Photographer Page

Michael Melford

The search for the southernmost tree in the world led to Isla Hornos, the last scrap of land in the Tierra del Fuego. The expedition, led by Brian Buma, a forest ecologist at the University of Colorado, Denver, determined that the titleholder was Nothofagus betuloides, a 41-year-old Magellan’s beech just under two inches in diameter that stands two feet high. With a baseline established, scientists hope to monitor soil warmth and tree growth—and in an age of climate change—determine whether that southernmost edge will advance south toward Antarctica.

In Greek mythology, dragon trees—Dracaena cinnabari—like these on Socotra, an archipelago off Yemen in the Arabian Sea, were supposed to have emerged from blood flowing from a slain dragon. Seventeenth-century herbals promoted its red resin as a remedy for everything from dysentery to loose teeth; it also was used as a dye and a breath freshener, as well as in rituals. Threats of global warming and overgrazing by goats have placed the tree on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List as a vulnerable species.

Morning fog rolls over an autumnal forest in Maine's Acadia National Park. The park is one of the nation's smallest, but can see upwards of 3 million visitors per year.

The sun rises on Kintla Peak in Montana's Glacier National Park. The park borders Canada's Waterton Lakes National Park, and together in 1932 the two parks were named the world's first International Peace Park.

A volunteer at Gettysburg Battlefield, Pennsylvania, lights one of the 3,500 candles that honour the Union soldiers who died during the Civil War battle in 1863. The ceremony occurs annually on Remembrance Day, which marks the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

A summer snowstorm swirls around evergreen trees in Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, a partnership between Glacier National Park in the United States and Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada.

Frankincense trees, found throughout northern Africa and in India, Oman, and Yemen, are increasingly under pressure, largely because of overexploitation for their aromatic resin.

‘While driving like mad to get to my destination, an aurora lit up the sky!,’ says National Geographic photographer Michael Melford. ‘I had flown into Fairbanks, Alaska, on assignment to photograph the wild and scenic river Birch Creek, some two hours away. I was very lucky, as the northern lights went on all night long, allowing me to get a good shot.‘

An enormous iceberg, broken from a glacier and blown by strong winds into the beach at Lago Grey, dwarfs a backpacker in Patagonia’s Torres del Paine National Park.

Photographer Michael Melford waited patiently on a clifftop between two viewing points on Australia’s Great Ocean Road to capture the sky changing behind the limestone sea stacks known as Twelve Apostles. The gauzy waves are a result of soft light and long exposure.