From The Daily Nebraskan to National Geographic, photographer Joel Sartore

Joel Sartore developed his love of photography in a makeshift darkroom in Abel Hall with photo paper he purchased from a girl who lived in Sandoz Hall at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. While in college, Sartore grew his portfolio that was filled with photos of a frog, donkey, a girl in a campus fountain and coach Bob Devaney. Along the way, he applied to the Daily Nebraskan for five semesters straight before he was hired. 

Today, Sartore is a National Geographic photographer, known for his Photo Ark series, a project dedicated to capturing portraits of every species under human care: invertebrates, fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals. 2025 marks the 19th year of Photo Ark; the project has gathered photographs of nearly 17,000 species. 

“Pictures tell a great story, and there's more than enough stories everywhere you look,” Sartore said. “All of us stand to benefit from good journalism.” 

Long before this achievement, Sartore was a young boy flipping through a Time Life book about birds. In the back, there was a chapter on extinct bird species. Sartore was drawn to a photo of a bird named Martha, the last passenger pigeon that died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. 

“I was always amazed that people would hunt something to extinction,” Sartore said. “It was hard for me to fathom. I always cared deeply about endangered animals from that point on, ever since I was seven or eight years old.” 

Sartore attended high school in Ralston, Nebraska, before he started at the UNL as an undeclared major. He tried English and art before settling in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. 

Sartore took beginning photography with professor George Tuck, who stopped Sartore on the first day of class and said, “We're expecting great things from you, Joel.” Sartore believed him. He later learned Tuck passed that encouragement on to multiple students, but that didn’t matter. He already had his sights set on big things. 

“I wanted to work for National Geographic as a photographer of animals,” Sartore said. “And so that is what I do because I had people that believed in me and told me I could.” 

When Sartore finally got hired at the Daily Nebraskan, he worked his way up to the role of Photo Chief. Under him, Mark Davis, a current senior reporter at the Powell Tribune in Wyoming, grew his photography skills. Davis credits much of his success, including traveling the world, covering sports, news and feature stories for the Omaha World-Herald and the Chicago Tribune, to the leadership at the Daily Nebraskan. 

“Joel didn't accept any excuses,” Davis said. “You either got the shot or you didn't.” 

Sartore had been hooked on animals ever since his parents gave him a variety of books about animals, but while in college, he had to experiment with other subjects. 

“It's almost a shame, because Joel is so good with people as well, and his pictures of people were just fabulous,” Davis said. “He had the full kit. He was okay with sports, but as far as features and news and everything, he's the total package.” 

After graduating with a bachelor’s of journalism, Sartore worked at the Wichita Eagle in Kansas.  He worked there for six years as a general street photographer and eventually as the director of photography. 

During this time, he met National Geographic photographer James Standfield at a photo seminar, who recommended Sartore to send in his work. Sartore has worked with National Geographic ever since. 

“He was great with people,” Davis said. “That's one of the ways that he got this whole world going, he is a wonderful person to spend time with and to laugh with, but he's also 100% work.”

The Photo Ark started with a photo of a naked mole rat at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo. Sartore got the idea while he was caring for his wife who was sick with breast cancer. He wanted to create a big project to open conversation around conservation. 

Photos for the Photo Ark follow a simple formula: an animal and a solid black or white background. Whether it's a red billed parrot cocking its head inquisitively or a bobcat with its tongue out, the Photo Ark encapsulates these creatures’ personalities wholly. 

“The reason that we do these on black and white backgrounds is because it allows us to look these animals in the eye,” Sartore said. “There's no distractions, and also it levels the playing field. All animals, because there's no size comparison, are equal in size. A mouse is every bit as big as an elephant in these pictures.”

Sartore released his newest book, “Photo Ark Babies” in March. The book is full of over 150 photographs of baby animals and facts about baby animals and animal families. 

“Babies are notoriously fidgety, and it's hard to get them to do what you say,” Sartore said. “But that's the case with most of the subjects that I photograph, not many of them sit still very long, and some of them go to the bathroom right on my background.” 

The overall mission of Photo Ark is to inspire people to care about at-risk species before it’s too late to save them. 

“It is really important that people pay attention and maybe start to care about the world around us, outside of politics and sports and the prices at the pump for gasoline,” Sartore said. 

Helping the environment doesn’t require world travel. It can start in the backyard by avoiding the use of herbicides and pesticides, Sartore said. Planting a pollinator garden is also a way to help.

For Sartore the work never stops, he’s traveling to New Guinea next week with his son, Cole, to photograph tree kangaroos and birds of paradise. The Photo Ark project is over halfway complete already. 

“That's the whole thing that's guided my entire career, whether I did field stories for National Geographic magazine – I did 35 stories over 17 years as a field photographer for them — or whether I'm shooting on the Photo Ark, the goal is always for me, shine a light on things and make the world a better place,” Sartore said. 

Published for the Daily Nebraskan, read here.

Portrait of Joel Sartore, 2021. Photo by Ellen Sartore.