When Joe Riis graduated from college after studying wildlife biology in Wyoming, he decided he didn’t want to get a job. Instead of jumping into doing biology research, he lived simply, much of the time out of the back of his pickup, and photographed pronghorns in Wyoming for two years. He began telling the intimate stories of wildlife through photojournalism instead of recording data and publishing journal articles.

Riis saw the potential influence photography could have with wildlife conservation: “I have a great interest in ‘wildlife corridors,’ the idea that wildlife need the room to roam beyond protected areas,” he says. As climates change, he says, wildlife will need the space to move and adapt just as we humans will need to do the same. “Wildlife will need to be able to move through our development, whatever form that may be.” The pronghorns were the perfect story to communicate this.

Soon, editors were coming to him for images, partly because he thrived out in the field for such long periods of time-traveling for up to 11 months a year. “Photo editors are thinking, ‘Who to call, how can they handle that?’ ” Riis says. “In a lot of ways, my background in science has helped me get photography jobs. I’m totally happy talking frog anatomy or Gobi bears for months.”

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He received a National Geographic Young Explorers Grant, and has gone on to shoot long-term projects all over the globe, some for National Geographic. He’s filmed frogs in Guyana, photographed elk in Wyoming, and documented nearly extinct bears in Mongolia and China. His Instagram feed deftly captures the wild, wide open spaces where he spends months at a time working with scientists to capture and tell the stories of wildlife and landscapes we’d never otherwise see-like the desolate Gobi desert and the endangered bears struggling to survive there. “Mongolia is like a land from the past,” he says. It’s like Colorado, Wyoming, or Montana but without the roads.”

Look for a traveling exhibit he’s working on with artist James Prosek-famous for his Trout of the World book published by Patagonia-next year, and in the mean time, follow him @joeriis.

“These are vicuna in Argentina. They’re the smallest camel in the world, and have some of the finest hair on an animal. I was there in January, when it’s the rut down there, so I think that was a male chasing the mom and young ones across the plain. We’re at around 11,000 feet in that photo-super high.”

“I was sitting in my camp chair after dinner, working on the elk migration this past summer, and the fire’s embers seemed like they were extra big, like little chunks of the twigs. The fire was really hot from the really dry wood. The photo was an afterthought, but I’ve had a lot of interest in it.”

“Two years ago, I drew a September 17 permit for the Grand Canyon-it’s the most requested day of the year. I invited a bunch of friends-both photographers and high school buddies-and had a really good time.”

“All three of my projects are all kind of the same thing, just in different trucks. All high desert, super remote places with incredible groups of wildlife. Lots of diversity, mainly because there aren’t people. This is from a project I’m still working on in northwest Argentina. It’s in a national park called San Guerillo.”

“This guy is a legendary outfitter out of Cody named Wes Livingston. He taught me all about getting around in the backcountry. That’s his mule, Rosie. She’s like a person, but looks like a mule. She was bottle fed and he’s had her for 20 years. During the night she stays by the fire, instead of feeding out away from camp.”

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“I’m always looking for how to show the landscape and the animals where it’s wide, instead of just using a long lens.” This is a camera trap capturing a Gobi bear.



“I took this off the front porch of my cabin in South Dakota. I love being home, and when the sun’s setting, I’m always setting out on the porch drinking a beer.”

“My dad was a fish biologist studying salmon and impact of dams. The oil pipeline moved them back to South Dakota. He started carving then, just in evenings and morning before work. He makes me any bird I ask for. On a trip two summers ago to go salmon fishing, we were seeing these different totem poles, and there was always a raven. So he made a mythical raven for my cabin. This year he made me a magpie with a three-foot long tail.”

“This cow elk is on one of the most badass migration routes in the world. That spot is 12,000 feet high. Not all elk are created equal. Some hang out in towns, and some hang out in the coolest mountains. Within 24 hours from when I shot that photo, she went down to a 6,000-foot river crossing and then back up to a 12,000-foot pass.”

“One of my hobbies I try to do every few years is a bike tour. Here we were just cruising around the Black Hills for 10 days. We usually stop midday for a beer or two. The dog was at the bar, and was cool with everybody.”



“If I did have an office, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. This is the park housing in Argentina. It had this really cool greenhouse-like front room.”