♪ Imagine the power of still photographic images.

Moments frozen in time that can change the way we perceive our place in the world.

♪ "To the Ends of the Earth" isn't a new concept.

It began when people first started looking beyond the next ridge, the next valley, to the lands beyond the mountains.

They searched for the unknown, the unexpected, the surprising-to map, catalog, and show to others.

Each explorer searched in their own way to push boundaries, expanding and sharing knowledge of what existed in the great beyond.

Here you will see, through our photographic vision, a story for the ends of the earth, photographs by Todd Gustafson, a lifelong personal search for the dramatic and the unexpected.

Traveling the world for decades, capturing intimate natural history moments and dramatic wildlife action, Todd has brought to the viewer images from East Africa, Brazil, Namibia, Patagonia, Rwanda, the Galapagos Islands, India, Costa Rica, Madagascar, and the ocean realm, revealing common threads that exists between humanity and the natural world that forever bind our fates together.

Ancient mapmakers could only present what they knew.

Beyond the edge of the map was the unknown, inhabited by monsters and dragons.

Todd still pursues dragons in his personal search for the ends of the earth.

♪ Through Todd's lens we see a vanishing natural world.

We can see a world we have the power to protect.

We have a collective voice that can change the force of destruction to one of stability and rebirth.

"To the Ends of the Earth" is more than a magnificent collection of wildlife photos.

Todd's photographs allow us to experience vicariously the very behaviors people most want to see.

"To the Ends of the Earth" is sharing the earth's beauty to illustrate exactly what is at stake.

TODD: Over the last 30 years I've had the pleasure of sharing East Africa by escorting over 1,000 photographers, helping them achieve their photographic goals at the ends of the earth.

I feel an important element to my success was growing up in Tanzania, East Africa.

Mom and Dad came here as missionaries and I was a young child, so I grew up a mission kid here in Tanzania for four years.

I had a brother and a sister and a Mom and Dad, and we lived in the Usambara Mountains in Tanzania.

Running a school was tough business for Dad, and we went out on safari, I think, only once or twice.

But he had some really pretty pictures-some lions that I remember, and going to the Ngorongoro Crater.

Coming here to Lake Manyara was terrific.

When we got back to the States, he would go with Mom and they would do presentations, and then they'd show what they had done when Dad was building the school, and how the school ran, what life was like in East Africa.

And I grew up hearing the slide projector fan and sort of smelling that electrical current that goes along with it and seeing the pictures.

So that's always sort of been with me.

Dad was a photographer, a zoologist, a biologist, and I got that all from him.

Well, the first time I thought I was coming back as a photographer was in 1986, when my beautiful wife Julie decided that we should go to East Africa.

I could show her what it was like, and then we should bring Mom and Dad back for a return trip.

And that was an adventure.

I mean we came here with like ten bucks and a plane ticket, made a couple pictures that people like, and then kind of sat on that for about ten years until we decided we were gonna bring the kids back.

Now we had three children and we thought we'd like to show them East Africa.

So I was gonna make some really good photographs.

So for five weeks we're running around Kenya and Tanzania, going back and forth.

We covered as much ground as we could.

When I came back with those pictures, I thought, I've got something really special here.

Understanding the seasons and how they affect animal behaviors is a great advantage to a wildlife photographer.

In February, you will inevitably find me in Tanzania, photographing the story of the Great Migration's birthing season.

The short rains have come to the Southern Serengeti, signaling the arrival of the Great Migration of wildebeest, zebras, and gazelles.

2.5 million animals are drawn here by the nutrient-rich short-grass plains for the birthing season.

Tender, nutritious grasses trigger massive numbers of births.

Food is plentiful and predators can easily provide for new cubs.

These events weave the tapestry that is the backdrop; the foundation of the East African wildlife natural history that is intriguing to chronicle and share through photographs.

The mother wildebeest waits for the right time to deliver.

Have the rains been good?

Are there predators near?

Are there other babies being born?

She can wait for two weeks for the right conditions.

♪ Calves need to be strong to survive.

The mother needs to teach it to stand and nurse.

The baby's wobbly legs seem unable to support it.

♪ It needs to learn to run so it can join the herd, all in the first five minutes of a precarious new life.

♪ Seasons change.

The long rains have ended and the difficult dry season arrives in the Serengeti.

The Great Migration circles north to the breeding grounds for the annual rut.

There are obstacles in their way-the Grumeti River and the mighty Mara River, which they must cross to complete their journey.

The herds gather in family groups, join other groups, until the herds number in the tens of thousands.

The energy and momentum of the migration is unstoppable.

Afternoon showers begin in late August, creating an irresistible urge to cross the river and graze on fresh new grass.

[wildebeest sounds] There are dangers in a river crossing.

Drowning, broken legs, and huge crocodiles confront the wildebeest.

For those that make it across safely and graze on the new grasses, it's only a matter of time before more rains call them back across the river.

How do we make photographic sense out of this seemingly random activity?

We're in the middle of the Great Migration river crossing season, where two and a half million wildebeests, zebras, and gazelles cross the Mara River in search of the rains.

We've seen the wildebeest herds gathering, from their long lines, to their groupings, to their mega-groupings, and we've chased crossings.

We've had our frustrations, and we've had our successes.

But when we got to the ultimate crossing for us, when the light was good and the setting was fine, and there's a big group of wildebeest crossing, photographic sense comes into play, are you prepared with your equipment?

I have a 200 to 400 for wide shots.

I have a 600 millimeter ready for close, tight shots.

At that point, will you take the shotgun approach and just shoot anything that looks like a wildebeest?

Or will you thoughtfully prepare a composition, have something in mind, and then capture it photographically.

When they start piling down the bank, there can be an unbelievable press of animals.

There can be a line of animals that go slowly and carefully.

They can tumble down the hillside-young ones, adults.

And when they hit the water, are they swimming?

Are they walking?

What are you trying to show the viewer?

Motion?

Intensity?

Action?

My favorite pictures from this crossing were where the wildebeests were piling over the cliff and hitting the water and swimming.

This is it.

They've reached their moment of decision.

This is a life moment.

Will they break their leg?

Will they be eaten by crocodiles?

Or are they going to make it to the green grass on the other side?

These are the questions on their minds, and our photographic choices will answer those questions.

If you could get one animal leaping, sharp, right into the water, fantastic.

If you can get two, fantastic-er.

But if you can get three, four, five animals leaping, it can be amazing.

When they hit the water, do they leap out again as another comes into play?

Those are questions that you can answer with your photographic skills.

JANE: Todd has developed strategies and concepts of photographing wildlife that set his intriguing storytelling images apart from others.

What I consider the elements of a good photograph are first of all, an understanding of your equipment.

You need to know how it works and how to manipulate the technical aspects of it, to make a proper exposure and make it in focus.

So that's just kind of a given.

Secondly, I'd like to have an engaging subject, and I don't care if it's a mouse, a bird, a reptile, whatever it's going to be, I want it to be an engaging subject, in a cool setting.

So if it's a clean background or if it's a nice branch, or if it's golden light on a meadow, any of those that would be a good setting.

Then if you have your subject in a good setting, I'd like the light to be great.

And by great, I don't mean it has to be bright light.

If it's during the day, I'd prefer clouds.

If it's early in the morning, I'd prefer golden, soft light; same in the afternoon.

So the quality of light- I'd like that to be good.

And then I would like to be in the best position for the angle of light, to capture that animal doing something great.

If it's giraffes, I'd like to have them necking.

Or if they're elephants, I'd like their ears out, I want to see both tusks.

If it's a lion, a growl, a roar, a yawn.

Greeting behavior is great.

So capturing the action of a great subject in a great situation in great light and executing flawlessly.

I like cats.

And I know it's maybe trite to say I love photographing lions that are active.

I couldn't care less about sleeping lions.

But active lions are intriguing-the social behaviors and interactive things that they do.

I love cheetahs.

They're powerful, they're fast, there's an elegance about them.

Their habits are very interesting.

But my favorite's a leopard, maybe because it's the most challenging.

They're the most elusive, they're solitary, they hang out in trees and deep shrubbery and they come out at dusk, and it's a search.

Did I mention the serval cat?

Man, oh, man, that's a cat that for 20 years I've tried to get-and this was the year for the serval cat.

We had a really, really good serval cat who was hunting close to the van, and then when it went out in the meadow it was in short grass, and it would look and it would pounce.

It was just a terrific thing.

I like the cats.

Photography is really about storytelling.

What does that image tell you about the subject of the photograph?

What I want to do I think is engage the viewer in what might be called the human condition in nature.

If you have two lions, and they are, they're fighting over a kill, you can obviously sense the anger and the power and the aggression there.

Same family might have two females who have just come across the meadow and are greeting each other, and it looks like they're hugging and kissing, which they are.

When you see somebody that you haven't seen for a week or a month or whatever, you go and you hug them, and it's exactly what we're seeing there.

You can see a lion cub, who's looking at the mother and saying, you know, "Dad was mean to me."

when he gave him a backhand and sent him sprawling-and there's that connection here.

JANE: What is it that makes a photograph or a series of photographs resonate with the viewer?

Knowing the subject of the photograph and the possible stories each of them has to tell is crucial.

The one that comes to my mind above all others is when you're at Lake Nakuru, there are four million flamingoes there at the right time of year.

And during that time, hyenas will hunt the flamingoes.

I've heard of it and I've seen it at a distance, and last October, we were point blank with hyenas that were just charging through the water, and the flamingoes were flying by the thousands.

Thousands-clouds of them-and we were paralleling these hunting predators.

They're not scavengers, they're predators.

And they're going in to find a flamingo who isn't quite gonna make it, who's injured maybe or slower, or the whole natural selection thing.

And as we're paralleling, you could see that flamingo is weaker than the others and not as fast, and you could tell this is a life moment right here, right now.

And the hyena took it by the neck, and it was done.

And it was right in front of it.

It was so fast, and so dramatic and intense, that it takes your breath away.

And you can say the same thing about the birth of a new wildebeest, or the birth of a Grant's gazelle.

There's a baby, there's a mother, and when we've turned the corner, the baby was maybe just hit the ground as a newborn, and the mother nudged it up and got it on its spindly legs and this baby went to nurse with the mother, and the mother was so proud.

It was very, it was the human condition.

I am a new mother, this is my child.

And in three minutes, the baby could bound across the road, and on the gangly legs like this.

At that moment you could hear that there were hyena coming, and the mother could hear it.

And she got so nervous, and she ran toward the hyenas, and the hyenas ignored her and went right for the baby.

And in, within the scope of seven minutes from being born to being in the mouth of this hyena, that was a life moment.

And nobody could talk for an hour.

No one could even- you couldn't even discuss it, it was so intense.

So that's a life moment.

My thought process is that I have a subject, and I'm pretty aware of the capabilities of that subject.

I know what it's likely to do, and I know what I want it to do within those likelihoods.

I can see where I'd like him to do it, and I know where I'd like to be when he does it.

So I can tell the driver, "Go there.

Stop," because I'd like the animal to keep moving there, and when he does this, I can take the picture.

I don't have to wait around for it.

Or when it does it, I don't have to try and run to a different place.

So often times I'm in good position and that animal does exactly what it's going to do.

If there's an elephant in the marsh, my god, wouldn't it be great if that came out of the marsh and directly toward your vehicle, and it's as if you're the only person on the planet.

It's you and that elephant, face to face.

That's exciting!

And I'd like to tell them to do it.

And when they do it, it's sweet.

We want him to turn toward us about three quarters and then flap his ears.

If that would happen-look at this.

You kidding me?

Go vertical.

Give me some ears.

Oh!

Stop it!

Oh-oh-oh.

[camera shutter firing rapidly] I'm going to a different lens because this guy's huge!

♪ Oh, vertical.

[camera shutter firing rapidly] As he walks off into the sunset.

I'm gonna tell you that that for me was a heart-stopping chance at one of the most dramatic animals in this crater, the bull elephant with the huge tusks.

He was point-blank, coming out of the marsh.

There's nothing that you could get that's more exciting than that, and I think we executed.

One of the things that's really enjoyable and rewarding about photography is capturing a tiny moment in someone's life-a little slice of life, a vignette that is a meaningful life moment for that animal or bird.

Will this gazelle survive the chase or be eaten?

Will the cheetah miss the kill and risk starvation, or will she provide for her cubs and have them live to see another day?

That's a life moment.

So they've decided-the females have-that he's done.

I'm not sure he's decided he's done.

We'll see, yeah.

[lion growling] [camera shutter firing rapidly] He's saying, "I will tell you when I'm done."

♪ [lions growling] So that was intense.

The male left, and that meant that those hungry females could come in.

And they're not really happy with each other.

And I think this is the dominant female.

She's gonna eat her share.

♪ Just as important to me is capturing the human condition.

It's the fabric of life- the things that we have in common with the natural world that bind our fates together.

It's love, play, humor, courtship, conflict, it's everything.

♪ Conflict-an opposing action of incompatibles.

A fight, a battle, a war.

Conflict can be over food, protecting a territory, a mate, or a family.

Being in position with the equipment and the skill to capture moments of wildlife action is a high goal in nature photography.

♪ Courtship and mating displays are among the most dramatic events in nature.

Being in the right place at the right moment is the key to successfully capturing the story.

Listen to the male kori bustard call for a mate.

[kori bustard mating call] Birds can have stunning courtship displays.

Crowned Cranes pair for life.

This Striped Kingfisher offers his mate a delicacy while bachelor flamingoes dance in groups to attract females.

♪ Lions have a complex courtship that lasts a week as they ignore all else.

♪ [lions growling] ♪ Birth.

Beginnings.

Starting a family.

These powerful feelings captured in a photo will resonate and share with viewers each new life's story.

♪ A mother elephant brings her new baby out from the protection of the marsh for the first time.

♪ She looks to see if there is danger nearby.

A younger female leads the way with the baby safe between the two.

The baby has trouble getting through one of the deeper pools and reaches for the mother's trunk for support.

Watch as she pushes away the aunt's attempt at embrace.

♪ A new family-a lioness with two cubs out for the first walk of their young lives.

♪ The mother takes them to the edge of the clearing, and when the grass becomes too deep, she gently takes each in her powerful jaws and returns them to the safety of the den.

♪ ♪ Babies grow, and through play, with parents' guidance and protection, become part of the family, the herd, the pack, the pride.

♪ Young lions spar with each other and play-fight with mom, practicing the techniques that will make them successful hunters.

♪ This cub is surely living out a kill, with the lioness playing the buffalo.

A male lion's role in the pride is to protect them.

They rest in the bush until they're needed.

When the females go out to hunt, the males join the pride till the hunters return.

No one told them they should be happy about it.

♪ Cubs grow, and play becomes training.

Each cub learns what it takes to provide food for themselves and family.

♪ Cubs grow to adulthood and have their own families to feed.

The training days have made them superb hunters.

Lions use sight, speed, ambush, and often cooperative hunting.

Leopards have keen sight and are masters of ambush.

Predators have extraordinary eyesight and can see prospective prey miles away.

Cheetahs rely completely on sight and speed for their hunting success.

Understanding each animal's hunting techniques allows for greater chances of capturing the decisive moment in a photograph.

Interestingly, the wildebeest seems so close to the cheetah.

They want to see the cat and know where the danger is coming from.

Serval cats have well adapted ears that allow them to hear their prey in the tall grass.

A well-timed series of pounces are all they need to secure a meal.

♪ Defending your hard-earned prey is crucial.

Losing it to another predator or scavengers after expending so much energy hunting is a life-threatening ordeal.

Cheetahs are fast but lack the size and power to compete with bigger cats and hyenas.

They make their kills on the open plains and have a better chance to see if there are lions or hyenas in the area before they hunt.

♪ Knowing that cheetahs must have a successful hunt every day or two can put a dedicated photographer in a good position to catch the action.

♪ Leopards bring their prey up a tree to avoid lions and hyenas.

Their powerful jaws, shoulders, and legs allow them to carry prey twice their weight up a tree.

They can eat in peace, quiet, and safety for up to a week on one kill.

I'm gonna tell you a leopard's tale.

The mother leopard had just brought a reedbuck kill up a giant fig tree, and her two cubs were just old enough to go down on the ground by themselves.

While they're down, you could hear a hyena coming in.

It was a big hyena.

You could hear the sounds, and the mother was up there going crazy.

The cubs were gonna be killed.

Instead, she picks up the kill and drops the reedbuck right in front of the hyena, who picks it up, runs away, and the leopard cubs go right up the tree, and the mom just started yelling at them.

It was amazing.

Lions are at the top of the food chain.

They don't really worry about other predators taking their food.

[lions growling] Feeding can be intense as everyone tries to get their share before the food is gone.

When lions are done eating, there's a variety of scavengers who move in to clean up.

Usually vultures are the first to fly in and soon joined by the jackals and hyenas.

These hyenas have made a kill of their own and are nervously looking for scavenging lions.

Here we see a male lion finishing at a buffalo kill.

The pride has left and his brother just walked into the marsh.

He's not that hungry any more.

You can see his full belly.

He's still not ready to give his kill to the waiting vultures.

♪ As they move in, the lion charges again and again until he tires of the game and joins his brother in the marsh.

That's when the next battle begins.

Silver-backed jackals trod in to get their share, diving and jumping at the competing vultures.

This story goes on.

East Africa is where you can truly photograph the entire tapestry of life in the wild.

To the Ends of the Earth's single most important goal is to continue and expand conservation efforts that will protect vanishing habitat and wildlife for generations to come.

Commonalities are intriguing.

We all go through the physical process of living our lives.

We eat, drink, walk, run, in our own unique ways.

The adaptations of different species are fascinating.

♪ An elephant's trunk has over 40,000 muscles in it.

Watch as this elephant uses his trunk to carefully clean mud off the grass roots.

♪ Sharp acacia thorns-no problem.

♪ Lions can actually be delicate with their dinner.

♪ A giraffe's tongue can be as long as twenty inches, and their amazing neck has only seven vertebrae- the same number as humans'.

♪ Does one drink from a puddle, or drink in the pond?

♪ Gerenuk don't drink water at all.

They've adapted to their arid environment and get all of their water from fresh leaves.

♪ Everyone gets from here to there one way or another.

Some walk, some glide, slither, or fly.

Again, it's the differences in stride, gait, speed that make it all so interesting.

♪ Translating the action of a moving animal to a still image is a challenge.

When it's done properly, the speed, power, and momentum of the subject comes to life.

♪ Still images from a continuous rapid burst can reflect a unique story of movement.

This cheetah's burst of speed chasing a gazelle at 70 miles an hour was photographed at 12 frames per second.

The resulting combination brilliantly reflects its speed.

Taking photographs at high speed can freeze action and present to the viewer a feeling of suspended time, while an image shot at a slow shutter speed will convey a blurred, silky feeling image in motion.

♪ Sometimes a photographic situation is cute, funny, or just makes you smile.

♪ With the limitless photo subjects in East Africa, what kind of photograph resonates with viewers?

Some people might like a portrait.

I love primate portraits, man!

Chimpanzee.

Yellow Baboon.

Vervet Monkey.

Colobus monkey.

Any number of those.

Just, if you line up primate portraits, I like that.

You can do that with cats.

You can have a theme with antelope.

Some people like action.

I'm not taking it unless the bird's flying and I'm not gonna take it unless it's eating something.

And so there are fewer pictures in that portfolio, but the ones that are there are dramatic if they're captured well.

And van position is crucial to all that.

You want to be in the best position as far as the light and the subject and the background, and then have the behavior happen right in front of you.

This is an important distinction that inexperienced or new nature photographers, especially in Africa, sort of miss.

They get subject-driven.

They say, "I am going to shoot Africa, "and Africa consists of giraffes.

"There's a giraffe."

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch.

And so you're shooting that subject.

And you may have captured that subject well, and then there's another subject-there's an elephant.

"I hear there are elephants here-this is important."

So ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch.

And they've got a picture of an elephant.

Now that's totally subject-driven.

What I look at as situational photography is more important-what is that giraffe doing?

There are m-, there are many giraffes around.

Are these giraffe in the trees and their necks are sticking awkwardly and being bisected by the skyline and, you know, are, is it a messy situation?

That would be a picture of that subject, a giraffe, done.

If you have that subject in a meadow where the grass is this long and it's just jade green or sort of an amber, and you have hills behind them and clouds above, and that situation, add some golden light from the late afternoon sun, and that's a situation where that subject looks amazing and it's riveting-and that's when I get excited.

Sometimes a simple portrait or photograph of a group of animals can convey a message.

A portrait should be more than a close-up head shot.

A group photo should illustrate more than lots of feathers or a pile of fur.

If a single image can illustrate power, grace, wisdom, vulnerability, sorrow, or joy, it has achieved a lofty goal.

Here's our chance to give wildlife a curtain call through deceptively simple portraiture.

♪ Elephants share news with the most delicate touching and intertwining of their trunks.

African hunting dogs bound and play until an unseen message signals the hunt.

A lion's powerful roar calls the pride.

[lion roaring] A cheetah uses all of his senses to find his brother after a nocturnal hyena ambush.

He smells, marks, finds a high vantage point from which to search.

[cheetah chirping] His plaintive calls and chirps are finally answered and the brothers reconnect.

What is the importance of communication to the survival of the family, the pack, the pride, the herd that has allowed them to survive for millennia?

How vital is it for us to relearn those communication skills and have the human species reconnect with the natural world for the survival of all?

JANE: And think how these wild creatures have so much in common with each other and with us.

Through Todd's lens we see a vanishing natural world.

We can see a world we have the power to protect.

If we of all creatures can best understand the consequences and plan far ahead, then let us do so.

TODD: I choose to use my photography to stand with nature, our delicate planet, and the wildlife that are shown in this documentary.

JANE: "To the Ends of the Earth" is sharing the earth's beauty to illustrate exactly what is at stake.

Imagine a world without elephants, lions, giraffes-and those are just the obvious animals at risk.

Collectively, these images explore different aspects of the animals' behavior-a visual commentary on what it means to be born free into the last wild places.

♪