Meet Jess Lee | Photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jess Lee and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jess, can you talk to us a bit about the social impact of your business?
One of the main reasons I chose to start photographing professionally was to show people the beauty and uniqueness of wild places and wildlife. I knew that if our society could see the wonders of our natural world there would be more desire to save it.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
When I first started seriously pursuing a career as a professional nature photographer I had a family with little extra finanical resources to buy the expensive telephoto equipment needed to produce the high-quality images to be competitive in the market. Still, I needed a telephoto lens so I purchased the cheapest one available on the back pages of the photography magazines. I left home on a Friday after work and drove 8 hours to the National Bison Range in Western Montana to photograph wildlife with my new lens. After sleeping in my pickup I found a beautiful bull elk in the soft morning light. When I picked up my new bargain basement lens it fell into two pieces. I couldn’t get the lens back together to focus properly so for the rest of the weekend I concentrated on action blur photos of moving wildlife. for the rest of that autumn if there was fog or heavy snow I was there photographing soft dreamy images of all types of Rocky Mountain Wildlife. That winter I submitted my portfolio of that work to Grays Sporting Journal which was the most artistic of the outdoor magazines at the time. That fall Grays ran a several-page showcase of my work. Soon the phone began to ring with other editors looking for more of my work.
Soon I had the reputation of the guy who would make the job work no matter the situation.

Even today when mentoring other photographers in my workshops I often am congratulated for finding a way to show them how to make great images under all types of conditions.

Even more important, that experience taught me how to see beyond the ordinary and make photographs that show a unique vision of common places in the landscape. In Wildlife I want to give the viewer more than a portrait , I want to give them images that show the spirit of my subject.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
My Favorite places would be out of the city 🙂 it would be off to the hills to explore those little-known but beautiful places that surround us.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Back in the early days of my career, it was the photo editors of hunting and fishing magazines such as Field and Stream, Sports Afield, Outdoor Life, and Flyfisherman. They were always supportive and offered heads up to what was needed in their publications which were some of the best paying in the outdoor photography market. Later as I became more established it was the conservation organizations such as Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, Trout Unlimited, and Fly Fisherman Publications. Of course, the projects at National Geographic, National Wildlife, and Smithsonian help me to learn the art of telling a story in a photograph.

Website: https://www.JessLeePhotos.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessleephotos/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JessLeePhotos