Ami Vitale - Photographing Stories of Hope

Ami Vitale is an award-winning National Geographic contract photographer, documentary filmmaker and a Nikon Ambassador. Ami has traveled to over 100 countries and focused her early career covering conflict and violence. She’s shifted her work to today’s most compelling wildlife and environmental stories. Ami recently published a best-selling book, Panda Love, on the secret lives of pandas. She lectures for the National Geographic LIVE series, and gives workshops throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Her photographs have been commissioned by nearly every international publication and exhibited around the world in museums and galleries.

In this episode, Ami takes us behind the scenes on some of her long term projects with elephants in Northern Kenya and last of the world’s northern white rhinos. She explains why she believes the indigenous communities she’s worked with hold the keys to saving what’s left. We talk about how photography helps us understand humanity, the natural world, our environment and universal truths. Ami tells us about being deported from a country where she had been working for five years on a National Geographic story and how what we may call failures can lead to our greatest transformations. We learn about her work with Ripple Effects Images helping tell stories about women who are being impacted by climate change. Ami encourages us to fall in love with the world around us, find long-term stories in our own backyards and that all of us need to use our voice to make a difference.

This is We Are Photographers with Ami Vitale and this is her story.