Cristina Mittermeier Explains Why Being A Good Photographer Isn't Enough Anymore, E117

Cristina Mittermeier is a National Geographic photographer, co-founder of SeaLegacy, and author of "Hope." Her work has been featured in National Geographic's series "Photographer" and in publications around the world. Cristinais the photographer who coined the term "conservation photography," co-founded SeaLegacy, and made the starving polar bear image seen by an estimated 2.5 billion people. 

In this episode Matt and Cristina discuss how to find your photographic voice that actually means something, why a point of view separates an artist from a craftsman, and the one principle Cristina has built her life around: to show up.

- Join the Mood Insiders for ad-free extended episodes, monthly masterclasses, the weekly book club, and much more (link in notes below) - 

Other things you will take away from this episode:

• The "glorious amateur" and why expertise is not a prerequisite for meaningful photography
• The full story behind the starving polar bear photograph and the backlash that followed
• How the social media algorithm punishes beautiful and important photography
• The idea of the photographer as a "membrane" rather than a messenger
• Why storytelling now matters more than the photograph itself
• "Enoughness" as a personal answer to consumerism
• Building a real portfolio of physical work instead of living on Instagram
• A personal handbook of ethics for photographers
• Why AI will make human-made photography more valuable, not less
• Legacy, ego, and shedding the need to be exceptional
• SeaLegacy and the next decade of conservation photography
• Practical advice for emerging photographers starting out today

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Cristina’s platforms:
Website - https://www.cristinamittermeier.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/mitty/
SeaLegacy - https://www.sealegacy.org/

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Transcript

Why The Crisis Feels Invisible

Cristina 0:00

The ocean always wants to kill you, and it only knows how to kill you in one of two ways, the fast or the slow. And you better pray for the fast. These things are piling up at our doorstep in terrifying ways and perhaps irreversible ways.

Matt 0:15

Meet Christina Mittermeier, a marine biologist who picked up a camera and became one of the most influential photographers, activists, and artists alive. One single image of hers was seen by two and a half billion people.

Cristina 0:30

I became a photographer because I saw photography as a door opener. And I didn't know anything. I didn't even own a camera. The photographs themselves are not gonna get it done. If your photography doesn't have a point of view, and if you don't stand on some philosophy, then you're just a craftsman. You're not an artist.

Matt 0:50

Christina coined the phrase conservation photography and built a global movement around it. In this conversation with me, she reveals how any of us can make our art matter. Not with a better camera, but by finding what we genuinely care about and showing up for it.

Cristina 1:08

I got into a really dark place myself, and I remember sitting right here where I am, thinking, you know, I don't get to be depressed. I think we're in for some really tough times. I think we're already seeing the beginning of extinction acceleration. Sometimes I have to pinch myself and ask, you know, do I really do I really know what I'm talking about?

Matt 1:42

Okay, Christina, welcome to the Moo Podcast. It's a really you know huge honor and uh and pleasure to have you on the show.

Cristina 1:49

Matt, I've been looking forward to this for such a long time. Thank you for having me.

Matt 1:54

We have been going back and forth for I mean, you're such a a busy woman, and um you know, we I I appreciate that so much that you've managed to take the time to sit with me this morning. So um it's been a few years in the making, but we're finally here. So I hopefully I won't waste the opportunity. Um, so I wanted to kind of before we jump into a bit of your background, because that there'll be there'll be a lot of people watching and listening to this who know who you are, but um we'll jump into that a little bit for those that don't. Before I do, I I'd like to kind of start running, as it were, and and I want to hear from you about what you think is one of the most or the most important things that we should be talking about today, whether it's in the photography world, conservation world, any parts of these worlds that you have involvement in, what is what are the what is the one thing or few things that we're maybe not talking enough about?

Cristina 2:50

I I truly appreciate the opportunity to talk about the things that I worry about that that keep me up at night. And it is the lack of awareness from the general public about just how dire the situation is, and then the attack from certain governments on you know the things that we know as scientific facts uh that are treated as beliefs and optional, you know, optional issues to tackle. And you know, these things are piling up at our doorstep in terrifying ways and perhaps irreversible ways. So these issues keep me up at night, and the ocean uh and its health is one of the ones that is top of mind.

Matt 3:36

Well, the ocean is arguably the foundation of everything else. When you say this dire situation, can you elaborate on how you see this this situation that we're currently living in at

A Warming Sea Is Real

Matt 3:47

the moment?

Cristina 3:47

Yeah, I think a lot of people know, and perhaps many don't, that the ocean is the largest and the most important ecosystem on planet Earth. And it provides incredibly necessary uh ecosystem services like the oxygen we breathe. 50% comes from the ocean. And because they stopped teaching science in primary school a long time ago, people don't understand the carbon cycle, the water cycle. But the ocean, the the water itself doesn't produce the oxygen. It is the living organisms in the ocean, tiny creatures like plankton, phytoplankton specifically. And we don't know enough about these creatures, uh, but we know that they're disappearing. In the last 40 years, we have lost about 1% of our plankton every year. So about the size of four Amazonian rainforests. And these microscopic animals and algae and creatures produce 50% of the oxygen we breathe. So, you know, that worries me because nobody can hold their breath for half the time. And and the reason that this is happening, of course, is the water is too warm. The ocean has absorbed uh about 90% of the excess heat in the atmosphere. So, but for the ocean, we would already be cooked, but it can only absorb so much heat before it too starts disintegrating, and that's what's happening. Uh, this year you'll see in the news the prediction that there's going to be a super El Niño. And although El Niño is a natural oscillation of warm water and then becomes La Niña cold water, this year the winds have basically just stopped, and the warm water is sitting on the surface of the Pacific. And when the water gets that hot, we see very, very tragic consequences. Mass mortality of marine mammals that cannot access food, whales that ingest toxic algae that looms in these warmer waters. I mean, it's just a catastrophic chain of events. And you see them in the nools piecemeal, so it's difficult to piece the whole picture together. But when taken into um account together, uh they're terrifying.

Matt 6:05

Yeah, and that that those uh effects cause so many ripple effects that we don't see weather being one of them.

El Niño And The Cascade Of Damage

Matt 6:12

Huge, more severe weather uh events and phenomena that you know don't only get talked about when it actually hits, and then oh, some you know, the climate change seems to take a backwards step because there's more exciting, more dramatic, ridiculous clickbait that happens every day. And I think that seems to be one of the biggest problems now is that we have on one side people seem to not really care about why would anyone care about plankton? It doesn't, you know, there's no direct effect to me on in my daily life. But obviously, if the those that have that education might understand the the the real effects of that. So you have that the lack of care on one side and then just distraction on the other.

Cristina 6:55

So true, so true. And when you think about news outlets, 80% of the news around the world originates in the United States. And the and the news companies are owned by a handful of billionaires who are in the business of profiting from keeping us in this state of rage, bait, and distraction, and they monetize uh the attention we give to these other issues. So yeah, we are in a tough situation because there's just not enough public awareness about the existential crisis at hand. Uh, but I promise you, Matt, that when this war in Iran is over, we still have climate to deal with. It's not going away.

Matt 7:40

Well, there'd be something

Building Community For Photographers

Matt 7:41

else. There'd be something else that sorry to cut away from the episode for a minute, but I wanted to talk to you about something very quickly. Now, I spent a long time thinking that isolation was part of the deal when it came to photography. That if you were serious about the work, you did it alone. You'd consume enough, watch enough, read enough, and eventually it would all cohere into something meaningful. And it sometimes did. But mostly I was just alone with my doubts and no one to push back on them. What changed things for me wasn't a course or a workshop. It was a conversation with someone who was doing the same kind of work and cared about it in exactly the same way I did. The doubts didn't disappear, but they got a little bit smaller, and I felt more okay with them. They got named. That's what I'm building with the Mood Insiders. It's a place where the work is taken seriously, where you can bring your questions and, of course, your half-finished ideas, and where someone will actually engage with them. We have the ad-free extended podcast episodes with bonus content. We have monthly masterclasses, QA sessions, and of course the weekly book clubs and direct sac direct access to me and my team because you don't have to do this alone. So the link is in the show notes, and hopefully I'll see you inside. Why should people who are watching and listening to this uh you know listen to us, listen to you? Uh, what do you think we can help them understand over the over the course of the next 45-60

The Polar Bear Image And The Backlash

Matt 9:18

minutes?

Cristina 9:18

You know, I I do so much thinking about this, and and I don't know if you remember in 2017 I published a photograph of a polar bear that was starving.

Matt 9:30

Yes.

Cristina 9:30

That went very viral. Uh two and a half billion people around the planet saw the video that Paul Nickland, my husband, shot and the photographs that I made. And it taught me so much about how, you know, this whole communications ecosystem works. Because during the first few days when this image was published, it went viral, and we started getting a lot of very positive and heartfelt, grateful messages from the public just thanking us for making people aware. But then things shifted. And of course, you always get the people that are kind of ignorant and they wanted to know why we didn't take the polar bear to the vet or why we didn't feed it. And those, you know, are entertaining to answer because it gives you an opportunity to educate. But then something really dark started happening, Matt. Experts started popping up in news outlets uh with opinions that are just not true. You know, polar bears are not endangered. There's never been more polar bears than now. These pseudo-experts just basically calling us fake news and criticizing us and discrediting us. And I am um I'm a scientist by training. And so I thought, you know, where is this coming from? And I started digging, and I followed the experts all the way back to where their funding comes from. Because if you follow the money, you usually find the truth. Well, of course, you know, think tanks that are funded by the Heritage Foundation, which of course is funded by the Koch brothers, which of course is funded by fossil fuel interests. And this starts telling you how well organized they are in maintaining the narrative for fossil fuels. Now we call it beautiful, clean coal, and all of these things that, of course, put a lot of money in the pockets of a handful of people, but are destroying the planet for the rest of us and are getting in the way of just an equitable transition to better forms of energy, which are already at hand. You know, we already have the science, we already have the technology. And the people that want to continue profiting from fossil fuels, um, they just have a very large PR machine maintaining their side of the story.

Matt 11:47

Is it that simple, though? I mean, uh before before we uh before you answer that, actually, can you just give it a little context around that video? Because I think it was such a seminal moment in in your career as a photographer, as well as kind of this inflection point with your marine biology background and then moving into kind of more of a public uh persona, brand, and then you're getting all of this yeah, praise on one side, criticism on the other side. But can you explain why there might have been criticism by because just a about the actual incident and what the polar bear was actually the context surrounding that that situation?

Cristina 12:21

Well, the polar bear we found it in the Canadian Arctic, and Paul, my husband, is a polar bear biologist. So he found the bear and he knew immediately that it was dying. Um, and we suspected that it was probably shot by a hunter that failed to kill it but injured it bad enough that it couldn't feed itself. When we first published the photograph, we said this is what a starving polar bear looks like. So when we say that polar bears are going to go extinct in the next 50 years as the Arctic continues to disintegrate and melt, you know, this is what we want people to keep in mind. This is what it looks like. It's a painful creature death, you know, it's horrible to see. National Geographic called and asked if they could repost the video. And uh we agreed, and they wanted to repost it in its original form, so we send the whole all the assets to National Geographic, which has been a parent organization for many years. And somebody had the brilliant idea at Nat Geo to uh post it with a new title and they put it out to the world to their millions of followers saying this is the face of climate change. It was not us, it was Nat Geo. And of course, that sparked a lot of controversy, and that was not our intention. But I'll tell you what, Matt, if I had to do it all over again, I would, because I think for a brief moment it forced people to stop and think about it. Whatever's coming for polar bears, it's gonna come for us too.

Matt 13:52

And this is beautifully um uh emblematic emblematic of the power of photography as well. So, you know, we haven't even we haven't touched upon that yet because you're such a multi-faceted, multi-talented um human being, but photography is is at your is it is at your core. Um tell me, you know, coming off the back of your book of hope last year, tell me where photography fits into this and how it's maybe evolved since times like 2017 where you've potentially questioned how you'll use your photography in terms of shock versus beauty, maybe.

Cristina 14:31

You know, that that decision comes from way before the polar bear photograph. Um when I became a photographer back in the 1990s, oh my god, I remember uh understanding that there was like this distinction. You can focus on the photography like war photographers too, the pain, the horror, the devastation. But people don't like being confronted with that kind of imagery all the time, and they eventually reject it. And then I heard a tech TED talk where somebody, you know, was talking about the great speeches uh of humanity, and they talked about Dr. Martin Luther King and how he painted a picture of the of the society he wanted to create and inhabit. And I thought, well, I can do the same with my phot photography, you know, I can paint the picture of the planet I want to live in. And basically what I'm saying is uh Martin Luther King didn't start the speech by saying, I have a nightmare. He told us what the dream was, and that idea of the manifest destiny um crystallized for me because I I think it's true, you know, people don't go to war because they like killing each other, we go

Hope As Liferaft Against Despair

Cristina 15:46

to war because we aspire to peace. We we want to make it better.

Matt 15:52

Hope, what does that really mean to you then? This this word hope.

Cristina 15:57

I think um it's it's it's a choice um to remain hopeful. It's so easy to slide into despair, and I I see it happening around me all the time. And for some people, it leads, you know, to really dark places, even suicide. And for others, it just leads to apathy and the you know, the disengagement with any issue. Oh, I don't want to look at the news, oh I don't care about politics, oh, I don't vote, you know. And for me, last year when the president of the United States got re-elected, and I immediately understood that the United States was going to be leaving the Paris Agreement, was going to be abandoning all of its commitments to fund conservation around the world. I go into a really dark place myself. And I remember sitting right here where I am thinking, you know, I don't get to be depressed, I don't get to just sit this out and feel sorry for myself. My job is to inspire people and to share what I know and to do it in a way that is positive and solutions-oriented. And I thought, you know, hope is like a life raft that you hold on to when things get really dark. And when you think about people who have survived the Holocaust or, you know, serious injury or disease, or you name it, incarceration, it is the people who cling on to hope that survive. The ones that give up and and surrender to apathy and despair, you know, they don't.

Matt 17:30

Yeah. It's it's easy to throw the word hope around though, isn't it? And kind of not hide behind it, but uh, yeah, some hope for and I always think about this word hope, and it's just you know, semantics at the end of the day, it depends what you what action you put behind it. But you know, hope is all I always think about hope being the opposite of fear. And if we can control fear and conquer fear, then what real depth does this thing of hope have? But it, you know, when you when you look at people like yourself and tie a lot of the things together with photographers and other, you know, incredible activists and conservationists and people and scientists, so many people out there doing such amazing things that we never hear about, right? Because it's not it's not clickbaity enough. Um tell me like how you actually inspire past the the the image and a book. It's great making a book of hope, but then you know what how do you that that's really where the work begins, right? Is the the the the the press of the shutter is really where the work begins. How do we actually inspire people past that?

Cristina 18:35

I love that you actually framed it this way. Um, because I remember thinking, so where is hope? You know, where do you find it? And then it became so crystal clear for me. Hope lives in the works and deeds of the people in the front lines that are not giving up. And the front lines are, you know, are the policy work, the science work, the activism, the people cleaning up

Glorious Amateurs And Showing Up

Cristina 19:00

trash on the beaches. And a lot of those people are a lot younger than we are, Matt. They're the age of my children. And I think to myself, you know, these are children, and we, the adults, you know, don't get to sit this out. This is an adult problem, and you know, I don't know if I'm gonna solve it, but I'm gonna show up. And I'm just a photographer, but if I can bring whatever skills and influence and network I have to make sure that the people around me know that I care and that I'm showing up, maybe others will too. And that's all it takes, you know. I I recently watched a documentary that I love called The Inglorious Amateurs, the Glorious Amateurs. It's uh the story of the the people during World War II that without any expertise in military were called upon to serve uh when all the boys were dying in Normandy and things were really, you know, looked like they were not gonna be succeeding uh against the Nazis. The United States creating it created an office called the OSS, the Office of Special Services, and they conscripted regular people, uh songwriters, accountants, ballerinas, to serve and to do things for which they had no training or expertise. They became informants and spies and code breakers, and they helped win the war. And that's what I think we need today. I see a lot of people just kind of sitting it out saying, Oh, I'm not a photographer, I'm not a marine biologist, I I don't know how to contribute, I already recycle. And I'm like, really? Is that all you bring to the table? Everybody has a little more that they can do beyond the minimum necessary. And and this is what's going to be required of all of us.

Matt 20:58

My mom always used to say this to me, bless her. If if everyone did their part, we wouldn't have we wouldn't have any of these issues. We really wouldn't. I mean, there's one thing on the financial side of things where $10 billion could solve a lot of issues right now, if not all of them. Um, but there's another thing like everyone actually just doing their part rather than you know, whatever they might be doing, playing video games or scrolling on their social feeds.

Cristina 21:21

And stepping up to do things that that you're uncomfortable doing because you're not an expert. I think about young Tituan Bernicot, you know, the head of the Coral Gardeners. When he was 16 years old, a child, he noticed that the reefs around his island home of Morea were bleached. He asked around, what's happening? None of the adults were doing anything about it. So he stepped up to become a glorious amateur. He Googled how to restore the reef. He conscripted all of his high school classmates to create an organization that today is one of the most important and influential. And Twan at 26 is the youngest. CEO in the ocean space. He operates in three countries. He's restoring the reef against all odds. And I think, you know, he's a child. Can we adults not find ways that we can be glorious amateurs too?

Matt 22:15

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're too wrapped up in our own our own world, I guess. Um, but tell tell me tell me more about the photography side of things. This do do do we really believe, or uh I'm sure I know we do, but how actually can photography change things? Maybe not in a direct sense, but you know, we throw in social media, you know, the education uh behind it, just the the skill set and the the aesthetics of an image to draw people in and all of these layers that can work um behind photography. But for you specifically, and for us who maybe wanting to help and know how to do photography and love doing photography, or this is maybe something I can really invest in that not only do I enjoy, but maybe I can make my little small difference through photography. So, how can how can how have you been able to do it? Has it worked?

Conservation Photography Needs Champions

Matt 23:12

And how can we kind of go down a similar path?

Cristina 23:16

So there's so many answers to that question. And the the first one is photography is a really powerful medium. When when I say to you Napalm, Vietnam, you know exactly which photograph I'm talking about because it's an iconic image.

Matt 23:34

When I see Yeah, but that was that was when photography was not homogenized, right? Now we live in an oversaturated world when it comes to images.

Cristina 23:42

So it is ever more difficult to create those iconic images that become crystallized in the collective consciousness of humanity. Photographs like that polar bear. So difficult to make. So that's one aspiration. But the second one is you know, the way that the photographer shows up to do the work. And that was one of the reasons I created the concept of conservation photography and the International League of Conservation Photographers. It was just a new banner that people could carry for their work. And it it's a distinction between nature photography that's just done for the love of nature, uh, you know, or whatever, into one of activism and purpose to say my photography will serve conservation. And that service orientation takes many shapes and forms. I volunteer my photography to this day to many organizations that I believe in. Because photography is a way of bringing people into the conversation and organizations that are working in conservation, especially, not necessarily have the budgets to hire the top photographers. So, how do we contribute our work without expecting to be paid uh for being heroes? You know, I donate thousands of my photographs to even the wealthy organizations. They need these photographs. So that's one way. Uh, and the other way is the photographer as an important character in the story. In the days of National Geographic, uh, when we were shooting for the magazine, the whole mandate was the photographer has to disappear. You have to be a fly in the wall and just photograph without inserting yourself. But for conservation, I feel that the photographer plays a really important role. And you have to be a central character that takes the form of an ambassador, a champion, somebody that will not let go of an issue and will use photography to galvanize action. A way to do that, of course, is to put the images in front of the people that make decisions. Another way of doing it is by creating public pressure and public support. But the key element, and a lot of photographers miss this, is it's a lot of hard work to become the champion for an issue or a cause. Photography, photographs themselves are not going to get it done. You need to insert yourself and become a champion. And that's real work.

Matt 26:10

I always talk about this with other kind of budding photographers, and it's it's so clear to me these days that it's more important than ever we find something we care about as humans, and then we think about the photography side of it. Whereas so many people think about cameras, photography, follows, likes, exposure, all that kind of stuff. And then, oh, where do I actually point the camera now? It's like, well, go, you need to know yourself really well first. You need to be a mature educated cool and go and find something that you really care about, and then just use the camera as a tool to put it out there in the world and to express your ambition and your ambassadorship of that thing that you care about. And there's it's a very subtle difference, but it makes such a huge change and a huge difference in people's messages, how it's received. And like you said, you can really understand the the genuine nature behind a photographer's intent, whatever they're putting out there with with their camera and and the images. And that makes such a big difference as viewers and as readers and as people who will either be interested within two seconds of seeing an image or not interested within two seconds of being an image. And again, there's a very small difference in output, but there's uh input, but there's a huge difference in output. And that um really interests me as to why you chose photography in that

Why Christina Picked Up A Camera

Matt 27:36

that respect so many years ago, and having your background in marine biology, can you tell us how that evolved with the camera and the challenges that you had within that?

Cristina 27:47

You know, I I was such a young person, and I talked to a lot of young photographers today that, you know, feel the way I did so many years ago. Don't know where to go with the photograph. Well, it was not I wasn't even a photographer. My impetus the whole time has always been there's something really bad happening to our environment. How do I spread a sense of urgency among others to care and to do something about it? Even as a 17-year-old in university, I was already seeing things that to me were very worrisome, like bottom trolling. Uh, and people are just so unaware. So I thought as a 20-year-old, maybe if I become a scientist and I contribute to scientific literature, maybe I will get the credibility and the microphone I I want to help inform and help push for more conservation. And so I did. Published a bunch of scientific papers, and then I realized that they have such limited distribution, and the scientific language is so difficult for people to engage with in an emotional level. And it's not like I was looking for a different way of communicating. You know, when you're 20 years old, you're showing up to a job, hoping to make a living and pay your rent, and you have a lot of priorities. And that's where I was, living in Mexico City, uh, commuting every day, 100 kilometers to my parents' house because I couldn't afford rent. And just trying to figure out how to create a career with something that I'm passionate about and working for conservation was not it. My first check that I ever made was $800 a month. You know, it's barely enough to live. So I was in Mexico City and sharing office space with a photographer. I was not looking for photography, but I noticed that he was writing a book about conservation and using his photographs to illustrate it. And I was lucky because he didn't speak English, so he asked me for help uh with the translations and the captions, and so I did. And when the book was launched, it was a trilogy of books about Mexican biodiversity and indigenous people. We um there was an event, and you know, people came to reception, and there everybody's looking at the book, and I noticed nobody's reading my brilliant text, my translations, but everybody was looking at the photographs, and something really interesting happened. Whereas people felt intimidated and you know, the lack of expertise to ask questions about the science. Everybody felt really comfortable asking questions about the photography. We are all photographers, and they wanted to know human things. Were you scared? Was it cold? How did you get there? Where did you sleep? And I thought, wow, you know, this is an incredible way of engaging people who might not be part of this issue into a dialogue, and that is step number one. I became a photographer because I saw photography as a door opener, and I didn't know anything, I didn't even own a camera. So uh just became a glorious amateur, I guess.

Matt 31:03

So glorious amateur. I love I love I love that uh phrase. Now

Finding A Voice Beyond Technique

Matt 31:08

there comes a point in every photographer's journey where gear or technique stops being the question. You've learned your camera, you can read light, you know how to edit, how to produce, what a good frame looks like, and you can probably make one on demand quite easily. But something is still missing. The work feels good, competent, maybe even pretty, but it doesn't quite feel completely yours. It doesn't really say anything that couldn't have been said by someone else on Instagram with the same camera. That's the moment most people get stuck. Not at the beginning, but right here, right there, somewhere in the middle of it, in the midst of it, where you have all the tools, but not really any of the language. And the reason it's so hard to move past is because nobody can teach you your voice in a tutorial or a silly little YouTube video. Because it's not a setting on the dial, it has to be drawn out of you slowly by methods and introspections that actually allow you to look at yourself and your work and challenge you with the harder questions, all in order to draw out your unique and photographic voice. That's what my voice alchemy mentorship program is. It's an online container for photographers who really already know how to use their camera, but want to use it to say something that's more meaningful and that actually matters to them. Personalized strategy, honest feedback, and the kind of work that builds a body, a voice, and a brand that actually gets noticed. It's not a course, it's just the thing I always wished I'd had. And it's the thing I now spend most of my days doing. The link is in the show notes, so if something in this is calling you, hit the link and we'll see where you're at. So when you I mean, this was what uh 90s.

Cristina 33:06

1996, yeah.

Matt 33:09

Uh and what challenges or setbacks did you have during that time? And that and a kind of second question to that is would you say that we we face the same issues 30 years later in terms of how we communicate those, you know, people obviously don't want to read scientific papers less so these days, but they also, you know, images bec are becoming less and less um I guess fungible or powerful in that respect. And so now how do we capture people's attention even more? Um, so you know, how what kind of challenges do you have initially and and moving forward to today? Are those similar challenges uh that you experience, or how do we adapt with today's?

Cristina 33:53

I love that love that question because yeah, I mean, back in the 1990s, we were still shooting uh photographs with film. So the challenges were, you know, it's uh it's expensive, you only get 24 frames per roll of film. You know, there were challenges, of course. I was a mother of two children of my own, and I was raising a third one from my husband's marriage. But I promise you, Matt, that if you only focus on the challenges, you will keep hitting a wall because manifest destiny is a very powerful thing. So instead, you know, I look at the challenges and then I say, for every problem, I'm gonna write five solutions and I'm gonna focus on the solutions. And back in the day, for me, the challenges were like, how do you get your work published? If you want to be a national geographic photographer, how do you do it? Well, you know, you start writing the solutions and meeting the right people and going through the right pathways and understanding that becoming a famous photographer is a lifelong endeavor that requires not just talent, but commitment and you know, uh the network of people that you need. So for me, those were the challenges, and I found a way. Today the challenges are different, so we need to think about different solutions. And I think one of the solutions that has emerged is that it's not just photography, it's storytelling. And storytelling is such a powerful thing. You know, I look at the top storyteller in the world, and that is Donald Trump. He just tells stories. His stories are not always true, but they're always entertaining. And boy,

Storytelling And The Membrane

Cristina 35:30

does he keep people entertained and he keeps a hold on the news daily, 24 hours a day, with stories. But there are other examples of storytellers. Steve Jobs was a storyteller. You know, he he told us a fabled story of what the technology could do. If you are a good storyteller, you know, humans I know that everybody says that we are hardwired, we love stories. And finding a way to share the story of how a photograph was made, what it means, the curiosity sparked in you, the wonder. It brings people in. So today is not about being a good photographer, it's being about being a good storyteller.

Matt 36:12

I'm not going to ask you how we how we'd be good storytellers. I think we could we could go on for hours and hours about that. But I I did hear you I I I read read this or I heard you uh on an interview talk about this, and this word membrane that you you talked about as a photographer was really fascinating for me. It was such a a really you know clear um way of describing your role as a photographer. So instead of being a message a messenger, maybe the kind of more of the explicit storytelling, right? Hey, listen to me, this is what I need to tell you, more of a membrane to kind of let let the story pass through you. Am I correct in that kind of assessment? And can you elaborate on what you really mean by that?

Cristina 36:55

Yeah, I am a biologist, after all. So when when I was thinking about the role of the photographer, and I I you see it all the time, when photographers insert their own ego into the photographs, you can see it immediately. And it becomes about the photographer's ego. And you know, it works for some. But for me, I'll give you an example. I'm I'm good friends with uh photographer, uh David Yarrow. I don't agree with I don't agree with a lot of things that David does, uh but he, you know, he cares about conservation and he donates a lot of money to conservation, and he's been really good to me in the art world, um, introducing me to people and helping me understand how it works. But when you see David's photographs, you see his ego all over it. You know, it's all about David.

Matt 37:44

You're right, okay.

Cristina 37:45

And he tells a great story about the photographs, and he doesn't hide the way he makes those photographs. So um what he's selling is David Yarrow, and people buy it, people love it. You know, I totally understand what he does. For me, it's different because it's not about Christina Mettermeyer, it's about these things that I'm photographing that I really care about. And how do you make yourself a semi-permeable membrane, almost like the skin of a cell that allows a conversation to happen between the thing that you're photographing that is the subject, and and the viewer, not you as a photographer, but the person that's looking at the photograph? And if you can catalyze that conversation through your photographs, then you might achieve some spark of wonder, curiosity, action, you know, whatever it is.

Matt 38:40

What do you think then current Christina still may get lost, uh kind of lost on the way or not be able to pass through that membrane? Do you think you still kind of struggle with um really getting messages across or being in the right rooms at the right places? You have still have those types of challenges where things just get lost in that membrane or don't actually permeate it?

Cristina 39:07

Absolutely. We we still live in a patriarchy where women have a really difficult time getting credibility and getting our voices heard and followed. Uh, so that's a huge challenge. But for me, the bigger challenge is just I'm a human on planet Earth, I'm 60 years old, and the adventure photography that I used to easily do is not going to be available to me much longer. So I have achieved a certain status that opens doors for me to speak to important people. How can I maintain that status? And I think for me, it's by becoming an artist, a recognizable artist. And everything I do is um about maintaining a profile that allows me to have conversations like this one. I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to be of being heard by people who may not know any of what I'm talking about and might have the curiosity to ask, uh, tell me more.

Matt 40:08

Yeah, well, I hope that's the whole reason for this podcast, really. And and uh, you know, we we don't necessarily do many episodes where we focus so much on um conservation photography or the more activist side of photography, but you know, either way we want to educate and inspire. And so um, yeah, it's it's it's an honor to have you on and being in that position. But for those um for those watching this

Social Media, Rage Bait, And Reach

Matt 40:33

who may not know who you are, and we look at your maybe social media profile as low as well as everything else you do, you know, such a busy, quote-unquote successful artist, scientist, activist. Um, and we'll get onto this meaning of success later, but uh where does social media fit into this power of a membrane and the power of storytelling and the power of exposure of your images and your message? Good, but I mean there's lots of good, lots of bad, but when you have 1.6 million followers, you have this platform that social media has has given you. If we're looking as you know, from this planet Earth, where we're looking at someone like Christina, who's got you know, this huge platform is able to um to have influence in in what you want to influence. As a young photographer, as a beginner photographer, an amateur who wants to have as big an impact, how much attention do we put into should we put into social media?

Cristina 41:38

I think uh social media was such a hope in the early to 20, 2010, 2012. Uh and I I remember when I first joined Instagram and I didn't know what it was, uh, but my assistant posted a photograph. She created my account as like I have no time for this stuff. Uh, she posted the photograph and then immediately we started getting comments about it. And I remember thinking, wow, you can actually have a conversation with some another human without the intervention of an editor, as you know, those of us who used to work in the magazine world, you know, you go shoot a story and you have to wait two years for it to be published, and then you don't even know what the public thinks or says. And yeah, I think uh I think Matt Zuckerberg uh took us into a loop, right? We were baited into believing that social media was going to be this amazing conversation platform with all of humanity, and we all posted our photographs there for free, excited to share our work, and then they hit us with uh the robots that are using our work to train AI and uh you know the monetization of these social media platforms, and now it's all about talking heads, selling your shit all day long. And so if I could, Matt, I would completely leave social media today. I just don't because the algorithm really punishes certain types of conversations. So anytime it's about equity or about empowerment of women or environment or any of those, climate change, you know, you get throttled. The algorithm is not built to promote or reward those conversations. Do you know how the algorithm works? Elon Musk gave it away the other day.

Matt 43:27

Oh, really? Oh, I'd love to hear because we've all been guessing for the last decade.

Cristina 43:31

So it's a it's a reward system, right? So you get a half a point for a like or a comment. Uh you get uh no, you get half a point for a like, you get one point for a comment. But if you elicit a back and forth argument where people are you know interacting with each other, usually rage bait, you get 75 points. So those conversations are, you know, they go to the top. And if you're just posting pretty pictures, you You know, you might get a handful of likes and comments, but they're they're not gonna bring you up to the top. So of course I keep posting, of course, I keep trying to educate. I just am very aware that I don't have the reach that I used to. So for every problem, you write five solutions. And for me, it's going back to the drawing board of we need to find the alternative distribution channels. These days, uh, if you really want to have an impact, you better be a good storyteller, but you also be better be a good writer, a good public speaker. You better become an expert in your subject so you can talk to traditional media. And so I have gone back to talking to newspapers, talking to back by back to magazines, because that's where the audiences are. And this this challenge of distribution, where do we publish not just our work but our concerns? You know, we keep hitting the wall against these billionaires who own the distribution.

Matt 45:00

Yeah. Well, let's let's talk a little bit about these billionaires because you've presented to, I mean, you you've met you know so many, and and I'd love to hear how you kind of approach that. But one word you I've also heard you talk about is enoughness.

Enoughness, Billionaires, And Donut Economics

Matt 45:15

So when you stand in front of an audience of whether it's me and other kind of you know normal westerners, and you talk about indigenous communities, and we have no idea about kind of who's at the forefront of the impact of these changes, what are they doing about it? How can they and their ways of life educate us? And you try and like translate that into a into a story or a message in front of billionaires. How did how do you even reconcile this huge gap that you're trying to close? Whereas one side of it is kind of the impact and the example, and the other side, these rich people is this essentially the solution. Where do you even start with those types of conversations?

Cristina 46:02

That this is the crux of the problem, isn't it? Um, I was walking my dogs this morning, Matt, and this is what I was thinking. Uh, I've been thinking a lot about President Claudia Scheinbahn in Mexico, and she is a true socialist. She believes that the social good and lifting people out of poverty and empowering women is a huge part of the solution. And who doesn't believe that? You know, who wants to see other people suffer? And yet, capitalism, you know, teaches us that you have to be an individual first and who cares about community. It's all about you and your own success. And it teaches you that that success is a bottomless pit. And I don't think that that's how capitalism started, Matt. I think capitalism was a different idea that was supposed to benefit not just the stakeholders of a company, but also the client base of a company, the community where that company lived. And little by little that concept morphed into now, you know, all the capital in the world is in the hands of a handful of people and it doesn't benefit anybody. And hey, they don't even need a workforce anymore. You know, they can have robots now. So I was asking myself, am I a socialist? Do I believe in the same things that Claudia Scheinbaum believes? It's a tough conversation because she has to tax the middle class in order to lift the poor out of poverty. And the middle class in Mexico is not happy, not happy at all. So I don't know if that works. And of course, you know, we've seen this play before in other places where you had a a socialist president like Allende in Chile in the 1970s, and the United States interfered with his government and overthrew him to put Pinochet, uh, you know, military horrific. Uh my goodness, hundreds of thousands of Chileans were murdered and disappeared and tortured. You know, it's happening all over again. And people forget because this capitalist idea of I need to make more money, you know, and and I need to look after mine and my own. And you know, so I don't know how we escape, but I will say two things. I've been reading the work of an economist. Her name is uh Dr. Kate Roworth, and she talks about donut economics. And this really resonated with me because the whole economy, all of this construct of capitalism and even money, it's a human construct, it's a human story. And we we have believed it, right? But we can also challenge it. And that's what Dr. Rutworth is doing with donut economics. She's saying, um, if you imagine humanity as a donut where we can only live within the bread, right? That's the very narrow range of conditions for humanity to thrive. So on the inside of the donut, you fall into um what's not socially ideal, right? We want everybody to have a political voice, but also access to fresh water and safety. And we want women to be empowered. We want all of these social things that are good for humanity. But on the outside of the donut, you have the ecological imperatives. You know, these are non-negotiable because Mother Nature doesn't care. So we need to have a stable climate, we need to have available fresh water and soil, and we cannot live in a toxic planet that's poisoned. And so she says, you know, we need to build an economy that brings us back to the donut, which is the sweet spot for humanity. In some places, uh, the city of Amsterdam is already enacting donut economics and it's working. Um, so I think we need to look at those ideas and challenge these concepts that we just take as immovable. Capitalism and these billionaires, you know, it's not, it's just a story. And when I talk to these rich people, of course they love their money, but you have to think, you know, how many yachts, how many private planes, how much wealth for, you know, a thousand future generations do you need when you have to live in a planet where so many are suffering, where we're seeing the extinction of the natural capital that keeps us alive. And they don't listen to me, you know, people in in those echelons. I get to have dinners with them, and they they've insulated themselves from these truths.

Matt 50:31

Why I I I mean, this is such a generic question, but I I ask this to myself almost every day, as well as my wife and friends. You know, it's I just don't I can't understand, I just can't understand any of it. And not that I'm above anyone and I I definitely don't have my shit together, just like every other human. But why do these rich people I mean, we're we're at the moment we're talking about the super rich. You know, these people, you know, people understand what a billion dollars is. I I think a lot of people watching listening to this don't actually understand how much a billion dollars is, let alone a trillion, where Elon is about to get to, right? It's so much, just a small portion of what they are worth could solve world hunger. I mean, when you when you think about kind of the numbers that are involved, I just don't people say, well, it's human nature and it's capitalism, and and uh I just don't understand why people don't care about simple issues, some of which we're talking about today, they're not simple, they're complex, but why doesn't the why don't these people care about a turtle ingesting plastic and dying in the ocean? They think you say that to them, they think you're a snowflake and a pussy, right? It's like where does this, you know, a lot of it is ego, a lot of it is this machoism that we've kind of bred through capitalism, and it's the macho, the the alpha male and the machoism. You go out and you just you know, that's what America is all about. And like you said, this was just constructed, you know, arbitrarily by humans as the best thing to do and the best thing for quote unquote success. Why why do they not care?

Cristina 52:22

I asked Jane Goodall this very question, you know. I said, why do some of us care so much to the point that is physical pain when you see the suffering not just of animals but also of humans, while other people don't care? And she thought about it for a while and then she said, I don't know. I don't know, Matt, why? But um, but I have met a lot of these billions. I had dinner with Elon Musk, and I've known the Murdochs, and I've known uh Ray Dalio, and these people with a lot of money. And I think something happens when you insulate yourself with wealth, where you believe that you're untouchable and invincible, while forgetting that you still need that 50% of the oxygen that the ocean makes, because nobody can hold their breath for half the time. And people like Elon has he has bread this idea that technology is somehow the solution and that we're gonna go to Mars. And you know, I I don't think within the next hundred years humans are going to Mars, and even if they were, you know, there's nothing in Mars for humanity. Everything we need is on this planet, and you're right, you know, a fraction of his wealth could solve it all. I I just don't understand it. And but this idea of enoughness it comes from a deeper place, it comes from looking just 200 years ago at the way the planet worked, and there were a lot of traditional and indigenous communities everywhere in Europe, in Africa, and Asia, people who lived close to the earth who understood the seasons and how nature could work with them to keep communities alive. And a lot of that has been lost, but at the core of it, it's it's not even the technologies that indigenous people have, right? It's the system of values that's really interesting. A system of values that is pretty universal around the globe that says you can't take more than what you need because there's others that you have to think about. You need to treat the foundation of life, but also your community with respect. And you have to think about the future generations, the people that are not here yet. And you have to find ways to live in harmony with nature and with others. And these are universal things that in every indigenous community they have different names and different rituals associated with it. But it's a it's an ethos of not wasting and not hoarding and being generous and building community. And we have forgotten about that. And so the idea of enoughness in the beginning was uh my challenge to consumerism, but it became something completely different. It became a liberation because when you understand how much is enough for you, for your family, for your community, then you don't need to be part of a rat race to hoard more wealth or more stuff or more power. You know, you have enough and you're free, and then you get to be a happy human on this planet and enjoy, you know, there there is a joy of living on this earth. You know, on a sunny day like today, I go out and I look at the birds and the trees and they make me so happy. Such simple things.

Slow Work Over The Algorithm

Matt 55:48

Now, when it comes to photography, the whole infrastructure of the internet rewards speed. Post more, post faster, be first, be everywhere. The algorithm doesn't care whether you went deep, it cares whether you showed up yesterday. And I guess that's not photography specific. Now, for me, I built my work around a different bet that there are people who would rather go slowly and understand something fully than go fast and understand probably nothing. That depth is not a liability, that the work you make when you take your time is categorically different from the work you make when you're chasing the feed, maybe, or chasing the algorithm. Now, the mood insiders is built on that same bet. It's a private community for photographers and visual artists who are serious about the slow work. We have monthly masterclasses where we actually go deep on craft and thinking. We have a weekly book club, monthly QA's. We have the podcast, of course, but ad-free with bonus content, and we have direct access to me and my team. It's not another newsletter you'll forget about, not a Discord server full of noise. It's a room with a small number of serious people and a very clear and supportive focus. It's just $19 a month. The link is in the show notes, and I really hope I can see you inside. There's this there's this, I don't know, it's that uh the exper I've been very fortunate to have experienced um decent salary levels before and and a level of wealth that I could pretty much not have anything I want, but I've never wanted like personally, I never wanted big houses or loads of cars or anything. But if I wanted to go and buy a new camera, I could just go buy a new camera. And there's this level of comfort that you get with that, which you think makes you happy. And I'm not the only one that says this. It's it's the majority of people who've reached who've experienced that type of wealth before. It guaranteed doesn't make you happy. You know, this the happiness comes in any other form that isn't tethered to greed and tethered to materialism and consumerism. We have this fundamental cancer in our society that is called consumerism, and this this horrible just suffering of being this rat race and comparing ourselves to other people, and it goes from the bottom of the pile where it's I don't have enough likes on my recent social media posts and I don't have enough followers, and goes all the way to the top where I don't have enough private jets. And it's just everything in between is just this like toxic way of living. And and I can say that from a relatively kind of good position of experience. And I couldn't agree with you more, but I I still see so I mean, it's the majority of the population, certainly in the West, who are just brainwashed by this idea of strength and capitalism, and this is good for society and good for me. And I've got my family to support. And I, you know, all of these excuses that people hide behind, and we're not talking about people on the breadline who, you know, that have to, you know, really struggling and to end it. I'm talking about the the

Greed, Exceptionalism, And New Paradigms

Matt 59:05

middle and upper classes who just have so much disposable income, they just want more and more, and they use that to fuel the next million and the next million, and they hide behind it for these, you know, a variety of excuses, but essentially they are tethered to greed. And I don't know, I just you know, there is from what you talked about earlier. I do think there's this inflection point that we're gonna get to, and maybe AI is gonna force us into that inflection point when we have at least AGI as well as superintelligence, where it's gonna make capitalism redundant, it's gonna implode on itself. Um, there's not gonna be enough money to print by these these economies. And we're, you know, I'm it's sad to say, but I'm interested to see how what happens. And we need this really like new ways of thinking politically. You know, call call Marxism for what it is, but it was a it was this huge movement and a brand new idea of how to operate politically, economically, geopolitically, etc. For for all its faults, it it was at least this new movement. And I feel like we need something like that coming up very soon because capitalism doesn't work, communism doesn't work. What is the solution? And and you know, maybe AI will will put us in that.

Cristina 1:00:28

I I love that I love this framing, Matt, because I think you're a hundred percent correct. And one of the, you know, I've been on speaking tour lately and uh talking to a lot of people. I think one of the big cancers, and we need to name them, greed is one of them that fuels a lot of this, but exceptionalism, this idea that I have to be exceptional and I have to be famous and I have to be, you know, get all the awards and all the power is a cancer, and you see it at the top of the government of the United States. Oh my gosh. Um, because it also makes you feel like you're invincible and the ails of the natural world are somehow not going to apply to you. But Mother Nature is a bitch and she doesn't care. So anyway, the the point is to say whatever is happening in the governments and the economies of the world is going to come to a head pretty soon. And I think I think we haven't even seen the worst of it yet, but it's gonna be a huge challenge to the way the economies are run. Uh you know, I think we're gonna see a lot of suffering and a lot of pain. But maybe there's an opportunity to challenge the way that we think about economy, the way we think about government. And maybe we get to rewrite and we get an opportunity as a society to rethink, and maybe with the help of AI, yes, to think about new paradigms, new ways of coexisting with each other in the limited resources of a planet that is our spaceship. We have nowhere else to go. Uh it's gonna force us. And what I was saying to people, Matt, is it's very painful to see institutions that have been important for humanity dismantled. USAID, you know, the challenges to the United Nations, to all of these institutions. I mean from FEMA to NOAA, you name it. And at the same time, it's an opportunity. We will be called upon as a society to rebuild institutions for the realities of a 21st century. And, you know, we better be thinking about that and what those institutions might look like. And people that are smart and visionary like you and me, we need to be thinking about what the next paradigm might be, because we may get called upon to bring ideas and expertise. And I don't have the answers, Matt. I'm I'm just a photographer. But hopefully there's uh, you know, people out there with big brains, you know. I think about Demi Sababi and uh and AGI. And I was listening to an interview, he he has been studying artificial intelligence since he was a little boy, with the idea that it can solve a lot of humanity's problems, starting with disease. And he's right. But it's not the only solution because as we lose the foundation of life on earth through extinction, we have to remember that those processes are irreversible. And every time we lose a species is one that we cannot ever bring back. So we have to keep these two things in mind.

Matt 1:03:34

Yeah. Let's get back to photography.

Cristina 1:03:37

Okay. Yes. So many.

Matt 1:03:42

And going going back to yeah, uh yeah, I I'm sure I'm gonna get some stick from from the audience for not talking about photography enough. But let's talk about photography. It it's all intertwined because this is this is the medium that we choose to express everything we're talking about now. My my concern with maybe we'll touch upon AI before we finish in in the foot in the photographic sense, but

Beauty Versus Shock With A Philosophy

Matt 1:04:05

when you you know, I see your your beautiful work. I haven't even talked about your work. We we could, you know, give endless platitudes how beautiful your your your images are.

Cristina 1:04:16

No, no, ego mat, I don't need it.

Matt 1:04:19

But that word beauty, when we make a choice as photographers to express ourselves, express our message, tell our story through beauty, do you worry that it's it's almost making us complicit in the apathy that we're trying to avoid, you know, by choosing to not go down the lines of maybe like the more shock and awe type photography or the more introspective or abstract type of art. And we we we show something that's beautiful because we want to quite rightly we want to celebrate it. But you know, there's one thing beautifying indigenous communities and maybe maybe running the risk of sending the wrong message, as well as like having that, because I know what it's like to see a beautiful image, and sometimes it's just a beautiful image because it's there's wonderful, beautiful, but it doesn't like maybe it doesn't make me cry or give me the kind of really kind of visceral emotion that maybe something a little bit more shocking might. And I'm not saying something's one is right and one is wrong, but is that something that you consciously think about when you're photographing?

Cristina 1:05:31

Yeah, and I think about it in uh slightly bigger terms because I I think what makes a difference in your photographic career more than anything else is having a well thought out philosophy for your work. Why do I do this work? And where does my work show up? And I want people to see my photographs, but I also want them to know the photographer behind the work. And when they go look at me, I don't want them to think. Oh, this is just you know a dumb dumb chick, you know, that has nothing to say with her work. I want them to know that there is a well-thought-out strategy and philosophy for every single one of my images. And I don't think photographers spend enough time thinking about that philosophy of their work. What does it mean? Where does it show up? What do people need to know about me as the artist behind the work? Because then everything else falls into place. And for me, the the tension between making beautiful images with the occasional punctuation of a horrific scene that reminds us of the problems is a very deliberate choice. You know, Martin Luther King didn't start the speech saying I have a nightmare. He painted what the dream was, and I want to do that with my photographs, remind us that there's still whales out there, there's still sharks, there's still something that we can fight for. But at the same time, he reminded us too, you know, we're in the shits, people are still getting lynched in the American South, and animals are still going extinct, so we are in a lot of trouble. But you cannot stay there because people will re be repelled and they will reject it. So you need to bring them back into what's possible. And if you have a philosophy of work that articulates this, I mean your way of thinking, people will gravitate towards that that narrative. Uh they know that you're not just showing eye candy for the for the clickbait of it.

Matt 1:07:33

Yeah, which is yeah, which is always the danger. But I still think like in we live in a world we live in a culture of hooks, right? We have to do everything we can to hook people into what we want to show them. It's it's you know, in everything we do, even I know it's even in in-person conversations, it's like, you know, within a few seconds people want to sum you up on whether it's you know it's worth their time being in conversation, or they just go straight to the phone and they're they're completely disconnected. So I think um I think we the the the the the clickbait idea has a negative con connotation, but it you know, going into your philosophy of photography, I think within that philosophy also needs to be a methodology. And I think having having something to get people engaged in the conversation that is genuine authentic, I'm not saying go and shock people, but be the the beauty side of things can can do that just just as well. So I think you know that there is an element to that that we have to try and get people into what we're trying to show them, and then as long as we've got something something to say, and that that's a you know another conversation for people to try and figure out what they want to say and what they really care about, which we we touched on earlier. But I think I see certainly photography a way to, and I'm interested to hear about how you experience it, certainly on things like speaking tours and the people you meet. The the distance between um almost like the out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality and the problems that you're talking about today, as well as we all know are out there, we can still feel like we sleep well at night because we're not there and we don't actually see it, and it's not a direct problem that we need to take care of. And this closing that distance is such an important thing to try and do, and arguably photography has such an important role in that.

Cristina 1:09:30

Absolutely, Matt. I I did a master's of photography course that doesn't teach you how to hold a camera or how to do any of the settings, but it teaches you how to build a philosophy for your work. Like the way that I built my philosophy of work. And when I think about my my work, I want to have as big a microphone as I can get in every uh possible avenue that I can. So when I'm a public speaker, I'm looking for those hooks. You know, I start my presentation these days. The first thing I say is the ocean always wants to kill you, and it only knows how to kill you in one of two ways the fast or the slow. And you better pray for the fast. And people are immediately hooked, you know, they want to know what this talk is gonna be about, but everybody needs to come up with the hook for their story, right? And that's just one idea, but um it's not about the photographer and it's not about the camera, and it's not about the bikini, and it's not about the adventure lifestyle, you know, it's gotta be about what the work means. And if you don't do the work of sitting down and writing what that philosophy of your work is, then you're just gonna be a flash in the news, you know, in the social media cycle. Uh and the the real the real game changer is when you acquire enough stature as an artist, as a spokesperson for the thing that you care about, that you get invited to the policy discussions because people think you have some real expertise. Sometimes I have I have to pinch myself and ask, you know, do I think do I really know what I'm talking about? You know, and even if I don't, I'm gonna be a glorious amateur and I'm gonna show up with some kind of point of view. A point of view. I think that's what's important in the work, Matt. A point of view.

Matt 1:11:26

Yeah, and passion behind it, like a belief in that point of view, not just a point of view for for the clicks, but like and people can really discern the difference, right? Between between they totally do.

Cristina 1:11:35

They totally do. So it's a personal decision for your photography work. What point of view do you have?

Matt 1:11:42

Yeah. And there's so many people that don't know what point of view they do have. There's so many people that I that have have been using a camera for that I come across been using a camera maybe five, 10 years, and they still don't quite, and and I feel for them, they still don't quite know really what they're pointing their camera at and why. And they're still trying to figure out who I am as a person, what do I really care about, what do I want to commit to, what do I believe in, what are my values, and all of these kind of like human things that go into the operation of a camera. Um, it's amazing how many people, how many amazing photographers, you know, technically incredible photographers, don't have that. And you just think, what if you, gosh, if you if you had that, like you said, that philosophy around your work and the belief system around your work, knowing what you truly care about, you could actually like do some incredible things.

Cristina 1:12:34

It'll transcend, but uh, you know, I this that's something interesting because that's uh one way that I've started using my social media these days. Um, I realize that I have a main feed and people expect to see my stories of animals or whatever. I have my stories that are usually my reactions to the to the rage bait that I see about the the policies, yeah. But then I also have these channels and I have built a handful of things about the things that I care about. Um, I have one called MIDI on photography, and I share a lot of the sparks that other photographers you know incite in me. Photographers that we should be studying, you know, people like James Natchez and his war photography. Like if we don't study the work of other photographers and how they approach these things, it's very difficult to understand what even are we talking about. Recently, I heard one of the photographers that I used to admire the most because her work is beautiful, and I'm not gonna name her. But when asked by a reporter, you know, what her photographs meant, she really didn't have an answer. She just said, Well, you know, I'm just pointing my camera and letting it do the work. I'm like, wow, that tells me that you have no idea. And wow, you just lost my respect, you know. Because I I can think about a million ways that each and every one of us can frame our work behind the belief. And I will say this if your photography doesn't have a point of view, and if you don't stand on some philosophy, then you're just a craftsman. You're not an artist. Every single artist in the history of humanity that that has transcended is because they have had something to say about the the world that they live in in that moment. And it's a commentary on social, environmental, whatever was happening at that time. But that's how artists become immortal.

Matt 1:14:33

Yeah, and uh on that note, it's interesting because I always think about how um I don't have children, but I always think, what was what is my legacy gonna be and what what does does that even matter? You know, do I need to direct my attention to something that's more meaningful and bigger than me? And um, you know, you think about maybe in 200, maybe a hundred years time uh after I die, no one remember remember me. It's kind of sad to say, but it's true. Like I don't know my great-grandfather. I no, no one there's no one alive these days that would know or remember who he's you're you're shedding your exceptionalism.

Cristina 1:15:15

You know, we're not that exceptional. In a hundred years, nobody who's alive today will be alive then, and nobody will remember who we are.

Matt 1:15:24

There's a freedom in that, right? There's such liberation in that. It's just go and do something and don't worry about what it means to the generations are, you know, obviously like we want to have a good impact on on society in our world, but how do you kind of address that and think about you know all of these all of these things that you've uh done so well and have made a name for yourself and and uh and uh are continuing to make an impact on. How do you see your definition of success today? And how do you how would you like things to be left or your name to be remembered in 50 hundred? Because there are artists obviously that we know lived hundreds of years ago, that we still, you know, we think about the musicians and and the artists that we we know. So it's like we still can leave a name and leave inspiration behind us. Is that something you think about daily?

Cristina 1:16:27

And if so, I I I I really work very hard to shed my ego, but I I do I do think about it a lot. And um I think about planet Earth as being a spaceship that's carrying humanity across the universe. And most of us have opted to just be, you know, passengers sitting, you know, having drinks in the back. But the truth of the matter is that some of us have the opportunity to actually be part of the crew. And when I look around, I think, wow, you know, whales are part of the crew as well because they maintain part of the biochemistry in the ocean that keeps us alive. And plankton is part of the crew, and I don't understand how it works fully, but I know that without plankton, the engine will stop working. And so, you know, I I look at the people who are the pilots of the spaceship right now, and you were about to ask me about Davos, and that's what I was thinking, you know, the people that attend meetings like the World Economic Forum, they're the pilots, but they have no idea who the crew is or how it works. Uh, and at the same time, some of those people, you know, they behave like that drunken passenger on 38B that's swinging a bat at the fuselage, you know, and we all have a choice, you know. I want to be part of the crew, I want to be part of the solution of how the spaceship goes. So I that that's the only legacy I want, you know. Um, maybe when I die, I don't I don't wanna I don't want to be buried in a cemetery, but if I was and I had to have a what you call a tombstone, I just wanted to say she showed up.

Matt 1:18:11

Is that the is that the credit that you give yourself? I mean, I know you you clearly battle against kind of the negative effects of an ego, but and you don't want to make it about you, but there's also kind of like the the the self-worth and self-love that you obviously and the and the and the appreciation for what you've already achieved as well as what you hope to achieve in the future. But where does do you do you find that difficult to give yourself credit for what what you have already done and and yeah?

Cristina 1:18:41

I really am a lot a lot more humble than that most people give me credit, credit for. And I I I hope success looks a lot like what you said. You know, I want to have enough of a decent income that I don't worry about money, that I can have the freedom to pursue the things that make me happy. And the I want my happiness to include the generosity of empowering and giving back to others who need, you know, who I have something that they need, whether it's uh political power, a voice, money, whatever it is that I can share and be generous with, that makes me happy. Um and other than that, Matt, I just I just want to be a good human on planet Earth. And I don't care if I'm forgotten a hundred years from now, but today I want people to know, and especially my children, I want them to know that I showed up when there was when there was a call. I think about uh William Wallace, you know, in that famous scene in uh Braveheart with the blue paint. I'm sure he was terrified. He knew that he was sending people to die. He still showed up.

Matt 1:19:49

Yeah. Christina Metama, the new brave heart, the brave heart of 2023.

Cristina 1:19:57

Showing showing up matters, you know, showing up and saying, I'm not an expert at many of these things, but I will apply myself and ask and learn and integrate myself into communities and show up and bring whatever I can to the fight.

Meditation And Creative Clarity

Matt 1:20:11

A short note before we close. For a while now, the first thing I've done most mornings before the camera or any other work or before the coffee, before the endless tabs, is sit 10, 20, 30 minutes just watching the noise inside my head do what noise does. It hasn't just made me calmer in the way people imagine, it's made me more honest, more mindful, more compassionate, and more free in more ways than I could even describe. And that honesty and introspective clarity, more than any lens, workshop, or book, is really what changed my photography. The work I make now comes from a quieter place with more clearness and calmness. I noticed what I'm reaching for, and I noticed when I'm reaching for the wrong thing. The inner critic still talks, still exists. I just don't believe everything he says anymore. The app I've used for most of this is Waking Up by Sam Harris. It's the one tool I've genuinely kept returning to all this time. This is not a paid sponsorship from them. However, I am an affiliate partner, and for good reason, I believe that this app is worth it more than any other. What's kept me there for years is that it's not just one thing, it's a guided daily meditation, which is the spine of it for me, but there are also short daily reflections, a daily quote that tends to do its own quiet work in the background, and these little moments, they call it, of awareness you can drop into during the day. Two-minute resets when the head starts running. There's also an entire library of guest series with teachers I'd never have found on my own, and a lot more besides that. It keeps the practice alive instead of letting it calcify into routine. So a link sits in the show notes for a free 30-day trial and 20% discount on their subscriptions. If you want the longer story, though, of how meditation reshaped my work, there's also a piece linked through my Substack page called There's No Self-Development Without Self-Awareness. Anyway, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for listening.

Career Basics, AI, And Photography Ethics

Matt 1:22:24

I just want to touch probably one of my last questions specifically about kind of photography, which is weird, but um you know, I really want to appeal to people who are getting into photography at the moment, and they they all they see is the I guess the probably some of the negative connotations we've been talking about today, as well as the the threat of AI just on the photography industry in general. Then you look at kind of the homogenization of images generally, the more the algorithm, the battles with the algorithm for just I just want to share some images, guys. Can you just post my images? Where how would you advise or how do you advise people starting out in photography who love photography and want to make something of it, whether it's full-time career, part-time career, or even just hobby and get recognized for what they do and hopefully have their own piece of difference making in their photography pursuit. Where would you advise and what would you advise these young and new photographers to do to begin with?

Cristina 1:23:35

The last 10 years have really sidetracked photography into believing that social media was the distribution channel. And it's not, it's just one of many. My advice to photographers is let's go back to the basics of how a photographer creates a career. Build a portfolio, you know, with physical objects that you can actually point people to and spend the time in learning photography from the people who came before you who had a philosophy of works or whatever, know the names of the giants on whose shoulders we stand today because you know, photography is not that old, but you know, there's been a lot of incredible photographers before us. And let's go back to the basics. I still look at this. I just got published on outdoor photographer, which is such a thrill. And I have full pages of my work. It's still a thrill, you know. Learn where those photographs are still being published, engage with those publications and learn how to write. I mean, build build a rainbow of skills that are needed. Learn how to be a good writer because the internet, you know, things are found on text, not on photographs. Learn to be a public speaker that can stand in front of an audience and defend your work and your philosophy of work. Um, learn how to be an expert at whatever uh issue, subject you are most passionate about, because that's gonna fuel your career. And let's just go back to the basics of creating a body of work that you can be proud of, that doesn't just live on your Instagram, that that is actually a presentation of who you are as an artist. And I would say, Matt, AI, sure, huge threat. Again, you know, these days you can go to any number of platforms and just type, make me a photograph of blah, blah, blah, and it'll come up. I think that will pass. I think uh the novelty, the novelty of having a machine create images will pass, and humanity will crave that human-made work again, and the credibility of photographers who are still making human images, human-generated images.

Matt 1:25:52

I would even say again, Christine, I think that the the demand is there more than ever, and I think it will continue to increase in demand. And I I have a firm belief that photography will just rate rise in value decade on decade with with AI will always be there now, and there will always be an option to artificially generate images, but that will make the human-made images more valuable because we now we're we we have a we're kind of a bigger fish in those ways.

Cristina 1:26:22

And photography as a skill set, right? I mean, putting the camera on P for program and pointing it at something is not making photographs. Let's learn how to be photographers and how the machine, which is mostly digital, but it's still, you know, a representation of what it was a hundred years ago, how does it work? How do you use the settings in the equipment to create something? And importantly, Matt, I think we have to go back to some ethics in photography. Uh, you know, we forget so easily how our work shows up and how it speaks about the way that we behave. Um so for me, you know, photographing animals that live in cages for the profit of photographers is just revolting to even think about it, you know, game farms for animals in captivity, or uh, I see the young people out there trying to get images of whales in the wild and just chasing them with boats and you know, like doing things that are just like so reprehensible. So let's let's build a personal handbook of ethics for our work.

Matt 1:27:32

But a lot of that is just educ, a lot of that is education. I would say there's a s there's a small minority who are deliberately ignorant and cruel, but I'd say the majority of those types of incidents, because we see, you know, we see them everywhere. And um I'd say like there's such a dearth in education around these types of matters. And again, I would point to the top and just go, well, why the f is that the case? Why, why are we not, you know, you look At this any school curriculum, and it's just so sad. You know, we we we learn about you know algebra, which arguably is important, but we don't learn about how that algebra can can translate into the value of money and understanding how to look after our finances, learning about mental health, how to look after ourselves, learn about the wider world, learn about travel and and the education that you can get with traveling.

Cristina 1:28:25

Learn about the spaceship and how the systems work.

Matt 1:28:28

Yeah. We just just don't just doesn't happen. And I think you know, we see the result of that now. People get their education on X or Instagram, and that's the way people think they're educated. So now we're all siloed into these dumb little kind of echo chambers, and we are now seeing the the manifestation of that. We're seeing the results of the people that go. I I was in Komodo uh about a month ago, and we did there was one dive we did of 20 in that week, and you you obviously were maybe touched on sea legs here quickly before before we go, but you having been there so many times know that it can get quite populated, and which is okay if people understand, you know, people are ethically responsible in the water on top of the water. But we uh we did one dive and um it was a it was a it was a cleaning, it was above a cleaning station, and you know, obviously like we go down and kind of just sat there, you know, watching mantis, but all we could see as we're watching mantis from and it was pretty shallow, you know, 10 meters, all we could see was maybe 50 snorkelers on on the surface. Now, if 50 people are snorkeling and they're just just bobbing and watching, okay, you know, you're having a wonderful experience watching these mantis, but there were so many people with their fing GoPros trying to get their Instagram videos, diving down on top of the cleaning station, touching the mantis, and you've probably seen this so many times. And I can't remember the point of me telling this story, but it's okay, yeah. Education, it's like there's people just don't people, and I'm coming up from the surface going, what the f is it? Where's the governance? Where are the ranges? Where's the education? And it's all well, I can answer two of those immediately, it's money, and then the education is that people just don't are not educated in the dangers for those animals when you do things like that. So true. So a lot of it then goes back to the top of it. Yeah.

Cristina 1:30:41

All of

SeaLegacy, Governance, And What Works

Cristina 1:30:42

it is true.

Matt 1:30:42

And so let's talk about C Legacy for a moment because though so where does C Legacy fit in in your world and in the last kind of decade or so of you you operate exactly at the intersection of what you're talking about?

Cristina 1:30:57

You know, we use our celebrity as photographers and the invitation to adventure to try to educate people and not just educate in in a vacuum. You know, we are we've been working for years now on uh the concept of ocean school and finding the funding to keep educating, especially younger people, about the ocean, why it matters, how you behave, but also trying to model behavior and God, it's so frustrating to see the operators and the lack of governance. And one of the things that we do with Sea Legacy is try to put pressure on governments to create governance around some of these things. And the good news is we know what the problems are, so they can be addressed, and we have to be able to reach the government officials capable of saying, you know, we're gonna have sanctions and there's gonna be some enforcement, and there's gonna be some fines for people that don't obey, and it works in some places. I don't know if you remember Isla Mujeres and the whale sharks, and maybe 10 years ago uh when they found that aggregation of whale sharks off the coast of the Caribbean and Mexico, and there were, you know, horror stories of boats uh running over the whale sharks and people free diving and riding the whale sharks. Well, a marine protected area was created, the Mexican Caribbean Biosphere Reserve, which allowed a legislation framework to be um enacted, and now you know there's severe fines. Only two people are allowed to get in the water from each boat. They always have to have a guide. Everybody has to wear a life jacket or no free diving. And there's an enforcement boat. So whenever the captains of the boats apply for a tourism license, if they have fines against them, they don't get a license for next year. So we know the solution. So what we do at Sea Legacy is yes, it's great to be a famous photographer because people listen to you more. I try to use my voice to talk to the politicians who can actually do something. And you know, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but we show up.

Extinction Acceleration And What’s Coming

Matt 1:33:10

We show up. What's the prediction um you don't necessarily want to say out loud, even though I'm gonna ask you to say it out loud? How what do you see happening over the next two, five, 10 years in this world of conservation and conservation photography?

Cristina 1:33:28

Oh, I think we're uh we're in for some really tough times. Uh, I think we're already seeing the beginning of um extinction acceleration. Uh, you see it in the ocean very particularly this year alone. I mean, since in the last 12 months, we've seen over a hundred gray whales wash up dead in on the coast of the Pacific in Mexico, the Gulf of California. The water is too warm. So the warming water is a harbinger of really bad things, a lot of mortality, but a lot of natural disasters, which include wildfires. Uh, as the ocean warms, it changes the precipitation patterns. And so off the coast of California, we will see more wildfires. Uh, we will see more hurricanes in the Atlantic, we will see, you know, as the Arctic and the Antarctic melt, that infusion of fresh water into the system is changing the very shape of the ocean currents that keep the weather patterns uh around. And we're gonna see big changes for those of us who care about animals as we see extinction happening. We're gonna have to steal ourselves and just get stronger to witness things that are horrific. You know, I was listening to a politician the day before yesterday say, oh, um, global warming, you know, why is some places getting colder? And it's just all semantics. I wanted to say, you know, how in the 1990s we used to talk about you having a limp dick. Well, now we call it erectile dysfunction, you know, it's just semantics.

Matt 1:35:15

Oh yeah. Um I don't know where to go from that. But um where does you know that we talk about this, and um, you know, obviously, like you have you will you will endeavor to have a big part to play in in making as many changes and and influences that you can you can have, and C Legacy is such a huge part of that.

The Personal Toll And Daily Resilience

Matt 1:35:40

And if anyone's watched um the documentary you're in, Photographer, the the episode that you were in in uh Nat Geo's photographer, which was really fantastically put together, but it also gave us a window into the struggles that you and Paul have, as well as the C Legacy crew, as well as everyone else out there that are not on this call with me, but everyone else out there that do such amazing work, um, whether it's with you or alongside you, um, how much of a cost does that have on you as a as a person and as a you know, as a as just a human, um, when we talk about hope, we talk about shock and suffering and the things that you've seen. What kind of toll does that take on you? And and do you worry about how much of a personal toll that takes on you moving forward?

Cristina 1:36:32

You know, I I I have to think about the positive things, Matt, and I am incredibly lucky that I get to do this work, that I get to um have a career that contributes something, that I get to spend time in the wild with animals. All of that is amazing. That I get to do this work with the love of my life with my partner, Paul Nicklin, who's equally passionate and loves doing the same things as I do. So all of that gives me a lot of resilience. And, you know, I get to talk to people like you, like-minded artists who who feel the same way. So I know I'm part of a larger community. I get to empower a lot of young people and a lot of up-and-coming photographers. Um, all of that gives me a lot of resilience. So it takes a toll on me only if I decide to sit around and feel sorry for what's happening. Uh, but that's just not me. I I um I I really I really think it's important to address fear with action and hope. And I do that by choice every day because the alternative is just too scary and dark. So I'm gonna keep showing up and be a glorious amateur and ask myself every day what else can I contribute, which also makes me happy, which also makes me rich, which also hopefully makes me a little more unforgettable.

Matt 1:37:56

Well, no one's ever gonna forget you for a long time, I don't think, Christina. And I think if you continue doing the incredible work that you have been doing up to this point, and we're all watching, we're all celebrating, we're hopefully we're all supporting.

Practical Ways To Help Right Now

Matt 1:38:08

How can people support? And then we have C Legacy on, you know, in terms of donations on one side. How else can we, you know, I don't want to ask you the same question again, like what can we do to help, but what can we do to help? And and where would you like to point people in terms of where they might be able to support you and your ambitions?

Cristina 1:38:27

I'm very lucky to be friends with real heroes like uh Chris Tompkins, who has preserved hundreds of thousands of hectares in Patagonia, um, with her wealth and the wealth of her late husband, Doug Tompkins. Um, and I'm very good friends with Chris, and somebody recently asked that question in an audience, and she just looked back and said, So what can you do? How are you gonna show up today?

Matt 1:38:54

Yeah.

Cristina 1:38:54

I think it's just by asking that. Uh, if you're an accountant, can you volunteer a few hours to nonprofit? If you're a lawyer, can you support a lawsuit? If you are a mother of young people, you know, how do you empower those young people to show up and be active so that they don't get apathetic and stressed out? You know, go to a beach cleanup. Uh we're we're we're focusing our lens on the Sungai watch kits. Uh, these I know them in Bali, yeah.

Matt 1:39:24

They're incredible people. Yeah.

Cristina 1:39:26

Again, you know, these are children. There are three siblings, and the three of them are so invested in finding a solution for the plastic that's going into the ocean. It's a problem with governance of the government of Indonesia not cleaning up, not having uh collection services or recycling services, but it's also allowing all this plastic to be created in the first place. And these are children, so we we point our lenses at them as examples of things that give us hope and where they need us, the rest of us, to show up and support them so that they don't lose their hope either. So the thing that you can do for free today is like, comment, and share on every one of those accounts of the heroes in the front lines. They need to see that we care. And that we're, I mean, I'm not gonna jump in a dirty river to clean it up, but goddess hell, I'm gonna support them. Um please keep doing what you're doing.

Matt 1:40:21

They've just done uh a huge run across Indonesia or or somewhere. I can't I don't know the details, but they're just to raise money.

Cristina 1:40:27

They're running across the country.

Matt 1:40:30

Yeah, and they're capturing people's attention and they're they're they're bringing so much good attention to this issue. And again, a lot of it is governance, but a lot of it's the education. You know, living there myself, I see the majority of the local population just don't understand the impact that the single-use plastics have, they don't understand where that might end up, and so just like being and those little things, being able to talk to someone who may not understand, and then being able to educate them in a non-kind of elitist, pretentious or condescending way. So I think, yeah, there's so much power in that, and we always want to think about the butterfly effect, right? We always want to think about it. Yeah, I love that. Everyone can get up and have a tiny little bit of difference that may turn into a bigger difference down the road.

Cristina 1:41:19

Without anger, without pointing fingers, without being condescending or rude, judgment, exactly. Yesterday, um, these kids, so they're running across the entire country of Indonesia, which is one of the largest countries on the planet because a lot of it is water. But um, three siblings, two boys and a girl, and the three of them are running together. And I mean, you you I follow so closely, right? And uh, you see how their feet are hammered by blisters and pain, and every morning the older brother is encouraging the other two younger ones to keep going. Well, yesterday they crashed a wedding, an Indonesia, an Indonesian wedding in Sunday and they were invited in, there's music, and there's a lot of plastic in the wedding, right? I mean, uh and they take the time to make the connection of what they're doing with the problem which is the prevalence of the shit everywhere, Matt. It's yeah, it's just I would say, you know, speak up. My my children used to hide from me when I used to go to the grocery store with them, because I would take stuff to the manager and I would say, why does a banana need to be wrapped in plastic again?

Matt 1:42:27

Oh my goodness.

Cristina 1:42:28

But you have to speak up, and it's exhausting. But if a handful of us are doing it, it doesn't work. If a lot of us show up and start asking questions, yeah, it works. Show up.

One Sentence To Live By

Matt 1:42:41

Christina, I've taken up on enough of your time. I have one final question. This is from my audience. Um, so I hope it's uh easily answerable. But um the question goes like this if you could leave one sentence carved on the inside of every viewer's eye, what would it say? Show up. Show up.

Cristina 1:43:03

Yeah, don't ask me what to do, you know. Go find what you can do and then just show up.

Matt 1:43:11

There we go. As easy as that. And it's it's such a simple principle. And I think we all run away from it because it it's responsible it's effort, it's uncertainty, and it's responsibility. And it's easy to just um yeah, not show up and hope. And this is the other thing, hope that or rely on other people. Well, someone else would do it. It's an assumption, right? Yeah, it's assuming that other people would take care of it.

Cristina 1:43:33

It's the biggest mistake we have made as a humanity, the assumption that somebody else is doing something about it. Uh trust me, nobody is. Elon Musk certainly is not. Uh, we we have to show up for our own future. So show up.

Matt 1:43:50

Well, um, thank you so much. You you've you've showed up today, I've showed up today. So we can take that off our daily list. But thank you so much, Christina. You are um obviously a huge inspiration to so many people. And all I can say is thank you for doing what you do, and and please don't stop, and we will be behind the lines, supporting you as as best we can.

Cristina 1:44:11

I love it. Thank you, Matt, for the opportunity, and I really have enjoyed this talk and travel safe.

Matt 1:44:17

Thank you very much, you too.

Cristina 1:44:19

Bye.