Photography On The Wild Side

Story by Elizabeth Piseczny
Photos courtesy of Gerry Lemmo

As a wildlife photographer, Gerry Lemmo has traveled across the world to six continents, been featured in national, international and regional publications, and has experienced heart-thumping encounters with dangerously curious polar bears. He has been able to photograph kangaroos in Australia and ring-tailed lemurs in Madagascar, yet he chooses to live with his wife of sixteen years, Lynne, right here in the Adirondack Mountains. Lemmo's lifelong love affair with wildlife makes the Adirondacks, home to a diverse array of species, a great place to live and work. Not only does he get to experience the beauty of the Adirondacks, and many other exotic locales, but he captures it on film and shares it with the world.

Lemmo was led to an eventual career in photography because as teen, he "was pretty serious about insect study," he says. "I belonged to an insect study group which met in Manhattan, at the American Museum of Natural History… So, that led to me eventually capturing them and putting them into collections."

However, his love and interest for animals eventually brought him to the conclusion that they were better left alive. "Into my later teens, I thought that I didn’t want to kill things and put them on pins. I was thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to capture them somehow and then let them go again?’ And the best way to do that is to take pictures of them."

With this realization, Lemmo continued his hobby by photographing insects with a simple point-and-shoot camera. Even though he had no training in photography,  he says, "I realized I needed something a little bit better than that and eventually got away from killing and mounting insects, but rather just photographing them and having them for posterity on film. I could not only enjoy looking at them in life the way they’re supposed to be seen, but also share those pictures with others and teach them about them. And I still do that today."

"I was thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to capture them somehow and then let them go again?’ And the best way to do that is to take pictures of them."

Eventually, Lemmo branched out from bugs and began photographing natural scenery and a variety of wildlife, as well as doing wedding photography.  An integral part of Lemmo’s life and work, Lynne says, "I really wasn’t a photographer at all before I met Gerry. Nine months into our relationship, I went to a wedding with him and started helping him."  Since then, Lemmo claims that his wife has developed as much of an eye and a talent for photography as he has.

Throughout his career, Lemmo has worked for agencies like the National Geographic Society and has had his pictures featured on covers of local magazines like Adirondack Life. Elizabeth Folwell, the creative director at Adirondack Life, has known Lemmo for fifteen years. "He’s a very generous guy. A nice person, very approachable," she says. "He doesn’t have a lot of ego involved in working with him. He’s very flexible. Some photographers are very demanding, and I would say Gerry is very low key."

Working with wildlife isn‘t always glamorous; it’s hard work. "He’s really dedicated to his subject. In the wintertime, he often uses a blind and he’ll stay outside for hours waiting for birds or animals," Folwell says.

Photographing wild animals can be difficult because they’re unpredictable. His subjects don’t necessarily care if he’s getting the perfect shot, or any shot at all, but Lemmo persists. "I’ve sat in a blind twelve hours waiting for things," he says. 

Gerry and Lynne are both so involved in wildlife photography that when they tell a story, it’s more like they’re privately reminiscing about the memory, often laughing about the events.

"She sat in the car last spring, at one place we went down to along the Hudson River." Lemmo says, recounting the day he waited in a blind for twelve hours. "I set up a blind to photograph a particular kind of duck, which never showed up in front of the blind. Neither did anything else for the whole day."

"I was in the car and I saw more than he saw from the blind!" Lynne says, laughing. Gerry still has the list of two dozen different species, including a mink, muskrat, hawks and woodpecker.

Although a blind keeps animals from seeing the photographer, it sometimes works the other way. "When you’re in blind, you only have a certain amount of view," Lynne explains. "You’re limited against your mobility."

"The polar bear trip was our honeymoon."

Lemmo has also had several encounters in the wild that have gotten his pulse racing. The photographer and his wife had one particularly memorable meeting with a polar bear during a trip to Manitoba.

"The polar bear trip was our honeymoon. I wanted to go to Aruba or an island and he said, ‘No, we’re going to see polar bears," Lynne recalls. "When we were on our honeymoon to see the polar bears, we were in a small bus, Gerry, myself and the bus driver. Gerry went out to photograph the arctic fox."

"After I asked first ‘Is it all right to go out?’ He‘s a local fellow who operates these tours," Gerry adds, before asking Lynne to continue the story. As Lynne picks up where she left off, she says, "Well, he went out on the snow and photographed it. As he was coming back in, he noticed a polar bear at the end of the bus!  He jumped in, and he yelled to the driver, Rob, "Shut the door!’ And before you knew it, the bear was right at the door!"

Gerry jumps back in. "His nose was in the door… the grating on the door."

"We actually have a picture of that, with his nose in the door right afterward," Lynne says, thinking back on the day.

Great wildlife photography relies not only on the subjects, but also the skill of the photographer. With the advent of the digital camera, Lemmo believes that almost anyone can go out and take a great picture. But Lemmo likes to stick with the technique he’s worked on mastering since a child. "I don’t do digital. I never have." Lemmo’s mastery of manual photography helps him to showcase his talent. Although he says he’s never liked dealing with chemicals, he still prefers to work with the cameras he’s owned since the 1970’s. Now, with traditional photography fading, he just sends his film out for development. Working this way means he doesn’t have the ability to tinker with them on Photoshop, making his work all the more awe-inspiring.

The use of a manual camera makes it a little more difficult to get the exact shot a magazine may be looking for. Lemmo uses Canon equipment, but says he didn’t own an auto focus camera until 2002. Photographing wildlife for him is like "shooting like a marksman, a sharp shooter." Because he uses film, not digital images, he tries to compose every image perfectly, waiting for the right moment.

"I have the eye, though. I have the artistic eye."

"Don’t get me wrong. I miss a lot of pictures because I’m slow and I’m waiting for just the right pose and just the right position of something. I might be waiting and I see a great shot. Before long, I hit the shutter and I miss it because it turns its head or… it’s gone. Whereas somebody standing next to me, in the same five seconds that I’ve had to take one picture, may have taken fifty shots."

Even though he doesn’t use up-to-date technology, he says, "I have the eye, though. I have the artistic eye." 

This knack for knowing exactly when to snap a photo, along with his knowledge of the subject matter, is essential because, "wildlife subjects often don’t pose for you. One second, they’ll be in a beautiful spot and just as you’re about to photograph them, they’ll go to some other branch… and it doesn’t look nearly as pretty as it did five seconds earlier."

Getting pretty pictures doesn’t seem to be a problem for an experienced photographer like Lemmo. Folwell remembers one photograph in particular. "Some years ago, he had a photograph of deer. White tailed deer, big deal, right? And among the deer was an albino… They’re like a pinto horse, they’re pretty rare. Here in this group of ordinary deer was this deer, and it was pretty stunning. I think for our readers, especially, it was like, Oh my god, deer do have this quality occasionally." 

Lemmo’s success isn’t just a result of knowing how to use a camera. Lemmo’s passion to learn about all things natural influenced him to be a photographer, and he says this knowledge is indispensable in order to be successful as a wildlife photographer.   "My number one thing is learn about your subjects before you step out into the field," he says.

He possesses the "ability to get gorgeous pictures of wildlife because he knows so much about wildlife in the first place." Folwell says, explaining his success. "You can’t just expect luck to be on your side."

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