Michael Melford (born February 18, 1950, Gloversville, NY) is an American photographer, artist and teacher known for his National Geographic magazine assignments.
Michael Melford grew up in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY. He has a BS in photography from Syracuse University.
Melford is known for his raw, natural landscapes and his ability to capture vibrant motion in nature. He has produced over 30 stories for National Geographic Traveler magazine, including eight covers. He has extensively photographed the marvels of America's National Parks and Alaska. His inspirations are Ansel Adams and Ernst Haas.
Melford's photographs have appeared in The Apple Store, [1] Life Magazine, Newsweek, Time, Fortune, Smithsonian, Geo, Travel & Leisure, Travel Holiday, Coastal Living, National Geographic Traveler and National Geographic. [2]
His image of Montana's Glacier National Park was featured on a U.S. Postage stamp, first issued January 19, 2012. [3] Five of his photographs appeared as part of the "Wild and Scenic Rivers" Forever Stamps released in 2019 from the United States Postal Service. [4] Melford's images were of the Merced River in California, the Idaho segment of the Owyhee River, the Koyukuk River in Alaska, the Niobrara River in Nebraska, and the Tlikakila River in Alaska. This stamp series celebrated the 50th anniversary of America's Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, signed into law in 1968.
Melford is a frequent workshop and seminar instructor for Visionary Wild, Lindblad Expeditions, [5] and National Geographic Expeditions. [6]
Issue | Article | Cover story? |
---|---|---|
April 2005 | Saving Civil War Battlefields | YES |
November 2005 | Acadia National Park | NO |
April 2006 | Glen Canyon Revealed | NO |
August 2006 | Great Smoky Mountains National Park | NO |
October 2006 | Our National Parks in Peril | YES |
September 2007 | Glacier National Park: Crown of the Continent | NO |
December 2008 | King Herod: Architect of the Holy Land | YES |
January 2009 | Russian Kronotsky Preserve: Let it Be | NO |
September 2009 | Plugging into the Sun-Solar Energy | NO |
December 2010 | Alaska's Choice: Gold or Salmon? | NO |
September 2011 | Forever Wild in the Adirondacks | NO |
November 2011 | The Glory of America's Wildest Rivers | NO |
June 2012 | Socotra: Yemen's Mysterious Island | NO |
March 2017 | Formed by Megafloods, This Place Fooled Scientists for Decades (online only) [7] | NA |
The Smithsonian Guide to Historic America: The Mid-Atlantic States, 1989, Steward Tabori & Chang, ISBN 1556700504, with Michael S. Durham
Big Sky Country: The Best of Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Idaho, 1996, Rizzoli, ISBN 0847819647
National Geographic Destinations, Treasures of Alaska: The Last Great American Wilderness, 2002, National Geographic, ISBN 0792264703, with Jeff Rennicke
Simply Beautiful Photographs, 2010, Focal Point (National Geographic), ISBN 1426206453 (Cover Photo)
Visions of Earth, 2011, National Geographic, ISBN 1426208839
Hidden Alaska: Bristol Bay and Beyond, 2011, ISBN 1426207700, with Dave Atcheson
The Continental Divide of the Americas is the principal, and largely mountainous, hydrological divide of the Americas. The Continental Divide extends from the Bering Strait to the Strait of Magellan, and separates the watersheds that drain into the Pacific Ocean from those river systems that drain into the Atlantic and Arctic Ocean, including those that drain into the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, and Hudson Bay.
The Continental Divide National Scenic Trail is a United States National Scenic Trail with a length measured by the Continental Divide Trail Coalition of 3,028 miles (4,873 km) between the U.S. border with Chihuahua, Mexico and the border with Alberta, Canada. Frequent route changes and a large number of alternate routes result in an actual hiking distance of 2,700 miles (4,300 km) to 3,150 miles (5,070 km). The CDT follows the Continental Divide of the Americas along the Rocky Mountains and traverses five U.S. states — Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. In Montana near the Canadian border the trail crosses Triple Divide Pass.
The National Wild and Scenic Rivers System was created by the Wild and Scenic Rivers Actof 1968, enacted by the U.S. Congress to preserve certain rivers with outstanding natural, cultural, and recreational values in a free-flowing condition for the enjoyment of present and future generations.
The Owyhee River is a tributary of the Snake River located in northern Nevada, southwestern Idaho and southeastern Oregon in the United States. It is 280 miles (450 km) long. The river's drainage basin is 11,049 square miles (28,620 km2) in area, one of the largest subbasins of the Columbia Basin. The mean annual discharge is 995 cubic feet per second (28.2 m3/s), with a maximum of 50,000 cu ft/s (1,400 m3/s) recorded in 1993 and a minimum of 42 cu ft/s (1.2 m3/s) in 1954.
National Geographic is an American pay television network and flagship channel owned by the National Geographic Global Networks unit of Disney Entertainment and National Geographic Partners, a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (73%) and the National Geographic Society (27%), with the operational management handled by Disney Entertainment.
The Noatak River is a river in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Alaska.
The Flathead River, in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Montana, originates in the Canadian Rockies to the north of Glacier National Park and flows southwest into Flathead Lake, then after a journey of 158 miles (254 km), empties into the Clark Fork. The river is part of the Columbia River drainage basin, as the Clark Fork is a tributary of the Pend Oreille River, a Columbia River tributary. With a drainage basin extending over 8,795 square miles (22,780 km2) and an average discharge of 11,380 cubic feet per second (322 m3/s), the Flathead is the largest tributary of the Clark Fork and constitutes over half of its flow.
The John River (Iñupiaq: Atchiiniq) is a 125-mile (201 km) tributary of the Koyukuk River in the northern part of the U.S. state of Alaska. It was named after John Bremner, a prospector and explorer who was one of the first non-native persons to go there. It flows south from Anaktuvuk Pass in Alaska's Brooks Range, into the larger river at a point near Bettles, slightly north of the Arctic Circle.
Henry Bradford Washburn Jr. was an American explorer, mountaineer, photographer, and cartographer. He established the Boston Museum of Science, served as its director from 1939–1980, and from 1985 until his death served as its Honorary Director. Bradford married Barbara Polk in 1940, they honeymooned in Alaska making the first ascent of Mount Bertha together.
The Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), based in Boulder, Colorado, uses time-lapse photography, conventional photography and video to document the effects of global warming on glacial ice. It is the most wide-ranging glacier study ever conducted using ground-based, real-time photography. Starting in 2007 the EIS team installed as many as 43 time-lapse cameras at a time at 18 glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, Canada, the Nepalese Himalaya, and the Rocky Mountains of the U.S. The cameras shoot year-round, during daylight, at various rates. The team supplements the time-lapse record by occasionally repeating shots at fixed locations in Iceland, Bolivia, the Canadian province of British Columbia and the French and Swiss Alps. Collected images are being used for scientific evidence and as part of a global outreach campaign aimed at educating the public about the effects of climate change. EIS imagery has appeared in time-lapse videos displayed in the terminal at Denver International Airport; in media productions such as the 2009 NOVA Extreme Ice documentary on PBS; and is the focus of the feature-length film Chasing Ice, directed by Jeff Orlowski, which premiered at the Sundance film festival in Utah on January 23, 2012. Major findings were published in 2012 in Ice: Portraits of the World’s Vanishing Glaciers by James Balog.
Brutus, also called Brutus the Bear, was a grizzly bear who was adopted as a newborn cub by the naturalist Casey Anderson, star of the National Geographic documentary Expedition Grizzly.
Michael "Nick" Nichols is an American journalist, photographer and a founder of the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph in Charlottesville, Virginia. His biography, A Wild Life, was written by Melissa Harris and published by Aperture.
Douglas H. Chadwick is an American wildlife biologist, author, photographer and frequent National Geographic contributor. He is the author of fourteen books and more than 200 articles on wildlife and wild places.
Casey Anderson is an American filmmaker, wildlife naturalist, and television presenter known for translating human relationships with the natural world and wild animals to various audiences. He has been a host and executive producer of the Nat Geo WILD channel television series, Expedition Wild and America the Wild with Casey Anderson, and for raising Brutus the Bear, a grizzly bear that he rescued and adopted as a newborn cub. Brutus and Anderson have appeared in many films, documentaries, television commercials, and live educational shows across the United States.
National Geographic Partners, LLC is a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company and the namesake non-profit scientific organization National Geographic Society. The company oversees all commercial activities related to the Society, including magazine publications and television channels. The company's board of managers is evenly divided between the Society and Disney.
Ronan Donovan is a conservation photographer, filmmaker, wildlife biologist, and National Geographic Explorer and Storytelling Fellow.
Sumio Harada is a Japanese wildlife photographer, author, public speaker, and conservationist.