00:00You know, we all start from somewhere.
00:09For me, I thought if I could just give a voice and a name to wildlife
00:13by using my camera, then that's it.
00:18It was very important for me to immortalize stories.
00:22So I started capturing moments happening around me.
00:26I think what drew me into photography was the capturing of souls.
00:30You can capture a moment of someone's joy or sadness in like 1 25th of a second.
00:37I just knew I couldn't pursue a career that would have me in four walls.
00:42And I took a gamble on photography.
00:47And I love it.
00:56I chose to be a photographer because early on in my life,
00:59I discovered the power that photography has
01:02to get other people excited about science and nature.
01:08I discovered that science is a difficult language for people to really feel emotional about.
01:13But photography is a great way to inspire people.
01:18So I picked up a camera.
01:20How can I take you a picture?
01:29A photograph has the ability to captivate humanity,
01:33to change how the story ends.
01:35And that's what I want to do with my images.
01:40I grew up in the 1960s and 70s.
01:42And at that time, it was pretty clear that there was a bias towards boys versus girls.
01:49You know, my dad would give my brother Jacques Cousteau books,
01:52and I would get Barbie top books.
01:56I started my career in photography almost by accident.
02:00I knew that I wanted to study marine biology.
02:03I discovered that science is a difficult language for people to really feel emotional about.
02:08But photography is a great way to inspire people.
02:11So I picked up a camera.
02:12I've spoken to women photographers who think that being a woman is a disadvantage.
02:25For me, it was like a superpower.
02:28You are just non-threatening.
02:30You know, people don't care that you have a camera.
02:32You're a woman.
02:33And I realized, you know, if I focus on this aspect of humans and nature,
02:39maybe there's something that not many people are doing.
02:46These are not just pictures.
02:48There are testimonies that live forever.
02:52There is no better way to make a difference than photography.
02:56I fell in love with photography at a very early age.
03:04It was the moment that I met my grandmother's Polaroid.
03:08I discovered the power of photography, and all I wanted just to take pictures.
03:14As a Jordanian national born in Jerusalem, surrounded by conflicts most of my early age,
03:21I realized that there is a life going on even in the middle of the war.
03:26As a kid, I had my own life.
03:28I used to play.
03:29I used to have fun.
03:30And I wanted to use the power of photography to share with the world that even in the middle of the conflict,
03:36life goes on.
03:37And this is when I started capturing moments happening around me.
03:43The reason I became a photographer is to show the real image of people,
03:48not to be remembered as refugees,
03:51to be known by their names, by their hopes, by their dreams.
03:58In a world where we can see so much, but so little,
04:01gets captured of certain people, it's shocking.
04:05The little corner of the world that I highlight and shine,
04:07I'm going to make sure that it's the underrepresented people
04:11until they're the majority and I can go home and sleep.
04:15Left shoulder up, right shoulder down.
04:17There we go.
04:18That's kind of cool.
04:19I like that.
04:20So my start in fashion photography came through interning.
04:25I've always wanted to do a myriad of things from styling to set to makeup.
04:29And whilst I was a stylist assistant, he noticed I was staring at the photographer's set.
04:34And he was like, yeah, you're a photographer.
04:36Go and do that.
04:37Three, two.
04:38And then I kind of fell in love with the romance of how you can capture a moment of someone's joy or sadness or your own depiction of an idea in like 1 25th of a second.
04:51Everything leads back to myself because I think of the minorities I fall into, whether it's my race or my gender or my sexuality even.
05:03I often feel immediately I'm not seen.
05:06Like I have to always assimilate to an idea instead of be in an idea.
05:09So when I'm creating ideas, I want them to be so authentic to my experience.
05:14I want to find these fleeting moments where I witness something that I could never conjure up with my own imagination.
05:26And my body just takes over in how I react.
05:30I just can't control it and I love it.
05:32How I started my career in photography?
05:37Well, I just, I wanted to be outside.
05:40Originally, I wanted to be a sports photographer.
05:44Like I dreamed about running the sidelines at a Rugby World Cup or going to the Olympics.
05:50But within the first three to four years of my career, I became so jaded.
05:57It was a really natural fit for me to just gravitate towards adventure.
06:02And what I loved about adventure is that I had no sidelines.
06:07If anything, if I'm held back, it's because it's the parameters of Mother Nature and what I can actually physically do or come.
06:13Look at that! Look at that!
06:19What a joy to experience life in such extreme environments.
06:23I loved science.
06:29But I didn't like taking the beauty of nature and converting it into a data set.
06:34And so I began my career as a wildlife photographer at the age of 26.
06:38Really, my love of animals and nature and creativity began when my family moved all the way up to the High Arctic in Baffin Island.
06:48All of my time was spent outside in the ice and the snow learning from my Inuit friends.
06:54I really knew that I was going to spend the rest of my life doing something with wildlife and nature.
07:01But science was not it.
07:03So by being an artist, a creative, I could give a voice and a name to wildlife.
07:10Then eventually, I got my first assignment for National Geographic in the year 2001.
07:17You're only as good as your last story.
07:20So really, I thrived in that environment where you were just pushing yourself to come back with the best coverage that you were capable of.
07:28The most important thing in creating a compelling image is surprise.
07:38As a photographer, how do I challenge people's assumptions?
07:43My career in photography kind of started by accident.
07:49I was intending to be a scientist and I got a summer job working for a photographer.
07:54And that experience showed me the potential that a photography career could have.
08:00Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is cool.
08:03You know, the lesson that I keep learning over and over again is that it's okay to not know what your future looks like.
08:12Becoming a photographer was the first scary step.
08:17That's so cool.
08:19Where I stepped out of a known path of how to become a scientist into this unknown path of how to become a photographer.
08:26And even within that path, it's like every story is like, this is interesting to me.
08:31This is going to be interesting to the world, but I don't know how to do this.
08:35But just stick with it and do your best work.
08:38I think to be successful in this career is to find a way to contribute something that only you can contribute.
08:52What is it about your perspective, your interests, your skills that you can bring that no one else can bring?
09:00Photography is not a job. It's built in. It's a candle in. You're born to be a photographer. Be passionate about it to succeed.
09:09You need to know what you love, what you're good at.
09:13This is a great scene.
09:15And the most important thing is what the world needs.
09:18And when you find that, you get up in the morning to fulfill the purpose of your life.
09:23You want to know what you're saying?
