Home and office location: Greenport, N.Y., on Long Island, but he‚ not there for very long stretches. "Home is where you store stuff," Moffett says.
Family Life: Married in 2008 to Melissa Wells, who, he says, also has a great sense of adventure. She previously helped establish medical facilities and teaching hospitals in Europe and the Middle East and is now shooting videos, some for National Geographic.
Equipment: Cameras: Canon EOS 5D bodies, with a 65mm f/2.8 macro lens and an EF-S 60mm f/2.8 macro USM lens. Also, 14mm Tamron and Canon 16-24mm lenses. Lighting: Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX. For digital storage, he uses an Epson Multimedia Storage Viewer, which contains a portable hard drive.Favorite Photos: "Those that are more complicated to get, and those that tell a story," he says. Example: An image of a tiny ant guarding its nest entrance while its young are feeding behind it. "You can look at every part of the frame and there‚ something happening," he says.
Most memorable assignment: Photographing Phyllobates terribilis, the world‚ deadliest poison dart frog, in a remote valley in Colombia when the frog decided to leap at him. A single frog, which is lethal to the touch, could kill 400 to 500 people.
Books: "High Frontier: Exploring the Tropical Rainforest Canopy" (Harvard University Press, 1993); "Face to Face with Frogs" (National Geographic Children‚ Books, 2008); "How to Hunt Like an Army Ant: The Life of Insect Foragers" (expected in 2010).
Advice for nature photographers: "Know the science behind what is being photographed," he says. "Look for the new and be a storyteller. The fact is, I believe life is all about telling stories."
