Who: Nature photographer; ecologist; Associate in Entomology at the Smithsonian Institution; winner of the 2006 Lowell Thomas Medal for Exploration.

Current Residence: Greenport, New York

Spotlight: “I like to photograph things that have been considered impossible, or have never been shown before,” Mark Moffett says. Moffett—alias “Doctor Bugs”—has risen to prominence for snapping such rarities as a tarantula shedding its skin, which it does just once every year, and a Colombian golden dart frog that only three non-locals have seen alive—and that packs enough poison to be fatal to one thousand people. “The key thing is to make people forget how small things are,” Moffett continues about his work. Indeed, looking at Moffett’s striking close-ups of New Guinean stag flies putting their dukes up like boxers and tropical frogs unblinkingly returning your stare—not to mention his streaming video footage of African driver ants, twenty or thirty thousand thick—it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the bulk of his subjects could fit in your hand. Although given that most of his subjects either bite, are venomous, or both, I wouldn’t recommend that. To date, Moffett has shot more covers for National Geographic than anyone else.

Tree Line: Moffett has also achieved renown for his studies and photography of the rainforest canopy, for which he has scaled trees in over forty countries. And while for backyard tree climbing, looking for good footholds works just fine, getting to the top of a 150-foot tree overlooking the Amazon River begs something a bit more involved: sometimes edging up the trunk with a strap between your feet; sometimes belaying up on a rope attached to an arrow shot over a branch. Moffett’s climbs generated his book, The High Frontier: Exploring the Tropical Rainforest Canopy, which the Boston Globe extolled as “[ranking] with the best work of Jacques Cousteau.” Plus, no skinned knees.

High Praise: Moffett’s high-altitude enterprises attracted the attention of the Explorers Club, who honored him this past October with the illustrious Lowell Thomas Medal for Exploration, which takes its name from the journalist who inducted Lawrence of Arabia into the lexicon. At the awards dinner at the posh Cipriani Wall St., Moffett made a grand entrance, repelling eighty feet past crystal chandeliers to the floor of the banquet hall. Suddenly, arriving fashionably late doesn’t look quite as cool.
Travel Log: Speaking of high altitudes: Moffett’s photography mandates a jet-setting routine that, according to Wired magazine, has him racking up more frequent flier miles than Madeline Albright.

Occupational hazards: You know how sometimes you get an itch on your head that just won’t go away? And then sometimes the itch turns into a pulsing, gradually expanding lump? Maybe that hasn’t happened to you if you don’t spend much time in the Peruvian canopy, but Moffett found himself in this predicament after a research trip. Concerned that he was sharing real estate with a botfly maggot, he stopped by Harvard’s Tropical Medicine office to get checked out. They scheduled an appointment for him to come back and have the offending party cut out, but minutes later, he felt something moving on his scalp. “I had just seen Aliens” he says, “and [I] wondered what bizarre creature was popping out of my head.” The bizarre creature in question turned out to be “an inch-long grub”, which the never-squeamish Moffett proceeded to yank out himself.

Snakes on a Plane: Also while in Peru, Moffett accidentally sat on a fer-de-lance (one of the most lethal poisonous snakes in the world). Fortunately, he was sitting at an angle that made it impossible for the snake to bite him. The take-home lesson is obvious. Moffett advises, “it’s important to sit on a venomous snake in the correct way.”

www.doctorbugs.com

Lowell Thomas Medal Award @ National Geographic Magazine

Bug-Eyed Photographer (California Berkley Alumni Newsletter)

Mark Moffett Speaker Profile at the Lavin Agency

"The Adventures of a Tree-Hugger", the New York Sun (login required)