Printing with your destination in mind

For more than 25 years, renowned German nature and wildlife photographer and Canon Ambassador Thorsten Milse has dedicated his time to endangered habitats and animal species. He documents what he describes as, "scenes that may not be seen in a few years or have never been seen before", always with his Canon cameras, and frequently printing the results for exhibitions and books.

More recently with his Canon EOS-1D X Mark III, Thorsten hiked a tropical rainforest in Tanzania that is home to 800 chimpanzees. "It's a magical moment when you find a group and participate in the family life and social behaviour of the chimpanzees. This photo (below left) shows how lovingly the mother treats her offspring."

Such powerful face-to-face encounters are tinged with melancholy. "If you photograph some animals in terms of species protection and know that they are the last of their kind, then you often get wistful. I know that I am documenting a special moment of this species that may not exist in 10 years," explains Thorsten.

Thorsten's motivation for species protections means his work isn't complete once he's taken a picture. He's a prolific printer, regularly exhibiting his images for free to bring these environmental issues to the public eye and also to raise funds to support the work of likeminded organisations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

"If the world sees how beautiful and unique our nature is; the fauna biodiversity and the beauty of our animals, then hopefully they will help to protect species and support projects too," he says.

Regular collaborations with the WWF recently included an exhibition called Survivor in Allwetterzoo in Münster, Germany – a zoo actively supporting the preservation of endangered species – for which Thorsten teamed up with Canon in Germany to produce the prints. So how did Thorsten put this together, and how did an outdoor display among living animals in a zoo influence key aspects such as the curation of photos, print size, paper, ink choices and more?

"For me, being a photographer means artistically staging nature – the animals and landscapes. To be in unique places and to creatively represent life in its incredible biodiversity. I see myself as an observer behind the camera who captures the fascination for the beauty of our planet in moments, and then presents nature in a haunting way and with a new perspective," says Thorsten.

The Survivor exhibition was in place outdoors for seven months, which brings about altogether different considerations than it does for book printing or prints for indoor display. The high-resolution, high contrast and dynamic colour of Thorsten's pictures needed to be as vibrant on the last day of the exhibition as they were on the first, with no fading or damage that occurs from exposure to daylight and adverse weather.

In addition to the many visitors who saw and were impacted by the stunning prints displayed in the zoo and consequently outside Überseequartier Nord, a commercial building in Hamburg, there is a wider body of Thorsten's images in a book, also called Survivor (see right image above). And for every sale of the book, €2 will be donated to the WWF.

Reflecting on the power of the printed image and the impact he hopes his work will have, Thorsten says: "Every day we lose some species. If we want them to survive, we must cooperate with nature. In this special time, protecting biodiversity and the preservation of these species is one of the most important things… Wildlife photos are works of art with very special creatures and thus each picture is also a tribute to the endangered species."