His passion for nature was born from the Florida landscape, where eight generations of family history have grounded his perspective. He sees natural environments and cultural legacies as the earth’s greatest yet most threatened resources. For his first book, The Edge of Africa, Carlton spent eight months in the tropical rain forests of Gabon with the Smithsonian Institution documenting the region’s unseen and undiscovered biological diversity. The photographs were exhibited in Gabon, London and at a United Nations reception in New York. Carlton’s work documenting endangered desert elephants in Mali was on the cover of Smithsonian Magazine and comprised a chapter in the National Geographic book, Great Migrations.