A career captured in the wild

A conservationist living in the city has finally found a way to combine his passion for nature and for photography

Surviving in an urban jungle like Beijing and observing the creatures who inhabit it is one thing, but Xu Jian faced a challenge of a slightly different nature. Xu, who lives in the capital, is a wildlife photographer, and for years he had wrestled with the problem of trying to make a living from it.

He worked with the magazine Chinese National Geographic for six years and was an assistant to a wildlife photographer part time for several years, and went full time in 2007, before becoming a freelancer in 2008. Making a living in the field continued to be precarious, and in 2009 he co-founded what is said to be the country's first imaging biodiversity survey institute, Imaging Biodiversity Expedition Inc, with four of his photographer friends. That venture, and his patience, is finally paying off.

Over the past five years, IBE has become a successful social enterprise that offers photographic biodiversity surveys to the country's nature reserves, forestry bureaus, scientific research and commercial institutes and NGOs.

From tropical jungles in Xishuangbanna in Yunnan province to no-man's land on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, photographers with IBE have conducted 50 expeditions in 39 locations and taken more than 300,000 photos of 6,500 wild species.

"We can support four full-time wildlife photographers, including myself, and have a team of more than 30 expert (or cooperating) photographers," says Xu, director of IBE, at the IBE studio hidden in a residential building in northern Beijing.

Xu, 36, says his dream to be a wildlife photographer was born while he was attending Beijing Forestry University, where he studied between 1996 and 2000. He joined the university's mountaineering and environmental protection societies, and volunteered for several public campaigns to raise environmental awareness. "I turned from being an outdoor enthusiast to conservationist in college," he says.

In 1997, he met Xi Zhinong, a leading wildlife photographer, whose photos of Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys helped protect the endangered species' last habitat in northwestern Yunnan province, during a conservation-themed summer camp held for college students in the province.

Later, he realized that wildlife photography is a good way to combine his two passions. "From Xi, I knew that photos could truly contribute to conservation," he says.

After graduating, he worked as a reporter and editor for the Geographic Knowledge magazine in Beijing, which later changed its name to Chinese National Geographic. But he struggled to travel for more than a week and soon found that photographers' pay was so meager that it was impossible for them to make ends meet.

He joined Xi's Wild China Film Studio in 2007, and "learned a lot" from him. Even someone as successful as Xi, he found, could not make a living by selling wildlife photos in the country.

He became a freelance wildlife photographer in 2008, doing projects for various conservation NGOs. "To be honest, I could support myself by working for NGOs," Xu says.

"But applying for a project, discussing it back and forth in e-mails, taking photos with limited time and funds, and writing reports afterwards is not what I expected from the job."

One day he read an article in National Geographic magazine about the Rapid Assessment Visual Expeditions (RAVE) survey taken by the International League of Conservation Photographers in Gabon. He was both impressed and inspired.

Then came the breakthrough in 2009.

Invited by a friend who was working with a research base of Peking University in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, he joined a biodiversity survey at a nature reserve together with several other photographers.

"I took photos of amphibians, Guo Liang (who became another IBE co-founder) took photos of mammals and birds and another friend took photos of snakes," Xu recalls. "We had a lot of fun and became aware that we could do something by working together."

In the beginning, they called themselves RAVE, later changing it to IBE.

Later that year, Xu applied for a project to do photographic expeditions to Meili Snow Mountain National Park in northwestern Yunnan province during each of the four seasons, for the international conservation NGO The Nature Conservancy.

He organized a group of wildlife photographers and recorded the park's fauna and flora. The results from the four expeditions led to the publication of A Field Guide to the Wildlife of Meili Snow Mountain National Park in 2011.

"More importantly, we figured out the development direction of IBE," Xu says. "It should be an enterprise, instead of a conservation NGO."

The funding for the Meili project was less than 100,000 yuan ($15,970), Xu says. Every participant received 100 yuan a day as field-trip allowance. But they had to rent horses to transport their equipment in the park at 160 yuan a horse a day.

"We joked we were cheaper than horses," Xu says. "In those days many of us had other jobs to make a living. Wildlife photography was often a passion instead of a profession. But we knew that to support our passion we needed IBE to be sustainable."

As a result, they registered IBE as a company in Beijing. Xu and Guo Liang were the only two full-time workers. The company managed to break even in 2010.

As the IBE photographs were seen by more people in books, magazines and exhibitions, their business started to boom.

"During our work, we found that even the best nature reserves in China are short of images to demonstrate their rich fauna and flora and to showcase their achievements in conservation to the public, "Xu says. "We have huge space to grow."

His team has been trying to standardize its working process over the past two years, he says.

"We usually send a team of five to seven photographers, often specializing in different fields, such as mammals, birds, plants and insects, to launch an expedition," Xu says.

"After a survey, we will give a copy of all images from the trip and a comprehensive report to our employer."

He is proud of IBE's contribution to science and conservation. Every year the IBE photographers in different fields of life science, record between 10 and 20 news species for China from their expeditions.

"Our photos, all with GPS information, will help scientists and reserve managers research and protect certain species and their habitat," he says.

"Few Chinese know that our biodiversity is one of the richest in the northern hemisphere, you must know about it before caring for it."

The success of IBE has brought Xu various awards, including a top prize at Ford China Environmental Award last year.

The prize was 200,000 yuan. Part of the money was used to fund the latest IBE expedition to Dulong River Valleys in northwestern Yunnan, Xu says.

chenliang@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 06/27/2014 page29)