Ruth Happel Biography

I got much of my love of nature and photography from my aunt, Ruth Happel Smiley, who has spent her life observing and photographing nature, in her backyard and around the world. Early nature expeditions with her, including an annual spring peeper frog hunt in the swamps of upstate New York, inspired me to pursue my own interest in nature.

As an undergraduate at New York University, I studied biology of native New York wildlife, and also traveled to the Caribbean and Africa studying and photographing monkeys and other wildlife. I continued these studies as a graduate student at Harvard University, researching and photographing wildlife in Central and South America, and Africa. I spent nearly two years as a Fulbright fellow, on thesis research in Sierra Leone, West Africa, focusing on the ecology of five monkeys.

After finishing my studies, I spent some time leading nature tours and teaching field courses, primarily in Central and South America. One field course focused on an endangered monkey in Panama, while others focused on ethnobotany in Ecuador. Extensive travel during and after teaching these classes provided excellent opportunities for research and photography.

I then traveled extensively around the world as a sound recordist and photographer. I published 8 albums of nature sounds, and built up an extensive collection of wildlife slides. My sounds and photographs have been featured in zoo and museum installations in various venues, including the Cleveland Zoo and the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences. A series of four albums I did on the Brazilian rainforest, including sounds and photographs, was reviewed in Entertainment Weekly simultaneously with Sting's newest album, and compared my albums favorably with his. Some recordings from one of these albums were later included on an album by Neil Young. This brought some attention to rainforests, and the plight of endangered species there. Royalties from these albums benefit The Nature Conservancy, in their efforts to preserve endangered species worldwide.

In 1998, I largely switched my photography to the digital realm, and now use Nikon digital cameras almost exclusively for my wildlife photography. Although I continue my research and recording of nature, nature photography has now become my primary focus, and is the reason I am developing this web site. I now live in Washington, in the Issaquah Alps east of Seattle, sandwiched between the Olympic Peninsula to the west and the Cascade mountains to the east. Although my current photos are most often from western Washington, I will include a wide variety of wildlife photos on this site (both digital and my previous slide photographs).

Background in Nature Photography

I began taking wildlife photos seriously about 30 years ago, beginning with a single lens reflex (SLR) camera. I went through a succession of cameras, ranging from manual FE Nikon models through Canon fully automatic models, and even the APS cameras introduced within the past few years.

Beginning in 1998, I migrated almost exclusively to digital cameras. I have been renting and buying a wide variety of digital gear since then, and am very happy with their quality. They have several advantages for nature photographers. First, given the non existent cost of digital "film", it is possible to take the equivalent of a dozen or more rolls of film in a day to get just the right picture.

A second advantage is instant review in the field with the LCD screens, to determine if the desired shot was captured (especially with in camera features such as histograms). And at the end of the day, when viewing pictures on a computer monitor it is possible to see the images at full size and resolution, and manipulate them further if desired in a digital darkroom.

Since most of my work involves computers, it also allows for instant digitizing of images, since they can be transferred directly to the computer without the intermediate step of some form of scanning, which can degrade the quality of a conventional film image, depending on the technique used.

My previous photos are now being transferred, via several scanners, photo CD, and other methods, to the digital realm. This is, I believe, the future of photography. Even the darkroom with its long history of techniques is rapidly evolving into digital form, with a variety of software programs taking the place of the chemical baths of old.

Although this site will not be limited to digital imagery, that is where my own expertise now lies, and I believe before long all "film" will be measured in bits and pixels. However, when relevant, I will include a discussion of traditional cameras and techniques alongside the evolving digital equipment, since the ultimate goal of all equipment is to record moments in nature.