Sometimes the music of nature can best be shared in silence.

I will be off the grid on filming expeditions most of the year.

For the next 365 days I will share images from my personal Ashes and Snow journals. Each image will be numbered and I invite you to write the words…

This is day eighteen.

—Gregory Colbert

Sometimes the music of nature can best be shared in silence.

I will be off the grid on filming expeditions most of the year.

For the next 365 days I will share images from my personal Ashes and Snow journals. Each image will be numbered and I invite you to write the words…

This is day ten.

—Gregory Colbert

Sometimes the music of nature can best be shared in silence.

I will be off the grid on filming expeditions most of the year.

For the next 365 days I will share images from my personal Ashes and Snow journals. Each image will be numbered and I invite you to write the words…

This is day six.

—Gregory Colbert

This photo was taken on December 12, 1994 in Kerala, India. I’d like to answer the often-posed question of whether any of my images are computer tricks: nature does not need Photoshop to collage her stories. My photographs record what I saw through the lens of my camera. The gestures of animals are not made on a silicon chip. We must find the humility to credit nature for her wonder. There is no need to digitally invent the expressions of an elephant or a whale. Instead, I’m trying only to follow nature’s lead.

—Gregory Colbert

Sometimes an oculist and a great photographer do the same thing—they help us to see more clearly. I just returned from my expedition filming polar bears in the Arctic. Paul Nicklen (http://www.facebook.com/paul.nicklen) led us on our journey. He is a photographer and visual storyteller like no other who is changing the way we see our planet’s polar regions. Nicklen is a virtuoso, a wild-at-heart Mozart with a camera whose images (like the one below) invite us to see and experience nature from the tips of our toes to the hairs on the backs of our necks. (PS: Special thanks to the captain and the courageous crew of the Hanse Explorer who sheltered our dreams as we navigated the ice pack.)

—Gregory Colbert