Q&A: Century City Photographer Recognized For Conservation Efforts, Part 2

Westwood-Century City Patch sat down with local conservation photographer Ian Shive for an interview about his work. A Century City resident, Shive has traveled the world for photography and the Sierra Club awarded him the Ansel Adams Award for Conservation Photography this year. He is the author of National Parks: Our American Landscape, now in its fourth edition.

The first part of this interview was published Monday on Westwood-Century City Patch. Click here to read it.

Back to LA, how did you pick Century City?

I moved here about seven years ago and I just kind of stumbled into the neighborhood. It wasn't what it's like now back then. The mall was still under construction, and I've just fallen more in love with it. I walk everywhere. It's great and convenient and a miniaturized New York. It's cleaner and different but it's nice because you can't really do that everywhere in LA.

Do you hike and photograph a lot around here?

The Angeles National Forest is stunning. It's stunning, it's like a mini Yosemite -- huge waterfalls, terraced waterfalls going over rocks, pine forests, a cool breeze -- and it's right there and people don't realize it. We have this driving mentality that you have to drive far in order to really do something.  But you go 45 minutes out of the city to the Angeles National Forest and it's beautiful.

I think this is something a lot of amateur photographers think about, so when you're out hiking and you see the first glimpse of where you're going but the views just get better every hundred yards, how do you know when to stop? There are a lot of different views, but how do you know when to take the picture?

I can't tell you that! No, I can't tell you that because I don't know. But you do just know. I try to create a catalog of places in my head of place I like. I look at the light and wait for the situation to change, and I actually go in circles. Sometimes it doesn't work out. The other day, I drove six hours to Pismo Beach expecting a beautiful day and I got there and it was completely fogged in. I drove six hours to photograph sand dollars, so sometimes it just doesn't work out.

So where are you at now with everything?

Now, the coolest part of my job is that I work with all the major nature and environmental non profits. They send me all over the place now. So after all these years, risks and decisions and trials and errors, now I'm getting to do things that are just mind blowing -- hanging out of a helicopter over one of the last pristine reefs in micronesia. To see that stuff on a regular basis, it plays with your head a little bit. You start to understand a global perspective that I think is so rare. It's the ultimate education. You realize there's no black and white -- there's only gray. And I'm sure this journey is only beginning.

You probably don't have a favorite park, but I'm going to ask anyways.

Wherever I was last, probably. Locally, the Channel Islands. Yellowstone was the first park I went to alone and worked on my craft. Yosemite because I went there a lot when I worked at the studio. Every place offers something different.

This interview was edited and condensed for length and clarity.