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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Outdoors photographer Donald M. Jones has vision of perfect shoot

By Rob Chaney Missoulian

A common redpoll finch sitting in a spruce tree on a white-sky day wouldn’t attract the attention of an Audubon Christmas Bird Count participant, let alone a professional photographer.

“And then all of a sudden, it looks down at its feet and suddenly, it’s a whole different photo,” Donald Jones explains of one of his favorite recent photos. “It’s the little things when something moves left or right, or shakes an ear, and you go ‘Ah-ha!’

“People say, ‘Haven’t you shot enough of that?’ and I say ‘Nope, I still want to keep going.’ ”

Jones has been waiting for those “ah-ha!” moments for 28 years. The payoff for that patience can be seen in the pages of books, magazines and websites.

Snapshots of his wildlife photography career have wowed viewers in galleries.

According to Hockaday Museum education director Kathy Martin in Kalispell, they show both dedication to craft and determination to go beyond the obvious.

“Don thinks about what he’s photographing the same way an artist does when painting a picture,” Martin said. “Only, he has to depend on what’s already there. He can’t move a tree to the right or change the light. He’s doing it the old-fashioned way where you sit, maybe for hours, thinking about the composition and what’s it going to look like ahead of time.”

Those images have wound up in publications including Field & Stream, National Wildlife, Audubon, BBC, National Geographic, Time, Sierra, Ranger Rick and Outdoor Life. Over the years, his images have been featured on the covers of nearly 750 magazines around the world.

In a job where you spend 180 days on the road chasing wildlife, seasons and light, finding time to appreciate the results can slip away.

“The thing I like about Don is he gets out in the field a lot,” said Montana Outdoors magazine editor Tom Dickson, a regular publisher of Jones’ work. “He’s able to get the shots of wolverine and lynx and grizzly bears, and it really takes a lot of work and effort and time to get out there and get those shots.

“But he also gets both the business of publication and the technical understanding of what you need to do with a camera to capture the perfect image. He gives our art director exactly what he wants.”

Jones said that market forces often overwhelm his own preference for what makes a favorite photo. He can deliver the perfectly framed mountain goat with its white hair mimicking the same windblown posture of a whitebark pine in the background, or the close-up of a grizzly bear spinning swirls of water as it shakes off a dunking in a river.

“I shoot a lot with a 600mm lens, but my favorite scene is when I have all that habitat,” Jones said. “The market doesn’t seem to grasp it.

“With magazines, everything is in-your-face. In my favorite whitetail deer shot I took all fall, the deer takes up one-100th of the frame. The chances of selling it are slim.”

Digital memory cards have replaced Kodachrome transparencies during his career. Everyone carries a smartphone with a built-in camera. They flood the market with snapshots that they’re willing to give away for free or for minimal pay.

A business that used to be dominated by a small core of dedicated professionals has been overwhelmed by amateurs.

“I’ve never seen Glacier National Park as crowded as I have recently,” Jones said. “Or the National Bison Range. It’s great that people are using it, but there’s that thing where you love it to death.”

It wasn’t that way when Jones started selling photos in 1987 in between seasonal stints with the U.S. Forest Service on the Kootenai National Forest. He decided to pursue wildlife photography full time in 1993.

“If someone would have sat me down and told me how this business worked, I would have said I’ll never do that,” Jones said. “But back then, I saw everything as a challenge. I just kept sending stuff, they paid attention and my work got better.”

Sending stuff meant chasing stuff. Jones decided to concentrate on wildlife – not scenery or adventure. He also opted to work mostly alone, skipping the workshop and photo safari worlds that others depend on.

“You should do a story on my Subaru,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve gone 24 days straight, eating and working and sleeping out of it. I don’t get assignments. Everything is on spec.

“I try to know the subject matter editors might be looking for, and then hit it and re-hit it and re-hit it.”

“Some nature photographers are less nature and more photographer,” Martin said of Jones’ portfolio. “He gets to know those animals and the scenery around them. There are so many subtle things in the pictures. It might be the way the light hits part of the animal’s head, or he’s captured something particularly funny.

“There’s one photo of a bear scratching his back on a tree, and he has the tree pulled down. I ask the kids when I’m leading tours if they can pull a tree down like that. Don’s totally focused in on the animals.”