Photographer Page

Michael Nichols

A tiger mother named Sita moves one of her cubs to a safer spot in Bandhavgarh National Park, India. Less than a year after appearing on the cover of the December 1997 issue, Sita was killed by a poacher.

For the December 2012 issue of National Geographic, photographer Michael “Nick” Nichols went to Sequoia National Park in California to capture this unprecedented image of the President, a giant sequoia that is the third largest tree in the world, measured by volume of the trunk above ground. Using a rig system of ropes, Nichols and his team shot every section of the 247-foot-tall, 27-foot-wide giant. It took 32 days of work to photograph the tree and stitch together the image from 126 individual photos.

Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, California, is a stunning example of old-growth forest in the United States.

A photograph captures a tiger running in Bandhavgarh. When hunting, tigers lie in wait and creep close enough to attack their prey with a fatal pounce. Bandhavgarh was once the royal hunting grounds of maharajas.

A tiger named Sita moves her cub to protect it from predators in Bandhavgarh National Park, in 1997. Beloved by park visitors and conservationists alike, Sita, then 16 years old, was known as a devoted mother: She had already raised six litters of cubs by the time this photograph was taken. Today, many tigers in the park are descendents of Sita. Two years after this photograph was taken, she was killed by poachers.

A large male tiger nicknamed Charger triggers the shutter on a remote camera with a powerful pounce, in Bandhavgarh National Park, in 1997. Charger and a female named Sita had several litters of cubs together. Charger was known for being a playful, affectionate father. He was also known for being aggressive, frequently charging other male tigers, vehicles, and elephants carrying tourists. Charger died of natural causes in 2000.

A story in the September 2008 issue documented families of elephants living in Samburu National Reserve, Kenya. Here, a bull elephant named Boone greets a matriarch named Maya and her daughter.

An African forest elephant stands at a mud hole in Loango National Park, Gabon. Estimates suggest the population of this smaller African elephant have declined over 80% in the last 90 years.

Dame Jane Goodall, primatologist and activist.

A group of giraffes runs across the Gara Plain in Zakouma National Park, Chad. The park was founded in the 1960s to protect the critically endangered Kordofan giraffe. Today it is estimated that only 2,000 Kordofan giraffes remain in the wild, with the majority living in Zakouma.