Home: Seattle
Books: “Rainforests: Lifebelt for an Endangered Planet.” Working on an upcoming monograph.
Recent awards: The Prince’s Rainforests Project Award (2009), ILCP Photographer of the Month (February 2010), ABC News Person of the Week (November 2009), Global Vision Award from the Pictures of the Year International Competition (2008), World Press Photo award-winning images (2006, 2007).
Preferred equipment: Canon 5D Mark II (“Smaller cameras are nice,” Beltrá says). Lenses: 24-70mm f/2.8 L, 500mm f/4 L and 24mm f/2.8 TSE. Mac computers. Think Tank roller bags.
Personal projects: “I don’t have time for personal projects,” he says. “I want to be working on conservation projects.”
Pet peeves: So-called “wildlife” photographers using game-farm animals as models. “I think that’s so wrong,” he says. “It’s wrong for the animals. It’s wrong for all the other photographers actually working in the wild. It’s an exploitation of the animal.”
Hobbies: Hiking, being outdoors, bird watching.
Inspiration and influences: Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Edward Burtinsky, Sebastião Salgado, Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Advice to aspiring landscape photographers: “Forget about equipment. Forget about traveling to remote places. Find stories that are near your house and don’t require spending a lot of money to reach, but where you can be comfortable enough to go back several times. Shoot it a lot, edit it a lot and be tough with editing yourself.”
Website: danielbeltra.com
