Tony Bynum operates at the intersection of conservation, wildlife, beauty and truth.
The photographer and conservationist has completed a career capturing images of western big game, documented oil and gas development along the Rocky Mountain Front, potential wilderness areas in the West and a number of international projects. But while many find inspiration in beautiful landscapes and wildlife, few have seen them so up close and personal. Once a high-ranking federal employee at the Environmental Protection Agency, Bynum has put passion above paychecks as he pursues a conservation message with every photo he takes.
“The kind of theme in my life has always been to be out there and try to figure out how to make a living doing what you want to do instead of making a living doing what you’re told to do or what you think you should do you have to.”’ Bynum said from his home in Great Falls.
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Tony Bynum
Photo courtesy of Tony Bynum
Bynum grew up in Washington state, where his enjoyment of the outdoors blossomed through fishing, hunting and observation; what he would later learn fell under the definition of a naturalist. These interests would be integrated into his education as he earned undergraduate degrees in geography and earth studies and an advanced degree in science and resource management.
Bynum, an enrolled member of the Grand Ronde Confederated Tribes, worked as a water quality scientist for the Yakama Nation before a detail at the EPA in Washington DC in 1998. There, he worked as to Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation and later became the Acting Indian Program Manager responsible for implementing and managing tribal air pollution control programs.
In 2002 he would move to East Glacier for family reasons. Bynum worked for a time as an environmental consultant, but when the contract expired, he knew he had to make a living. He had started taking pictures while in DC, and the potential outside his door seemed limitless.
“It was a bit of a necessity, honestly, which seems strange,” he said. “Most people think, oh, you get into photography and it’s just a passion that you pursue. And in my case, even though it was a passion, I ended up in East Glacier Park. I was living there full-time, raising my daughter, and it just made sense to try to put it all together.”
Modern Naturalist: Tony Bynum on wildlife photography as a conservation tool
Bynum’s hunting skills proved invaluable as he got up close to photograph mule deer, elk, bighorn sheep and mountain goats. He would spend four years building a portfolio before trying to sell photos. The advent of the Internet played a key role in his early success, as “the whole world could come to my door” and buy his work at tonybynum.com.
For two decades, Bynum has continued his photographic pursuit of western big game. His ability to capture the routine intensity and hearty personalities of mature animals has led to his photos being on over 300 magazine and book covers. His career has also diversified, shooting for commercial projects and as a freelance photojournalist for publications such as the Washington Post.
Bynum likes to find those remote places to photograph wildlife. A hand-held camera greatly increases the difficulty of the hunt, he says, with perhaps one in 10 days spent out in the field offering optimal conditions.
“There are some places in my universe that I travel to that I’ve spent hundreds of hours waiting for photos just because I know that when it happens here, it’s going to be epic,” he said. “… This is what I have managed to do, is to find those places where probably no one will be. It’s too hard to get to, it takes too much effort, and people are very afraid of grizzly bears.”
While Bynum has photographed in national parks, his preoccupation with atmosphere has driven him away in recent years. He observes a palpable anxiety about wildlife, where people crowd out of vehicles near a moose or black bear in a situation that can be harmful to the animals and stifle their enjoyment.
The tech-age world of wildlife photography has also brought its share of pitfalls, Bynum says, as texting can quickly cause a deluge of photographers to descend on a location. He wants to photograph animals as wild and peaceful as they can be. It values responsible recreation and the power of photography as an educational tool.
“I’m doing this because this is fulfilling something in my universe that I get a lot of energy from. Like, it fills me up when I can go spend time with certain species of wildlife and watch them do things and literally just watch them for hours, doing things that most people never see done,” he said.
Conservation has become an unmistakable aspect of Bynum’s work. He quickly learned the importance of place when photographing a particular species and how that photo could resonate and inspire. He doesn’t shy away from sharing his views on social media and often circulates stories about the environment to his large following.
“I like to think that I always bring a dose of conservation with the dose of a sweet photo, as if connected. So I try to keep it up. I probably get into more trouble than if I was just a strictly wildlife photographer,” he joked.
It is easy to draw striking parallels and differences between his work in tribal and federal governments with his photography. Bynum laments that while he was in government, he often felt that science mattered less than the politics of whoever was in charge, though he still feels good about much of his work. With photography, the impacts can often be much more immediate and tangible.
Bynum noted his work photographing oil and gas development along the Rocky Mountain Front, a project that, once underway, attracted media attention across the country.
Buffalo graze on the Blackfeet reservation with oil wells nearby.
Photo courtesy of Tony Bynum
“I’m going to put these images together, I’m going to write the story, I’m going to catalog this thing together, so 100 years from now, if the Rocky Mountain Front becomes an industrialized landscape and we decide, because we took it all out, that we want to restore it, here’s what it looked like, here’s the floor plan, here’s what you’re restoring it to,” he said.
Bynum believes that when it comes to conservation issues, capturing everything is important. In another project he documented wilderness values for lands in central Montana. This meant not only photographing the beauty, but also the scars left on the landscape, whether from roads, weeds or grazing practices.
Hunters in the Scottish Highlands.
Photo courtesy of Tony Bynum
Bynum’s work has extended beyond the United States with photography and film projects in countries including Africa, Scotland, New Zealand, Mexico and Kyrgyzstan. The practices, customs and ability of governments to conserve wildlife vary widely. But he also sees some commonality among those who care about wildlife, regardless of borders.
“I think there’s a universal bond to bring people together in the outdoors in a way that you can go anywhere in the world and find people you can relate to on a wildlife conservation level,” he said.
Tom Kuglin is the Deputy Editor of the Lee Newspapers State Bureau. Its coverage focuses on the outdoors, recreation and natural resources.
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