’re going to get when the snow leopard returns that camera though. Some

[00:16:02] incredible stuff.

[00:16:04] Jake Davis: we did find it. We split up, we split up and, and one of the guys found it at the bottom of the mountain. And there was incredible clips on it. Actually, it’s one of those clips is in the show. Before the, the snow leopard stole it and went down the mountain, he picked it up and walked around and then drop it and then walked right by it.

[00:16:21] And it’s a really nice shot.

[00:16:23] Michael Hawk: Oh, wow.

[00:16:24] Jake Davis: And that shot’s in there. It’s a little bit, the horizon’s a little bit crooked, so you can tell it’s like, A little off, but yeah,

[00:16:31] Michael Hawk: other thing that’s just an incredible, I can imagine you setting these things up and testing them out, you’d probably, walk through or set up something, put a rock somewhere and focus on it. I don’t know what all the details are, but then if you are talking six weeks, two months or more, the, To your point, the angle of the sun is going to change in that time too.

[00:16:50] And, considering that so it seems like you must have spent a lot of time learning about snow leopard behavior to prepare for this. Tell me if I’m wrong, but, but, how did you prepare? Like, how did you learn about how they might behave, where they might go, how they might enter in a given scene?

[00:17:07] Jake Davis: yeah. some of it, I just had to learn once I got there from either talking to people or just observing, once I spent some time in the field, but I think I had worked a lot with mountain lions or pumas before that, and I think that had prepared me quite well, cause they’re actually very similar in a lot of ways in, in how they move and how they might approach a scene, how they leave scrapes, like.

[00:17:28] They’re, they’re both, obviously they’re different, but they both are mountain cat. That there’s a lot of overlap there, and so I think that was If I hadn’t had all the experience I had with pumas was going into this, I think I would have been, potentially in over my head.

[00:17:43] Michael Hawk: How then, like, you set this up and you’re expecting the snow leopards to come through and I’m guessing just there’s, back to the behaviors of the animals. Sounds like cats are curious. That’s the old saying is, curiosity

[00:17:57] killed the cats. So are they spooked by the cameras?

[00:18:01] Do they see the cameras? Are they well hidden? Like, what’s, what, how do you prepare from that standpoint?

[00:18:06] Jake Davis: They are curious. It’s with all the animals. It really depends on the individual too, right? Like there’s like some for whatever reason, maybe more, more bold and curious and other ones are going to be a little bit more timid. And so that, that was definitely the case with the snow leopards. Time is your friend.

[00:18:23] With all things when it comes to setting up any kind of camera trap, because you usually the first time they show up to an area where there’s cameras, they’re going to be a little bit uneasy, maybe a real confident male might be fine. But the first time they’re going to be a little uneasy.

[00:18:39] And I did find that that was the case. It took, it probably took me about three weeks before I got anything good on any camera ever when I set up on a new site. And I think they would either come in and stand on the edge and look at it, or maybe they would just come in and not spend a lot of time. But some of them are, that is also, that’s, it’s an interesting question, like whether you hide because it seems like that would be the thing to do, right?

[00:19:04] Just hide them. But then the reality is like, you can’t actually hide them. Like they’re smart. They’re going to know. And so what I’ve learned just from experience is that like, It actually is better not to hide it because the, the more well hidden it is, they still find it. But by the time they find it, they’re well within their critical zone of like feeling safe.

[00:19:25] And so then it actually does trigger, they can get scared. I did have one time where I had one really well hidden underneath a rock. they couldn’t see it until they got right on it. And then the cat was like, didn’t like that. Then he ran away, but he ran like a hundred feet maybe or less and then stopped and then sat there for a while.

[00:19:44] And then walk back in and it was totally fine. But it’s better, I’ve found with a lot of animals, it’s better To let them assess it from a distance, decide what they want to do with it. And then once they’ve made that decision, by the time they get in front of the cameras, everything’s going to be natural behavior.

[00:19:57] Like we don’t want to scare one in the first place, but also it’s like not a scared animal is not useful footage for us either. So that was an interesting thing I felt like I learned just from just from experience when I was out there.

[00:20:10] Michael Hawk: That’s funny, as I was asking the question, I was also forming a hypothesis in my head. Something that’s really been on my mind a lot in the last year plus is this, this book by Ed Yong that’s about animal senses and how, snow leopard, the, the visual, obviously they see well, but there are other senses.

[00:20:29] Thanks. would probably detect that something is amiss. Something has changed. Somebody has been there. And if they can’t also see it, I could almost imagine them being more

[00:20:38] timid And more scared. And by putting those two things together, they can piece it together a little bit faster and say, okay, this isn’t a threat. So that’s my hypothesis. I have no idea if

[00:20:48] Jake Davis: Yeah, that’s

[00:20:48] Michael Hawk: bears out.

[00:20:50] Jake Davis: yeah, no, I’m sure that there’s something to that. Yeah. Yeah, I think Yeah, cats, especially cats in general, they really like to and you have to bear this in mind, like when I build these sites, it’s like they, they, when they first come in, like they really like to assess things from a distance.

[00:21:06] They like to just sit and look for a while, and I’ve had them come in when a new site, and they might spend three to five minutes just sitting there looking before they even walk in, and then once they decide that it’s safe, then they’re totally, they’re totally fine. But yeah, you have to set everything up according, because you can If they sit there for five minutes and your cameras are running and then the clip’s done by the time they walk in, then you’re, you’ve missed it all.

[00:21:29] Michael Hawk: So a little more context to set here. We, we jumped straight into this incredible, fairly recent footage that you’ve captured. How many years have you been setting up these sorts of camera traps?

[00:21:40] Jake Davis: probably about eight years. It’s definitely

[00:21:43] Michael Hawk: so yeah. and and how, how has the technology changed in those eight years?

[00:21:50] Jake Davis: I wouldn’t say it’s exponential

[00:21:54] That, when I started, I was working with a lot of just like homemade stuff that was, you’re just taking a bunch of different things that were never meant to work together and then trying to make them do a thing that they were never meant to do. And so it’s like, camera trapping is, has all, has this like stereotype of just being an absolute nightmare for people who, especially for like producers who have, maybe they don’t understand a lot about it, but they just know that like the time they invested on a camera trap shoot, it just was a total money sink and they got nothing out of it because nothing worked.

[00:22:22] And so there’s still like a lot of, uh, unreliable variables that you have to deal with, but there is like the company I work with now is called Cognisys and they have they’ve done a lot of like really nice custom stuff for me, based off of my demands for custom software and stuff like that.

[00:22:40] And it’s, yeah, it’s gotten to the point where like eight years ago, I don’t, I would not have felt comfortable leaving something for three months like that. Whereas now I can do that, but it’s yeah, there’s still a lot that’s just like, you can’t control.

[00:22:54] Michael Hawk: reading between the lines a little bit. It sounded like you were saying earlier when you connect when you set up your rig, it sounds like there’s maybe one system that triggers all the cameras simultaneously.

[00:23:07] Is that correct?

[00:23:08] Jake Davis: It depends on how I program it, but that’s, that’s, that’s how, that’s usually, that’s how I might do it, right? It just depends on what I’m trying to film. could have 12 cameras on one site, potentially, and I might have eight different sensors in different areas, covering different like entry points or something like that.

[00:23:25] And I, I could have all, any sensor could turn all 12 cameras on at the same time. So

[00:23:31] Michael Hawk: And what are these sensors? Are they like infrared or like

[00:23:34] Jake Davis: exactly. Yeah, they’re active. Well, there’s, there’s two. It just depends on what I’m filming and what technology I might use. one of them is just like, security, like ring cameras that people have at home, right? That’s just a passive infrared sensor. Which you probably know.

[00:23:50] And so it’s just basically it’s a heat detection. So it sees like a heat cell and it moves. From one grid to another. And it counts as like, okay, let’s turn the camera on. So sometimes I use that. And then the more reliable, like long term ones for something like cats in this case is an active beam.

[00:24:06] And so it’s just, it’s just literally sending a beam to a receiver. And so it’s like a trip wire. Right. So as soon as that signal is interrupted. Then that will send a signal to the computer within this box that I’m using that then sends, sends messages to the camera.

[00:24:22] Michael Hawk: I

[00:24:23] see. And

[00:24:23] Jake Davis: because you’re, you’re just using like Sony cameras, I’m using like A7S3.

[00:24:26] So it’s like the cameras are, you have to like, just tell a camera what to do because there’s nothing in the camera, unfortunately. It’d be amazing if Sony would, work with me to, to do some custom stuff because it would open up some more options, but for now we’re just limited to what, whatever Sony cranks out and then we have to make it work.

[00:24:44] Michael Hawk: so are you connected to the cameras via a wireless connection or is it wired?

[00:24:49] Jake Davis: It could be either. Yeah, it just depends. Mostly it’s waterless stuff.

[00:24:53] Michael Hawk: Okay. Yeah. Wow. It’s just, so my background prior to getting into nature and podcasting was in network engineering. So things like, communications protocols and

[00:25:03] The fact that it’s at a stage of reliability that you can set up a wireless system and walk away for a couple months is, it blows my mind.

[00:25:12] I don’t even know that I would trust that having engineered these things in the past. So that’s, that’s amazing. How about you’re in such an amazing place. Actually, how long did you spend in the Gobi desert for the shoot?

[00:25:24] Jake Davis: It was almost five months. It was five trips. It ended up being about five months away from home. Yeah, a little bit, probably a little bit less than that in the field.

[00:25:33] Michael Hawk: And were you staying in the vicinity? Like if you had your setup out there for six weeks, you were, one place recording and then you’re setting up in another place or like, how were you

[00:25:42] Jake Davis: Yeah, we set up where I was in the Gobi Desert, it’s just, there’s The only people out there are nomads, right? So they’re nomadic herders who they, and they live in gers, which are like yurts basically. And so they’re, they’re easy to pack up and move and they can, that way they can migrate with their herds throughout the year as, there’s more grass somewhere else.

[00:26:02] And yeah, so I, that’s what I had was just, I had a ger camp set up there and that was like a base camp to work out of, and, I could get pretty much anywhere I needed to go from there. Within the day we would, drive a ways and then we’d then use hike so that, yeah, we just had a base camp, but it was really cool to live in one of those things it was like camping, but it was nice.

[00:26:22] It was like, it was very comfortable. I got to the end. Like when I, the last few times I went back, the first night I just slept great. And they have these cool flaps at the top that you can open up for airflow if you want. So you’re, you’re basically it’s like a skylight, right?

[00:26:36] So you’re just laying in there and you can look at the stars at night. Yeah, it was a really cool, really cool experience.

[00:26:41] Michael Hawk: So then do you have some like generators or solar gear or something? So you can do some field work, check on progress, check on what you got.

[00:26:51] Jake Davis: Yep. Use both. Yeah. But, and sometimes a generator was the best way just to power because a lot of that is having to recharge the batteries which takes quite a bit of power. Yeah.

[00:27:01] Michael Hawk: Maybe this is too in the weeds, but I’m just thinking from, again, my amateur eyes, did you ever run into any situations where you just captured so much footage that you actually drained your batteries before, before you’re able to get out there?

[00:27:14] Jake Davis: yes, but not necessarily so much usable footage because, I mean, part of what happens in that time is like, The cameras will trigger for other things too. Like it’s impossible to, you try to mitigate that as much as you can. And, but you, you’re constrained by like how much storage you have on media, right?

[00:27:33] So like I have about a terabyte of media of like memory cards and then also power. And so that’s why you, you have to set it up so well so that you don’t have a lot of what we might call falsing. things triggering for maybe the wind blowing or the sun hitting it at a certain angle. But no, I never had a, I never had a terabyte full of snow leopard clips, but I had a lot I had coming away from it.

[00:27:53] We had far more than I could have hoped at the end of those five months. Far more than was ever that they were able to use in the show, probably only use 20 percent of what was good. Made it into the show. Yeah.

[00:28:07] Michael Hawk: so good to have had that kind of success on, on a shoot like that. That’s just amazing. And I can understand why

[00:28:13] you would go back and talk to your 10 year old self and tell yourself about

[00:28:17] Jake Davis: Yeah. It’s crazy. Yeah.

[00:28:19] Michael Hawk: Something else that always, that I always wonder about anyway, is like the, you could call it the bycatch in a way.

[00:28:27] So you have this setup and you’re trying to get the snow leopards, but I’m going to guess that some other animals, some other interesting things happen can you tell me about some of that bycatch that maybe you caught too?

[00:28:40] Jake Davis: Totally. Yeah. That’s always really interesting. Cause you’re what it, what it does is it just really reveals. Diversity of whatever ecosystem you’re working in. that was really one of the most surprising things about this project to me, because it was, the Gobi desert is harsh. It is harsh.

[00:28:57] it’s like looking at the Mojave desert, maybe in California. Like as I drive through there, I’m like, this looks pretty similar to where I was. Temperature’s probably not quite as extreme, but you would not think that it would support a high level of biodiversity, but when you have cameras out there, that’s what you start to realize is like.

[00:29:12] Wow. there’s, snow leopards don’t live here in a vacuum. Like there’s all sorts of, there’s Ibex there’s, there’s sheep, Argali sheep, there’s different types of antelope, there’s other cats. There’s a palace, it’s called a palaces cat. It’s a sometimes known as the grumpy cat. It’s got a grumpy face and really short legs.

[00:29:30] There’s wolves, there’s foxes. I was just blown away at how many animals made a living in such an extreme place. It was really impressive.

[00:29:40] Michael Hawk: That’s incredible too, because everything you just listed there would probably fall into a classification of kind of like mega fauna. So there’s got to be so many other small things living there to support all those big things.

[00:29:51] Jake Davis: yep. And those we don’t get as much. Like, there was a hedgehog we got that was pretty cool. But yeah, unfortunately, I, the way I have to set everything up is I, those sensors are like a little higher, right? So that they’re more reliable. But it means that like a smaller animal going through won’t turn the cameras on.

[00:30:06] So we do miss a lot of those smaller rodents and whatever else is there. But obviously, yeah, that’s, there must be that, or else it wouldn’t support all those megafauna. Yeah, especially those predators. Yeah,

[00:30:18] Michael Hawk: that’s one of the, the things that I, no matter where you go, you can just experience like the awe and wonder of biodiversity and it, and it’s just always surprising, it seems like. So you alluded a little bit to, you, you, you You wish Sony would do a few things and how the technology has progressed a little bit.

[00:30:35] What still or currently drives you the most crazy with the technology? Like if you could snap your fingers and have one innovation, or maybe it’s two innovations, I won’t constrain you that way, but have some number of innovations to get over that hump. What, what would you be looking for?

[00:30:54] Jake Davis: Boy, some of them are probably quite like, specific and technical. But, a lot of what I have to do is rely on, I can, I set certain parameters within the camera. Because like, I don’t know, I have to prepare for a snow leopard might come just, just before sunrise when it’s quite dark, or it might come a little, a couple hours later when it’s really bright.

[00:31:13] So I don’t know what the exposure needs to be. And so I, I have to rely on some parameters within the camera to float. So I have some things that are fixed and some things that float so that my exposure can change, but I have no control over how that happens. so I would love to have, for example, like if we’re talking camera talk, The ISO options on the Sony, like I have it going from all the way from 100 to 102, 000, which is very high. But there’s like in between zones that I would like to skip because that the camera I work is basically like, there’s two spots on the ISO setting where it looks really clean and it’s not a lot of noise and grain in the image.

[00:31:50] And I have, and those auto modes, I have no control over that. So they’re just really like, specific things that Sony probably will never do because. I don’t represent enough of their market with those needs. I do think that like things like eye tracking are really interesting to me and like a lot of newer DSLRs are starting to incorporate that and that’s getting better.

[00:32:08] And so that’s something I’m already using that that’s really cool. having, sometimes, maybe some kind of AI facial recognition or something could be really interesting down the road. it’d be incredible if you could set up a camera and, and the camera had the technology to, to say.

[00:32:23] This is the species I want you to report for, and so when this species enters, the camera recognizes it and starts recording, that’d be a dream. think that’s definitely a possibility at some point, I think we’re a little ways off from that. But there’s definitely been a lot of improvements in DSLRs and it’s happening fast.

[00:32:38] Michael Hawk: Yeah, I could see some of that happening and I could almost see it, to the point where you could custom train your AI on your camera for a specific use case or specific

[00:32:47] Jake Davis: Mm hmm.

[00:32:48] Michael Hawk: like a decade in the future, something like that.

[00:32:50] Jake Davis: Yeah,

[00:32:51] Michael Hawk: exciting times, as to uh, how this

[00:32:53] will all evolve too.

[00:32:54] Talk to you a little bit about some of the other experiences you’ve had. in photography, cinematography, camera trapping, whatever. But one I actually saw on your Instagram when I was, preparing for this, and I thought was really interesting you were able to put a GoPro in a wolf den. And yeah, that, that was it was interesting on so many levels. One that, professionals are using GoPros in that way. And I guess I shouldn’t be surprised because I’ve seen other, other uses. But can you tell me a little bit about that experience and what you were looking to achieve there?

[00:33:27] Jake Davis: that was crazy. So that was another where I actually set up camera traps outside of the den too, but then. The times we ended up using a GoPro is where you’re just, you’re really confined by the space. And so the only thing you could fit in there was a GoPro. And so that, yeah, that was an experience.

[00:33:44] I never, one of those, you probably wouldn’t just have on your own unless you’re part of some like bigger project. We had collaborated with this research project called the Voyager’s Wolf Project. And so what they, the researchers, were already, they were going in to the den, regardless of us, and they were going to weigh and tag the pups.

[00:34:02] And so what that means is they have to go in there and get the pups out of the den and then, do their whole process. And so I had basically as much time as it takes them to do that, to frantically set up the cameras, because we didn’t want to, we didn’t want to take more time than we needed.

[00:34:16] Obviously it’s stressful for the parents, and it was a bit of a frenzy, but yeah, we just, I remember just jamming my arm down that, that wolf den, hoping that there wasn’t another pup in there, bite my fingers off and yeah, the shots were really cool though, because you get them, because the pups were like, they’re too young to be scared of anything, so like, as soon as we leave, they just all, they’re just like running over all the cameras, they’re all just they’re all howling at the front of the den, It was really, that was a really cool, cool experience.

[00:34:42] Michael Hawk: Yeah. Seeing a wolf pup howl is it’s such a cute thing. It’s like, okay, you can see, you can see the adult wolf inside of the, of the pup.

[00:34:50] Jake Davis: yeah. It’s a, it is, it will melt your heart. Yeah. The first time they did it on camera, I was like, you’ve got to be kidding me. Pretty cute. Not very intimidating.

[00:34:59] Michael Hawk: That’s really interesting that, so it’s like a opportunistic thing that biologists were going in for research purposes already. So it’s not like you’re adding any extra, negative impact to these wolves. And what was your goal though with this? Were you just looking for cool footage or was it part of the research project to observe the behavior of the wolves?

[00:35:18] Mm hmm.

[00:35:19] Jake Davis: our goal, well, I guess a little bit of both, but ours was that was part of a show. So that was, there’s two different shows that’s in for Disney National Geographic. The one on Disney Plus right now, it’s called America’s National Parks. And so for, from a production standpoint, we were trying to tell a story, right?

[00:35:35] And so it was part of a larger, like a larger narrative. And the wolves living in voyagers were more of the stories we were telling. But the, for the researchers, it’s, we also, work out a deal that’s above my pay grade, where they’re also benefiting from the footage and learning from it as well.

[00:35:51] And but yeah, it’s, it’s one of those things where you, we often will try to find those situations where we can partner with working biologists. Because we, like, we would never just go put, do something like that. And that’s like way too invasive. But it’s like you said, it’s okay, this is going to happen for the research and if we can do it without adding any negative impact, then it’s a great opportunity to witness some really unique moments there.

[00:36:16] Michael Hawk: And just staying on this theme of other incredible situations you found yourself in, you were starting to tell me a little bit about an encounter you had with some Alaskan brown bears. So I’ll just hand it off to you to tell me that story.

[00:36:29] Jake Davis: Yeah. That, so we were talking a lot earlier about all the camera trap work that I do, which I really like, but that’s a, it’s a very different type of. a different way of working than like actually filming an animal in person where you’re you’re having this like encounter and so bears for example they can be dangerous but you also can like in the right situation if you handle yourself well you can sit there with them and film them at like pretty close proximity and have it be pretty safe.

[00:36:58] And so that’s this particular sequence I was on was they had asked us to film a bear fight which we were like, okay, we’ll try it, but knowing like going into it, it’s, they don’t like to fight. Right. So it’s like a pretty hard thing to even just to witness because they’re really good at resolving conflict without actually getting physical.

[00:37:16] Like they’re all with all of their body language. it’s actually a very nuanced communication. And unless they’re really evenly matched. They don’t actually get into a fight. They might come really close. And even if they do, it’s usually pretty quick. it might be ten seconds and it’s over.

[00:37:30] so knowing all that, we were like, the odds are really against us, but we’re going to try. And so we were out here sitting with this male bear who was already with a female. And we could see from the distance, this, this other big male, who just came out of the bushes and started walking straight toward us, head up high.

[00:37:46] Like he knew, he knew what he was getting into. He was probably on the scent of that other male for a while. And so we set up the cameras really quickly and I got all set up. And as soon as I got set up, those two bears met right in front of me. Like 30 yards right in front of me. And they They size each other up.

[00:38:05] They have like the very methodical way of starting to fight. They walk side by side and, and show off how big each other are. And then they square off and then they stand up and then they both roar. That’s how every fight starts. it’s really, really fascinating. There’s like rules that they go by.

[00:38:19] And then after that first roar where they’re, they’re showing their teeth to each other, right? Then it’s just, then everything’s quiet and they just go at it and they’re just. In this case, it was like 15 minutes straight of just the most intense fight you can imagine for like blood everywhere.

[00:38:36] Just like, and it was, they were so close. I was looking up at them, right? Like they were that close that I was trying, I was like pointing the camera up, trying to film them. And it was just one of those experiences that you have to stay focused. Cause you’re, you’re trying to get all the different shots and you want everything to be in focus.

[00:38:52] You’re just, you’re having to stay in the moment. So I remember just like, bottling all of that adrenaline, and then once it stopped and the fight had broken up and there was a clear winner, I just so distinctly remember just being overwhelmed. I like, I had fell to the ground. got hit with the biggest wave of adrenaline that I had been suppressing that whole time.

[00:39:10] And it was just, it was really incredible because you just, it’s just one of those moments where you’re just dwarfed by like, the sheer power of nature. And these animals that you are just absolutely nothing to, and there’s like a, probably a little bit of fear there, it wasn’t like they weren’t going to attack us.

[00:39:26] They were focused on each other. I guess the only danger is that they probably could have run over us cause they weren’t even, they were so focused on each other, but yeah, that was definitely one of my like peak wildlife moments for like just intensity.

[00:39:38] Michael Hawk: I have maybe two questions. First what do you think led them to finally stop the fight after 15 minutes?

[00:39:49] Jake Davis: the one, one surrendered. So they fight until, until you surrender. And it’s, and it’s actually really clear. You can see it with what they do with their heads. So the loser will put his head down really, really low, almost between his legs, and just like his nose is just pointing straight at the ground, and then he’ll just back up a little bit.

[00:40:07] And then the fight’s done. So it just, the one, the one bear who was, he was a little bit bigger, but this other bear just, just kept going at it and he would have them down and it would look like the fight would be over. And then the bear who was. On the bottom, he would just get up and swipe at his face again or bite him, and so he would just instigate it.

[00:40:25] He wouldn’t give up, basically. So it’s, it really goes until somebody surrenders. Yeah, that was really fascinating to see how, yeah, there’s like really just like a system of rules in place that they go by. it was really unique. And even when you’re out there interacting with them, that’s you can observe how they are with each other.

[00:40:43] And then you, you pretty much do the same thing. You play by their, you pretty much just pretend you’re a bear out there. And communicate with your body in the same way that they communicate. And it’s yeah. And you can end up being out there and be actually quite safe.

[00:40:57] Michael Hawk: Yeah, it really is fascinating from a behavioral standpoint, from like an ethology standpoint, like I don’t know what the right term would be, but I, I think about it from a, a human perspective. And I just imagine like two, two like enraged people. Going at it full force fighting. And if somebody wants to stop and give up, is that other person going to let them, or are they going to keep at it?

[00:41:21] I feel like people might keep going, and, and not say, okay, we’re done here like that. So it’s, it’s really interesting.

[00:41:29] Jake Davis: Well, yeah, it is. And I suppose it depends on the intent, right? Because like, ’cause there would be situations where a bear might actually, the intent might be to kill another bear, right? It might be pre.

[00:41:40] Michael Hawk: Hmm.

[00:41:41] Jake Davis: Maybe he’s gonna kill a young bear that’s threatened, or maybe he’s So that does happen, and in that case, it ends in one of them being killed.

[00:41:48] I think this particular dynamic around mating is more about just, dominance. it wasn’t like predatory to begin with, right? It was more about just I just wanted to prove that I’m the one who’s going to get to breed and you need to leave. I think they’re very aware of even though he was going to win, like, if they had continued fighting for no reason, he’s going to continue to be injured as well and expend a lot of energy.

[00:42:14] Michael Hawk: those are great points. And the other, sort of behavioral thing is more from, you behind the camera. I know like when I’m, when I’m trying to take videos of my kids at sports events or important events, I always feel a little disconnected from the event when I’m looking through the camera.

[00:42:30] And I, I sometimes have this little bit of feeling like I really wish I could just put the camera aside. and be fully in the moment. And I’m wondering, you as a professional, when you’re seeing, in this case here with the bears, it’s like so over the top, maybe all the rules are thrown out, but perhaps in a more mundane situation do, do you, having gone through so many repetitions, so many cycles of photography, do you feel a little disconnected from the moment when looking through the lens?

[00:42:57] Or I’m just curious what your thoughts are.

[00:42:59] Jake Davis: Yeah, I, I, there certainly is an element of that, right? It’s like, it’s like that Sean Penn moment from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, where he decides not to take the picture of Snow Leopard and just look at it instead. That’s what everybody thinks of in that, I think. But like, I, there are times where I, if I can, because maybe not everything is interesting, right?

[00:43:19] You might just be sitting with an animal and it’s just napping or something. So like, I do try to find those little moments where I can just stop and then sit there and be with it. Because there’s definitely something that’s really special about those moments. my instinct is definitely to like, if something really interesting is happening, I’m gonna, I’m probably gonna feel more like regret if I don’t actually capture it.

[00:43:40] Because that’s just how I’m wired, as opposed to like, feeling regret that I didn’t sit there and watch it. cause it’s, I still do feel like I’m pretty they’re definitely, it’s a, like, it’s a different experience, but I don’t know that it feels completely disconnected because like, in some ways you’re like, in some ways you’re closer to, cause you’re like using like a telephoto lens and you’re like, you’re zooming in and you’re seeing all this detail that’s going on and you’re still like in the moment reacting to it, it doesn’t feel completely disconnected, I feel it, but it is a different experience than just sitting there and watching.

[00:44:07] Michael Hawk: One subtlety for me I’ve noticed is if I’m looking through an electronic viewfinder, I feel very disconnected. But if it’s an optical viewfinder, I, I don’t feel so disconnected. And maybe it’s just that little subtle difference that the brain picks up on, that slight delay, whatever it is about the electronic viewfinder just feels a

[00:44:25] Jake Davis: Yeah. I can see that. Yeah.

[00:44:27] Michael Hawk: All right. Well, well, Jake, I think we’re nearing the wrap up portion now. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences and insights. It’s been really interesting to me and hopefully everyone listening. Now, before we go though, a couple of things, I I’d like to hear about what you have coming up.

[00:44:42] What sorts of projects are should we be looking out for maybe that are out right now that people can go check out?

[00:44:50] Jake Davis: Sure. The most recent one, like we talked about, was those snow leopards for Planet Earth 3. So you can check that out now. That’s streaming. It is so hard because there’s, there are a handful of pretty exciting things that I have been working on recently, but they’re all under NDA. Okay. And so we, I can’t talk about them yet, maybe at some future point.

[00:45:09] But there will be some more, I’ll be posting about it on, Instagram and stuff. So you can see in the next year, there’ll be some cool sequences coming out. But the project that’s been taking the majority of my time over the past couple of months is actually a bit different. It’s an online nature photography course that I’ve partnered with a really good friend of mine who’s a really talented photographer.

[00:45:30] And we’ve just, we know so many people who. have said to us in different ways that they have always thought about getting into wildlife photography or always wanted to do nature photography. And for various reasons, people have just been held back and there’s, some, some obstacles. And so what we’ve tried to do is just, there’s something for everyone in here.

[00:45:48] There’s something for people who have been photographing for years, but we really tried to just make it accessible for anybody. Because just, speaking from personal experience, even if you don’t want to do this as a career, there’s something really, really profound. That you get out of just being in the woods, like out in nature, taking pictures of wildlife, even if it doesn’t have to be epic megafauna, like even at home in your local park.

[00:46:13] It’s, it’s a really great way to connect you into nature and it’s really good for mental health. And so our vision with this is just to make this as accessible as we can to anybody. And so that’s, that’s, it’s not out yet, but that’s, we’re looking probably mid June, we’re going to release that.

[00:46:30] And it’s. It’s called Mastering Nature Photography, and it will just be mastering nature photography.com. That’s been a, that’s been a passion project for us for the past couple months

[00:46:39] Michael Hawk: Well, great. I suspect then if you’re saying mid June that when we release this episode your course will now be out in, in the public. That’ll

[00:46:47] Jake Davis: Oh, that’s right. Yeah. Yep. Perfect.

[00:46:49] Michael Hawk: make sure to link to that in in the show notes. And the I, I, I love the message though, because I, I’m a firm believer. My, my journey in nature largely began with photography just to point and shoot.

[00:47:01] When I did a national park tour. And then I

[00:47:04] realized at some point that even when I’m not in national parks, I can photograph birds anywhere. Like there’s always birds. And then that started opening up all these other layers. And now most recently I’ve really gotten into macro photography of insects because you can find insects everywhere.

[00:47:20] And there’s like crazy things going on at the microscopic

[00:47:23] level all the time. So that’s, that’s so cool. And on the mental health standpoint. Spending 20 minutes in my backyard. I can so quickly get in the moment. It took some practice. It took a while before like that kind of

[00:47:38] Jake Davis: hmm. Mm

[00:47:39] Michael Hawk: intentionality and vision were to before it would take me 20 minutes just to get in that space now I can go out there and within minutes be in the space and then spend 20 minutes finding spiders or whatever it is.

[00:47:48] So

[00:47:49] firm believer in in the power of like just getting in the moment with nature. So very cool.

[00:47:54] Jake Davis: Totally. Yeah. Just, it’s a really, you could just go out and some people going for a walk is great, but like, it’s like doing what you, like you’re saying, like, it’s just easier to get your brain focused on something, if you’re being creative it’s like an easier gateway to just, to reconnect, I

[00:48:09] Michael Hawk: I hadn’t thought of it that way, but yeah, that’s, that’s cool. I’m going to dwell on that. Yeah, that’s So I like to ask my guests some kind of standard wrap up questions. And, one of them that I think you might have a really interesting perspective on is if you could magically impart one, I’m just going to say open ended concept that could help the general public see nature and the world the way you see it, what might that be?

[00:48:35] And the reason I said concept, usually I say like ecological concept or. Something like that. But you, you’ve gotten involved in, in behavior and observation and, a lot of other aspects of nature as well.

[00:48:47] Jake Davis: hmm. Totally.

[00:48:48] Michael Hawk: Hopefully that made sense.

[00:48:51] Jake Davis: I think, I guess there’s a lot of different ways I could go with this, but the one that seems to be standing out to me most is This idea of connectivity, which like could be an ecological one, principle to start off with, like in community ecology, like this idea of how everything is connected.

[00:49:07] And we like to think about things, even us as humans, as like this kind of separate thing and then there’s nature, right? And I just, that’s definitely been something that has, been impressed on me as I’ve spent a lot of time working like in very particular ecosystems with particular species is I might start off thinking about one thing like maybe filming a bear or filming a squirrel or something and then if you really have immersed yourself in a place it what’s revealed to you is actually like how connected all of these different species even between plants and animals are to each other to form this much larger picture and I think to see that on like a small level is quite cool.

[00:49:46] But obviously like, even from an earth system standpoint, I think about that a lot is how, like, we are all so connected. And yeah, I don’t know. I just like to like to dwell on that.

[00:49:57] Michael Hawk: I think that’s, that’s a great one. It’s true. And, it’s something that you almost really have to experience in bits and pieces for it really to sink in. You can be told it, over and over, but it, it takes that, that experience, I think, to really see it. And I’m constantly thinking about how to better impart that concept actually to, to people.

[00:50:19] Like how to, how to help them jumpstart, the general public jumpstart to that destination in a way. what analogies and what videography and stories and narratives can be put together to to help in that regard. And yeah. I won’t bore you, but we’re working on some ideas, but

[00:50:38] Jake Davis: oh, cool.

[00:50:39] Michael Hawk: hopefully we can crack that nut a little bit.

[00:50:41] Jake Davis: Yeah.

[00:50:42] Michael Hawk: So the other thing, of course, is I want people to follow you and your work. So you’re on social media. Can you run down the best places to go for people to keep in touch with you and what you’re doing?

[00:50:53] Jake Davis: Instagram is a great one. That’s @revealedinnature. That’s probably where I’m the most active and then website is jakedavis.tv. And so there’s, you can see recent work on there also like prints and all my photography collections are on there. So those are, those are the two best bets.

[00:51:10] Michael Hawk: All right. And as always, those will be linked before we hang up for today. Is there anything else that you’d Like to say,

[00:51:17] Jake Davis: Yeah, I think I really enjoyed talking with you, Michael. Thanks for having me on and yeah, leave people with anything. Maybe it’s just like a little encouragement just to get out there and spend, if nothing else, just 20 minutes in nature, like you were saying, and do that once a day and see how you feel.

[00:51:35] Michael Hawk: yeah, for sure. All right, Jake. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you and all this time that you spent with me today. It’s been enlightening and a lot of fun. I’m looking forward. This is, this is one of those moments where I generally don’t like to edit my podcast because I don’t like hearing my voice, but I think I’m going to enjoy going back and listening to this one because

[00:51:54] Jake Davis: Nobody does. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:51:56] Michael Hawk: Thank you again. Have a great day.

[00:51:59] Jake Davis: Great. Thank

[00:52:00] you.