How did you get started as a photographer?

I trained as an economist and realised I was on my way to becoming a very unhappy one. Then, after I moved
to California to do research in environmental economics and environmental planning, I discovered the West Coast tradition of outdoor photography and landscape and nature photography, and that really fascinated me and gave me the inspiration to try it myself. Whether I could make a living was something I never considered – I just plunged into it. If I’d known better, I might have paused. But it still gives me as much joy as it did originally.  

How did you first come up with idea behind the Life project?

I wanted to explore the roots of biodiversity back in time, and I began to recognise the past and present in many situations. That became the guideline for looking for situations all over the natural world where I could see influences back in time. It’s taken me seven years of researching it, planning it, photographing it, editing it, getting it into book form and turning it into a musical production – which we’ve just launched – with music by Phillip Glass. It will be launched in web form in September, and also as a travelling exhibition.

How did you edit down seven years worth of work to create the book?

When you work on something like this for such a long time, new ideas and possibilities will always come up, and I spent a lot of time editing the images. They had to have something to do with the story of life, so some things suggested themselves quite logically – these were stories that are well known to scientists – and there were other things that were slightly more obscure.

Do you have a favourite image?

It’s difficult to separate them out because they really live together. Each of these images has its own story, but together they tell the story of the history of life on Earth. But visiting a remote lagoon in Western Australia was, to my mind, a highlight. There are ancient life-forms that have been there for three billion years or more, so that was really interesting.

Which was the most difficult image to capture?

Photographing diatoms was such a long process. They’re microscopic algae that I photographed at Harvard University. It’s very tedious, painstaking work, because you navigate around special slides that are the size of a fingernail. It takes very intricate manoeuvring. Whereas photographing animals I’ve done for a long time.

Some of the shots look as if they might have been quite dangerous, particularly those taken on Kilauea volcano while it erupted around you. Were you concerned for your safety?

I try to go out with people who know more about a situation than I do, so usually I’m in the company of scientists or explorers or conservationists – people who know the landscape very well. In the case of the volcano expedition, I was with geologists from the volcano observatory. It got really hairy when the lava lake got all the way up to the rim and started overflowing. That hadn’t happened for a couple of years, and it was amazing to see.

Over the years, you must have seen plenty of evidence of humanity’s impact on the planet

In the book’s concluding section, Planet of Life, we try to articulate and visualise a coherent view of life on Earth as it was originally presented by James Lovelock in his Gaia theory. And I think that if you look at life in that context, we’re at a very significant and interesting point. We’re the first generation that’s realising you have to look at life as a totality. We’re now reaching the conclusion that we have a global consequence for life on the planet and climate change. So we live in a unique time.

What does your role on the national council of WWF entail?

It has been a long collaboration. I support a lot of conservation efforts, either directly or through publicising what they do. I’ve had a long relationship with WWF, both in the Netherlands and the USA. In the USA, I serve on the council of advisors and contributors. In Holland, I’ve had a number of publications and they’ve had auctions of my work, with the funds going to conservation projects. WWF in Holland is also participating in the launch of the Life project.

What inspires you?

Telling stories of the natural world. And I keep finding new ones. The Life project is interpreting different ways of looking at nature, and I think it also comes at a time when there’s a real synergy between different sciences, which leads to a more holistic way of looking at life. I find that interesting – translating stories from science into more popular mediums.