Pioneers

Álvaro Valiente is a professional landscape and nature photographer based in Spain. His passion for photography and video creation have made him travel to different parts of the world to capture the beauty of extraordinary landscapes and cities. He is always looking for his next destination and he loves to discover new places. 
 
He finds beauty in the way that this art makes him express how he sees the world through his camera and how he tries to portray his vision and way of thinking in the work he creates. 
 

Brandon Güell is a first-generation Costa Rican-American wildlife ecologist & photographer. His research and photography have garnered numerous awards including recognition in the 2022 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. His passion for exploring wildlife and wild places was largely due to traveling throughout Costa Rica with his family as a child. His interest in wildlife photography developed at the start of his Ph.D., initially from using it as a tool to study animal behavior in the field. Now, Brandon aims to use photography not only to communicate science but also to help inspire a passion for wildlife, wild places, and create advocates for conservation.

Enrico is a professional landscape photographer from Northern Italy. He is one of the most renowned landscape photographers at an international level, and his work has been awarded and published in some of the most important photography competitions and media over the last decade. Enrico’s work is constantly evolving and every day he has new ideas and new works are slowly materialising in his mind. Here is a famous quote that Enrico thinks fits extremely well with his approach to landscape photography: “A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.”

Freelance photographer based in Rome. Passionate about traveling, in 2019 he has won the title of Italy’s Top 10 Landscape Photographer in the World’s Top Landscape Photography Contest. His works have been published in some of the most important photography magazines such as “Digital Photo” and “Digital SLR Photography”. Over the years, he gained over 60 thousands followers between Instagram, 500 px and Facebook.

Marc Stickler is biologist and Leica wildlife ambassador from Austria. Marc early work included researching lemon sharks in the Bahamas and mountain gorillas in Uganda. He spent one year at the UNESCO World Heritage Okavango Delta in Botswana studding Chacma Baboons, living in a tent. In this magnificent place his passion for photography and nature observation was born. Now one of the world’s leading wildlife and underwater photographers, and a Leica global ambassador, Marc’s mission is to utilise photography as a tool for conservation, living by the maxim “What you love you will protect”. His aim is to build schools in developing countries to support education.

Education triggers conservation. He was recently named one of 50 Change-makers from the United Nations Climate Change department. His photography workshops and keynotes are booked worldwide. Since 2017 he became a leading lecturer for photography at the university of Salzburg. Top tier companies such as Deloitte, Refinitiv, Verum Capital, SAP and many more are trusting Marc Sticklers unmatched performance within photography and his images to brighten up their offices. A percentage if this income goes directly back into the country where Stickler took the picture.

Margot Raggett left a corporate career in PR in London in 2010, in order to concentrate on her love of wildlife photography. She was a regular 'Photographer in Residence' at Entim Camp in the Maasai Mara for a number of years and was also leading photographic safaris, before everything changed again for her when she saw a poached elephant in late 2014.

So moved by that incident, in 2015 she founded the Remembering Wildlife project, a 'live-aid' moment for wildlife photographers coming together for a fund-raising book entitled Remembering Elephants. Such was the success of this book that it was quickly followed up by Remembering Rhinos in 2017, Remembering Great Apes in 2018, Remembering Lions in 2019, Remembering Cheetahs in 2020 and Remembering African Wild Dogs in 2021. So far, nearly 200 photographers have contributed to those books under the banner of ‘Wildlife Photographers United’, selling more than 32,000 copies and raising more than £950,000 / USD $1.2m for conservation projects in Africa and Asia. You can read about many of these projects here https:// rememberingwildlife.com/supported-projects/

Whenever she can around the books, Margot still visits Africa regularly, more often than not nowadays visiting projects the series is supporting. She shoots on a Nikon D810 with a Nikkor 400 f/2.8 as her primary kit and her work is regularly published worldwide. In 2015 she won the 'Animal Antics' category of the prestigious Nature's Best Photography Awards. She was also awarded a highly commended in the 'African Wildlife' category of the same contest. She is now much in demand on the speaker circuit and also as a judge of wildlife photography contests.

She recently announced that there will be a 7th book in the Remembering Wildlife series, Remembering Bears, and that this will be published in October 2022.

Milko Marchetti was born in Ferrara on 10th June 1968. In over 30 years of activity he has built an archive of over 1.000.000 images and over 25.000 clips videos. He has received lots of relevant prizes such as the professional qualification QEP (QUALIFIEDEUROPEAN PHOTOGRAPHER), the first Italian photographer for the Wildlife section. For over twenty years he has been organizing photographic courses and post-elaboration, photographic journeys and Naturalistic Photography in Italy and in the World.

Sean Scott is an Ocean Landscape photographer based in Burleigh Heads Australia. As an ambassador for Tourism Australia Sean’s spend a great deal of the year exploring all over Australia from the remote areas of Australia’s Outback to underwater on the Great Barrier Reef. Sean’s passion for the environment and the country he calls home is evident in his work. With a gallery based in Burleigh Heads Sean is always out and about looking for that next image for his studio.

Sue Flood is a wildlife and travel photographer and documentary maker who has travelled the world capturing breathtaking images of some of the world’s most iconic species. Sue has a particular passion for cold and remote locations, including the Arctic, Antarctic and Siberia, which is evident in her stunning photographs. Despite her love of the cold she can also occasionally be found in warmer climes when on safari.

Sue’s images have been published in BBC Wildlife, National Geographic, Nature’s Best magazine and Geo and recognised in various prestigious photograph awards, including The International Photography Awards, International Conservation Photography Awards (best of festival), Travel Photographer or the Year, Nature’s Best Awards, International Garden Photographer of the Year and the Royal Photograpical Society international exhibition, where she was awarded a Silver Medal. She has written two books which were both awarded in the International Photography Awards.

Tom Mason is a professional wildlife and nature photographer from the UK and Nikon Europe Optics Ambassador. Having worked on numerous assignments from the Amazon to the Falklands, he is a regular contributor to numerous publications such as BBC Wildlife Magazine, N-Photo and numerous other titles. Tom has a passion for remote camera traps and deploying remote cameras in order to capture unique images of wildlife close up, sharing the stories of the natural world through photography. He hopes to positively engage people in order to help protect wildlife for the future.