© 2021 AO Kaspersky Lab. All Rights Reserved.
Chris Burkard is an accomplished explorer, photographer, creative director, speaker,
and author. Traveling throughout the year to pursue the farthest expanses of Earth,
Burkard works to capture stories that inspire humans to consider their relationship with
nature, while promoting the preservation of wild places everywhere.
ChrisBurkard on Instagram: “In the Bible of stoke there is a verse about this.”
Layered by outdoor, travel, adventure, surf, and lifestyle subjects, Burkard is known for
images that are punctuated by untamed, energized landscapes and peak moments of
adventure. He has accumulated an audience of over one million followers to become a
globally recognized social influencer.
Burkard is often central in synthesizing the creative projects he is involved in, across
stakeholders. His holistic and visionary perspective has earned him opportunities to
work on global, prominent campaigns with Fortune 500 clients, appear as a TED
speaker, develop specialty product lines, teach national and international photography
workshops and publish a collection of books, including a children’s book. Along with his
team, Burkard is based out of his full-scale production studio and art gallery near his
hometown in Central Coast California.
At the age of 30, Burkard has established himself as a global presence and influencer,
accomplishing a prolific portfolio, connecting people from around the world and
producing some of the most recognized creative work of our time.
Topic:
“We want to show the beauty, but also the fragility of this remote strip of land”, says Renan Ozturk. “But to cut through the noise and create an impact in public awareness, we can’t just go on a boat and take beautiful pictures and hope a few media would cover it. So we put together a group of filmmakers, photographers and environmentalists, to make a meaningful representation of this place with wide reach. And we will produce a documentary about it all, including first ascent climbing and true boots on the ground exploration, as that is the kind of content that really creates awareness these days.”
Renan lives to tell stories about our connection to the natural world, often set within the most challenging environments on Earth. He’s constantly searching for projects that move him — films that have a strong visual identity matched with some deeply compelling human element.
He began his career as an expedition climber and landscape artist, spending years living in a tent beneath the big walls of U.S. National Parks and in the snowy Himalayan mountains. All of his paintings were created on expedition, carrying large cotton canvases on his back, sometimes even using natural pigments pulled straight from the earth to capture these wildly beautiful landscapes. He received National Geographic Adventurer of the Year in 2013 for his combination of cutting-edge first ascents and visual storytelling.
Currently, Renan works as a commercial and documentary filmmaker, an expedition climber for The North Face, and a photojournalist for Sony and National Geographic. The films he’s made over the years have had a global presence; he’s probably best known for MERU (cinematographer/subject), which won the 2015 Audience Choice Award at Sundance, and the critically acclaimed Sherpa (cinematographer/co-director), which screened at TIFF and Telluride. He’s directed and shot commercial work for major international brands such as Apple, Google, DJI and Nike.
Topic:
Taylor Rees is a documentary filmmaker, photojournalist, and avid adventurer. She is driven by an insatiable curiosity to explore and share stories beneath the surface to bring about greater understanding around natural resource conflicts, climate change, conservation, and human rights. She holds a Masters degree from Yale in environmental management and anthropology, giving her stories a rigorous scientific and social justice background. She has shot and directed doc films for clients including The North Face, National Geographic, and United Nations.
Topic:
Jeff Kerby is an ecologist and photographer. His work spans the Arctic to the mountains of East Africa, exploring species interactions in extreme environments. Currently a fellow at Dartmouth College’s Neukom Institute and the Institute for Arctic Studies, he’s spent the past decade studying Arctic landscape change in Siberia, northern Canada, and Greenland. He uses quantitative photography to track changes in plants, animals, and landscapes beyond the traditional perspectives and time frames of Arctic fieldwork.
Jeff is also an award-winning narrative photographer and videographer. His photos have been published in National Geographic Magazine, Geo Magazine, and the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival (Grand Prize – Photo Essay), in addition to multiple contributions to environmental films, web and TV series. He earned his PhD in ecology from Pennsylvania State University.
Topic:
Rishi Sugla is a PhD Candidate at Scripps Institution of Oceanography with expertise in interdisciplinary research. His main focus is long-term changes to Earth’s geosphere and biosphere. Beyond his research, Rishi focuses on climate and environmental justice organizing and activism while working on projects in Southern California, Chile, and Argentina. He deeply believes that community-drive, decolonial science with a focus on forming relationships is an important path forward. Rishi is slowly growing his skillset as a communicator so he can better tell nuanced stories about the roots of our climatological and ecological problems and the people they impact most.
Topic:
Loading more articles