Mattias Klum makes a living by shooting photographs of some of the world's most endangered species and places.
A photographer for National Geographic, Klum might be considered an endangered species himself, given his recent work shooting closes ups of the venomous Chinese cobra, which can shoot its venom up to nearly 7 feet. Even a drop of that venom can blind you.
But there he sat....shooting away....nonetheless.
Mattias Klum was in town speaking at the Kauffman Center on Monday, and he stopped by the Up to Date studios to speak with Steve Kraske. The interview airs Thursday on the program.
Mattias Klum was born in Uppsala, Sweden in 1968 and started taking pictures in his teens. He has worked full-time as a freelance photographer since 1986, and as a cinematographer and director on numerous film and television projects since 1994. In an artistic way that is entirely his own, Klum describes and portrays animals, plants, and natural and cultural settings in the form of articles, books, films, lectures and exhibitions. Klum’s film creditsinclude: Borneo’s Rainforest and The Brittle Thread, a documentary about Asia’s last lions, produced with his wife and colleague Monika Klum; Searching for the Giant Sea Eagle, a Wild Chronicles segment for National Geographic Channel; and The Linnaeus Expedition and the political documentary For Cod’s Sake, both co-produced with Folke Rydén. He released two new films in 2011: The Testament of Tebaran, a Penan elder’s plea to end deforestation in Borneo, and The Coral Eden, a film about biodiversity from one of the Earth’s last untouched coral reef havens. Klum is now at work on a new feature length documentary about the Baltic Sea Environment.
