Photographer and filmmaker Pete McBride has spent 20 years behind a camera documenting the natural world. McBride has traveled the globe for National Geographic, but he also focuses on stories close to home. This Saturday, McBride will be speaking with fellow filmmakers at TACAW's Backcountry Symposium about the responsibilities filmmakers have in the wild.
"We are going to be talking about documenting the beauty of wilderness, but also doing it in a way that is mindful and respectful to the places that we love. My big concerns today is that we seem to be loving a lot of these places to death. There's been a huge influx of people that want to get outside.
I think it's great for all of us to reconnect with nature, but there is a lot of examples of people leaving big footprints. And so we'll be talking about that, how we do it as documentarians. I've been doing it for a long time, hopefully we can share some of those stories and make people think about it and hopefully improve our experiences for everybody, including the wild critters that are out there."
You hiked through the Grand Canyon multiple times the first time in 2015 and then you returned several more times to finish your projects. Were you concerned at all that the work you were doing might be sensationalized on social media?
"We're always concerned about that and I do my best to try to prevent that as best as I can. I can't control sometimes what others do and social media in my own social media world. And I do that with National Geographic. I did not disclose a lot of sensitive locations. I didn't disclose a route. Try to do things so people don't just try to follow what we do. I want people to experience their own experiences.
We live in a world where it's really easy to make beautiful imagery today, thanks to the technology of our cameras. And it's really fun to go out and make beautiful images, but more importantly, it's more rewarding, in my opinion, um, to tell stories; stories of place and people and wild things and why they're important."
What kind of stories do you like to tell?
"I generally try to promote stories, um, where I use adventure as the, as a backbone to tell bigger, broader conservation stories about, um, public lands, native voices, watersheds, water, rivers, some of my favorites. The Grand Canyon was a favorite 'cause it was challenging physically, mentally, logistically, that was over a year walking 800 miles to the length of the Grand Canyon and not many people had done it. And so there was no, we had to figure out a lot of things on our own, which didn't come easy. There were a lot of hard moments, a lot of humility. For me, the challenging stories are often the most memorable. And then I did a lot of media impact around that, and I felt like I was able to help be the voice for some voiceless in there, whether it was water or rock, public lands, or even some of the Native tribal communities that weren't being heard."
What projects do you have coming up that you're really excited about? Is there anything that you can give us a preview for, for Saturday?
"Michelle Smith, who's on the panel, works with me as a film editor, and we're doing a short film about a young Native Havasupai woman who is instrumental in helping protect large swaths of the Grand Canyon. She's a great reminder, a great example of how one individual can make a difference even in today's world."
What responsibility do you think we have as individuals and as Coloradans to the natural world and to the communities that we live in?
"I think our responsibility is to enjoy the amazing natural resources that we have, but leave them better than we found them for those that, um, don't have voices. The wild critters and the Amazing resources that kind of sustain us, and of course, be grateful and willing to share the resources we have. Do it in a way that's mindful and respectful with humility."
The Backcountry Symposium at TACAW is free to attend with an RSVP. More information can be found at TACAW.org, and you can see Pete McBride's work at petemcbride.com.
