PHOTOGRAPHY: Behind the scenes of our craziest captures

Plus, a gorilla's pet kitten and the real shark photo that launched a thousand memes [ ] [THE SHARK PHOTO THAT LAUNCHED 1,000 MEMES]( [VIEW ONLINE]( [THE SHARK PHOTO THAT LAUNCHED 1,000 MEMES]( [National Geographic]( A TALE OF WONDER, CURIOSITY, AND COEXISTENCE PHOTOGRAPH BY THOMAS P. PESCHAK Honestly, it’s a real shark photo: It took weeks for marine biologist-turned-photographer [Thomas P. Peschak]( to make his most famous image. Instantly, his photo of a great white shark tailing a yellow kayak off South Africa went viral—and Peschak began carrying his negative of the image around to prove that it was real. But then it kept going viral, for the wrong reasons, meme’d out of context after natural disasters. These days, the Nat Geo Explorer uses the notoriety for good. “Though at first that kayak photograph appears foreboding, its true story is quite the opposite—a tale of wonder, curiosity, coexistence,” he writes [in the July issue of]( Geographic](. “From one picture have come countless chances to tell people more about sharks—conversations that often begin in fear and ignorance but end in fascination.” [THE WATER‘S FINE]( A PEEK IN THE ARCHIVE PHOTOGRAPH BY RONALD H. COHN, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION The gorilla’s meow: Not just humans have pets. The gorilla known as Koko made the January 1985 cover of National Geographic for this image, in which she was cuddling her pet kitten. Koko, who died in 2018 at the age of 46, was famous for communicating in sign language with her handlers. “Koko could show us what all great apes are capable of: reasoning about their world, and loving and grieving the other beings to whom they become attached,” anthropologist Barbara King [told Nat Geo](. But Koko also made us realize the cost of our curiosity. “We must remember,” King said, “that Koko was made to live in confinement in a highly unnatural way from her infancy through her death.” [THE EXTRAORDINARY KOKO]( ) MEET OUR RESIDENT CAMERA WIZARD PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK THIESSEN, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC If Nat Geo were a James Bond movie, [Tom O'Brien]( would be [Q]( the British intelligence gadget builder. In Tom’s case, however, he equips photographers so that we can see the extraordinary in our world. Tom (pictured above) is a technical wizard who designs things like the camera trap used for [this photo of wolves picking a muskox carcass]( in the Canadian Arctic. Back at Nat Geo HQ, O’Brien even gnawed on part of the camera trap to test it, anticipating a probe by a hungry predator. Tom is so ingenious—brainstorming with our photographers about what they want to do, and then turning those ideas into reality through mental imagination, research, 3-D computer design, rapid prototyping, and fabrication—that he is rarely without a solution. “If you can dream it, he can probably build it,” says Peter Gwin, speaking to Tom’s ambition in a recent episode of the [Overheard at National Geographic podcast](. And he’s right. For more than 100 years, engineers have been designing and fabricating custom cameras and other visual storytelling contraptions for us. When asked why he goes to all this trouble for these photographs, Tom's answer was brief - and resounding: “To make people care.” If you’re lucky enough to take a tour of Tom’s workshop, he always begins: “I’m here for the wide, the long, and the weird.” Join us, as we take a look at a few highlights: [LISTEN TO MORE]( GO BEHIND THE SCENES PHOTOGRAPHS BY PRASENJEET YADAV, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC The snow leopard: Tom provided photographer and Nat Geo Explorer [Prasenjeet Yadav]( with several camera traps [to capture images of the elusive cat](. At left, one trap catches an image of an old male snow leopard on a mountain. Prasenjeet observed this cat for two years before its death in March, when it chased an ibex off a cliff. At right, another hidden camera setup for the assignment. [LEARN MORE]( PHOTOGRAPH BY CHARLIE HAMILTON JAMES The funky bird: For [a magazine story on sage grouse]( a species of bird that lives in the plains of North America, photographer and Nat Geo Explorer [Charlie Hamilton James]( wanted to capture an image of the sage grouse doing their mating dance (above). There was a problem. Sage grouse won’t dance if there’s a human around. So Charlie asked Tom to build him a remote-control train with a camera hidden inside a fake bird, a contraption that he now calls “the funky-bird train” (shown below). PHOTOGRAPH BY CHARLIE HAMILTON JAMES [ALL ABOARD]( LEFT: PHOTOGRAPH BY CHEYNE LEMPE; RIGHT: PHOTOGRAPH BY JIMMY CHIN A dizzying challenge: For Free Solo, the Oscar-winning documentary that followed climber Alex Honnold scaling Yosemite’s El Capitan with no ropes, Tom was hard at work. He built three remote-camera systems for photographer Jimmy Chin to film a particularly difficult portion of the ascent (above)—when Alex Honnold didn’t want any cameras, or people, near him. [HOLD ON TIGHT]( [SHOP]( [DONATE]( [SUBSCRIBE]( [TRAVEL]( [READ OUR LATEST STORIES]( [SHOP]( [DONATE]( [SUBSCRIBE]( [TRAVEL]( [FB]( [Twitter]( [IG]( Clicking on the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and National Geographic Channel links will take you away from our National Geographic Partners site where different terms of use and privacy policy apply. This email was sent to: {EMAIL}. Please do not reply to this email as this address is not monitored. This email contains an advertisement from: National Geographic | 1145 17th Street, N.W. | Washington, D.C. 20036 [Stop all types of future commercial]( email from National Geographic regarding its products, services, or experiences. 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