Post 3: John Ashley

https://www.johnashleyfineart.com

This week, I am going to talk about Montana photographer, John Ashley. His focus is on conservation photography, and landscape photography. He has worked all over the country with a variety of different animals, such as bald eagles, California condors and harlequin ducks. He currently lives in northwest Montana.

He earned his biology degree at the University of Montana and worked as a biologist for most of his life but moved on to conservation photography. This, combined his love for wildlife biology and photography, has made him an award winning photojournalist. A few years ago, he made a collection of nighttime photography and has made an effort to bring awareness to light pollution.

I had an amazing opportunity a few years ago to work with Randy Matchett in northeastern Montana to spotlight black-footed ferrets for a night to assist with his research. The endangered species is making a very slow come-back, and needs constant monitoring and vaccinations. My ecology class and I worked with him for a night - from 10pm to 6am, spotting, trapping, vaccinating, and releasing the ferrets. We teamed up and divided ourselves into vehicles to start working and I was paired with John in his truck, who works with Randy to photograph the ferrets. Between checking traps, he would get pictures of ferrets as we released them or as they came back out of a prairie dog hole.

 He took this picture of me releasing a ferret ready to go home.

Here is the link again to his website to see more of his works:
https://www.johnashleyfineart.com