Right neighborly

By Cindy Landrum  

JUNE 16, 2011 11:45 a.m. (0)

Nature photographer Clay Bolt wants Upstate residents to know their neighbors.

Not the neighbors who live in the house next door or across the street or even down the block, but the kind of “neighbors” that call our backyards, parks and other natural spaces home.

Think salamanders, snakes and frogs. Trillium, lady’s slippers and orchids.

Bolt co-founded an international project called “Meet Your Neighbours,” which aims to bring attention to the world’s flora and fauna in a new way.

“I found people living in South Carolina, including myself, don’t really realize what we have here,” said Bolt whose photography has focused on South Carolina and conservation issues in the Palmetto state. “We have amazing natural history here and that’s true all over the world.”

But most people, according to Bolt, have blinders on when it comes to seeing what’s around them.

Bolt’s career in nature and conservation photography began after a trip to Australia.

He was amazed by Crimson Rosellas, a vibrant parrot found in eastern and southeastern Australia that native Aussies took for granted.

After he got back home to Pickens County, one day Bolt saw a cardinal land on a bush outside the window of his home.

“Cardinals were everywhere, but I had taken them for granted,” he said. “I wondered what else I haven’t seen.”

About a year and a half ago,  Bolt and “Meet Your Neighbours” co-founder Niall Benvie, a professional outdoor photographer from Scotland, decided to enlist other photographers — both professional and amateur — to photograph the flora and fauna in their areas on location in a field “studio.”

“The whole point is that biodiversity begins at home,” Bolt said.

The project aims to photograph common species with a brilliantly lit white background, eliminating context and placing all the focus on the subject itself, he said.

“These creatures and plants represent the first, and for some, the only contact with wild nature we have,” Bolt said. “A lot of conservation efforts focus on saving endangered species. This is a proactive effort  concentrating on common species.”

Bolt has found many of his subjects literally in his own backyard.

“I’ve personally seen things I’ve never seen before,” he said.

The photographers involved in the project— about 25 from a dozen countries around the world— are sponsored by conservation groups in their areas, said Bolt, who is sponsored by the Nature Conservancy.

The photographers agree to share their work with their communities, he said.

Among the photographers involved are Carl Battreall, whose images have appeared on buses and billboards in Alaska; Kevin FitzPatrick, a North Carolina photographer who is involved in a project to identify all the species found in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park; and Jerry Greer, a professional nature photographer from Tennessee.

Other photographers come from countries such as Ireland, France, Bangladore, Germany, Canada and Italy.

“We’re asking people to care about their own natural heritage,” Bolt said.

Several hundred species have been photographed so far.

Bolt said the future could include a book on the program that shares some of the images taken, a short film and maybe even a series of children’s books. School programs could be developed where teachers and students could meet the neighbors in their own schoolyards, he said.

“My children’s generation is seriously losing contact with nature,” Bolt said. “As people, we need wild places and wild things. There’s not enough climbing trees and wading in the creek.”

Bolt said he has been interested in nature all his life, almost to an obsession. He credits his grandfather.

“I loved him so much, I think his love of nature rubbed off on me,” he said.

Some of Bolt’s images were used during an event at the Poinsett Club to raise money to buy the last few hundred acres of Jones Gap State Park. The Nature Conservancy made 5-foot tall prints of  his images of salamanders and frogs.

“We’re doing more than saving property,” he said. “We’re also saving our relationships with nature.”