by Matt Fabiano
If I’m being honest, this is mostly your fault. Before I met you (and I mean ALL of you), I was a mild-mannered iPhone user who occasionally would pull my brick of rare earth minerals out of my pocket (or more often, cycling jersey) and point it at things I found mildly interesting. That’s called being a normal person—definitely not a photographer.
I’m not saying I didn’t think of myself as a creative (hell, I went to film school, so you know I lack good judgment), but over the years, I’d allowed myself to stop making things. Maybe it was the malaise of middle age. Maybe it’s because making things is messy work. Maybe I was just being lazy. But whatever the reason, the person I’d been who made films, told stories, and wrote screenplays was someone I no longer recognized.
That’s where you come in. ALL of you. As Content Director at Think Tank, I had the unique opportunity to see your work and learn your stories. I witnessed the incredible content you were capturing in the fjords of Greenland, on the plains of Namibia, and in alleys in New York City. You photographed landscapes and wildlife at risk of disappearing from our planet, told stories amid a global pandemic, in trenches in Ukraine, and captured images of the most important moments in your clients’ lives. It was inspiring work, and it sparked something in me.
So, if you can’t beat ‘em… open an account at B&H! I bought my first “real” camera and started making a mess again. On trips to Ireland, the Mojave Desert, and to the alley behind the Target down the street from my house, I kept twisting the knobs on my XT-4 and snapping the shutter to see what it, and I, could create. I was enjoying myself and having fun. I could have made it a pleasant new hobby and left it at that. But then I met Joshua Asel.
Joshua is an award-winning wildlife and conservation photographer who has spent the past seven years hiking to the peaks of Pinnacles National Park to document the critically endangered population of California condors that call the mountain range home.
Brought to the brink of extinction in the 1980s by a lethal combination of lead ammunition and DDT poisoning, habitat loss, and human predation, the last California condors were removed from the wild in 1987 in a desperate effort to save the species. After landmark breeding programs at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo proved successful, California condors were released back into the wild at Big Sur and the Grand Canyon, and then at Pinnacles National Park.
Today, approximately 350 California condors live in the wild in Arizona and Utah, stretching up the West Coast from the Baja Peninsula, north to Pinnacles and Big Sur, and as of 2022, in Northern California’s Redwood National Park and on the ancestral lands of the Yurok Tribe.
It’s a powerful story—not only of the devastating impact short-sighted human actions can have on our planet, but also of our extraordinary ability to right past wrongs and shape a more sustainable, hopeful future through bold, deliberate action.
But there’s learning that story, and then there’s seeing Joshua’s photographs.
Joshua’s photography immediately captured my imagination and made me want to see these incredible creatures in the wild. Along with that feeling, I also felt the spark of an idea: a short documentary that told the condor’s story and explored the intersection of photography, conservation, and creative inspiration.
And with that, a plot was hatched. In collaboration with our friends at Looking Glass Photo, the Think Tank team joined Joshua and his long-time cinematography partner, Ian A. Nelson, on a trip to Pinnacles to see the largest birds in North America.
Equipped with BackLights, FirstLights, and Rotation backpacks, our team left the parking lot at zero dark thirty and hiked to the summit of the Pinnacles in hopes of capturing the first golden rays of dawn as it illuminated the peaks and the condors sunning their wings.
We embarked in search of a story about conservation photography and the California condor.
What we found became Wingspan.
A documentary short that follows Joshua’s journey from fine art, to photography, to a life dedicated to wildlife conservation, Wingspan is fresh off a successful film festival run where it won the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Green Film Festival of San Francisco, Outstanding Documentary at the Sacramento International Film Festival, and was an Official Selection at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival, Boulder Environmental Film Festival, Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, and many other prestigious festivals.
Sitting in darkened theaters, watching our project play for audiences has been a highlight of my career, and the energy it generated spun my life off in a new direction. While I’ll always be a member of the Think Tank family, I am now producing and editing conservation stories for The Nature Conservancy and other clients. I know I’m in the right place because my heart is as full as the hard drives I keep having to buy.
I hope you enjoy Wingspan half as much as we loved making it! Meeting all of you has quite literally changed my life for the better, and I want to express my gratitude for showing me the way back to a life that’s filled with messy creativity and the dangerous business of going out your door and stepping onto the road.
Matthew Fabiano is a conservation filmmaker and messy creative. You can join him on his journey on Instagram and at road27.com