My name is Jonathan Kingston. I'm a photographer for the National Geographic Image Collection. I do a lot of contract work for National Geographic. I also work for their expeditions arm leading tours all over the world. So the National Geographic Image Collection is a group of photographers who've all worked for National Geographic Magazine. And it's an in-house agency that represents those photographers. And they find them assignment work. They represent their stock archive. My dad's a very famous guy. He's an organic chemist. He immigrated from London. And it was educated at Cambridge, went to MIT. And it was long story short, Dad helped invent a drug called Taxol. It's taken from the U-Tree, and it's the first line defense for breast and ovarian cancer. And mom is an analytical chemist. So dad's an organic chemist, mom's an analytical chemist. And mom helped invent the magenta dye that's used in polaroids. So obviously there are no expectations in my family of being a scientist. Well, in school I never did very well. And I actually I really struggled in high school. And that's where I discovered photography. There's a vocational program in my high school. And there's a great photo teacher. I learned about focal lengths and lenses and apertures and shutter speeds and all that good stuff. And I entered some contest. And right away almost every contest I entered I won. So I came home from high school one day and I said, Dad, I figured it out. I know what I want to do with my life. I want to be a professional photographer. And so dad has a bow tie on. British accent. He has the jacket with the tweed jacket with the leather classic professor. He's sitting at the table in his face just falls and he says, Jonathan, that's not a good idea. And so we went back and forth and back and forth for months. And eventually sort of reached this detente. Dad said, get a degree in anything. I don't care what it's in as long as it's not photography. And if you still want to pursue photography, then you have my blessing because I know you'll have some other skills that you know are serviceable skills that you can make a living. And I get it. I'm a new dad. I have 10 month old daughter at home. In 2016 if I remember correctly is when the fine art galleries were started. And National Geographic Image Collection contacted me and asked me if I'd like to be part of the galleries. And I said, absolutely, I'd be honored to be part of the galleries. And so they opened up submissions. That was right about the time that I had taken the heartwave shot. I think the heartwave shot was actually maybe a year before that. The heartwave I've probably taken 20,000 images at that specific spot on the island of Mollokai. It's an incredible beach. It's this two mile long white sand beach that's west facing. And right at one of the ends, it turns a 90 degree corner. And whenever there's a big storm up in the barring sea and there's big swell coming down from the north, all the sand washes away at this corner. And it turns to a slope where the wave will wash up on the slope. And then it'll wash back down at a high velocity and meet the incoming waves. And so you have these two waves meeting each other. And as they collide, these incredible explosions of water happen. And it's particularly at sunset. Two waves colliding, the sun's right behind it. It's just this luminous light coming through the water. And that's what keeps me coming back to that spot. I'm often there during storm season in the spring. And the light's great. It's a predictable, repeatable miracle. The heartwave itself is something I could have never predicted. I mean, I really kind of do feel like it is a miracle in a way. That this ricocheting wave turned into the perfect shape of a heart from the angle that I was taking a picture of it from. The swimming elephant. This is, I mean, one of my favorite shots that I've taken in my life. And I don't know if it's my favorite because it was the most work I've ever put into a shot as far as time. It took two years to get the shot or just kind of the ethereal feel of it. But it really holds a special place in my heart. So I'd been, I was a newly minted graduate of Brooks Institute of Photography. This is back in 2002. And my very first job right out of Brooks Institute of Photography was to teach at a photo school in South India. Well, one night I got back from teaching at the college. And I believe it was Discovery Channel was playing an old Jacques Cousteau special. And the title of that was, the Andaman Islands, Invisible Islands. And in that special Jacques Cousteau talks about these elephants that were brought to the Andaman Islands. And it was discovered that they would swim between the different islands and the archipelago. Some islands had female elephants, some islands had male elephants. And when the elephants went into must, they would swim from one island to the other, have a little fun with the ladies and then swim back to the island where their moutts were, where their caretakers were. And when I watched that special, I instantly, in my head, I could see the shot that's behind me, the shot of the swimming elephant. I could see it so clearly. It was, you know, they say lightning bolt or whatever. But that was one of those lightning bolt moments for me. The Anaman's is, for one, it's an Indian naval base. So as an American, you can get there, but you got to get special permission. You can only be in for a limited number of days. And two, because the elephants are considered government employees, to do anything like I was thinking of doing, I needed to get permission from the ministry and charge of the elephants. And that's the Ministry of Environment and Forest. I got permission. I take a train from Uttakamund, which is in the western Gott Mountains, down to Chennai. I get on the airplane in Chennai and I'm so excited. I'm in my 20s. I'm on this airplane to the Anaman Islands. And I get upgraded to first class. So I'm sitting up in the first class cabin. I'm looking out the window and I'm just thinking about this shot in my head. And one of the flight attendants gives me a newspaper, the Port Blair Times, that's the capital city of the Anaman Islands. And I open it up and it says Chief Minister of Environment and Forests indicted for corruption and jailed. And I felt like someone had just punched me in the stomach. Like I just knew that I knew that permission was off. I knew the shoot was off. So this is right at the end of my first year in India. And I'd only signed a one year contract to teach at this school. So I re-up my contract. I end up at a, I'm not going to say the name of the island because I don't want a ton of people going out to this island. But there are two elephants living on this island. And one side of the island was very, very shallow. And one side had the Bethemmishry fell off very steeply from very shallow to very deep. And so I started in the morning on one side of the island with the elephant swimming a shot, six rolls of black and white film. And they don't swim for long. They're out there for 10 or 20 minutes. And we take the boat to the other side of the island and have two rolls of color film. And I'm waiting in the boat and the Mahoot kind of waves at us and says, okay, I'm going to start the daily bathing ritual. And he swims the elephant out and I splash into the water. And I took all 36 frames and blew through the whole roll. And this was, this was the only shot on the roll that was, was a good shot. All the other shots didn't work. You could either look like the elephant had one leg or no tusks or no trunk or no ears. You know, you couldn't really see the shape very well. But this all lined up perfectly. You can see the legs. You can see the trunk. You can see the tusks. And he's, again, only swim for five or ten minutes and went back to his village. And that was that. So that's a story of that shot. I heard a lot of stories when I lived in India about Mahoot's. And this is a story that's repeated over and over in different elephant camps. And this would go out and they'd get just slam-faced drunk, just passed out drunk, falling down in the path. And their elephant will come and very gently pick them up in their trunks and walk them back to their huts and put them down on the front stoop of their huts. When I'm really in the moment in photography and I'm telling a story, there is no other world around me. It's only that moment. It's only that story. It's only that obsession. It's that joy. It's like I'm pressing the shutter and I just feel a tingle go up my arm into my brain. And I'm just on fire. I don't know. It's hard to put it in the words. One of my friends, Duwit Jones, has this great saying. And it's to celebrate what's right with the world. It's not that much bad crap going on all the time around us. And his choice, and as much as I can, my choice is to celebrate the good things that are happening in the world. And that's not all the time, but that's as much as I can.