Nature's beauty is a gift that cultivates appreciation and gratitude.
Metamorphosis has always been the greatest symbol of change for poets and artists. Imagine that you could be a caterpillar one moment and a butterfly the next.
I realized that nature had invented reproduction as a mechanism for life to move forward, as a life force that passes right through us and makes us a link in the evolution of life. Rarely seen by the naked eye, this intersection between the animal world and the plant world is truly a magic moment.
Beauty and seduction, I believe, is nature's tool for survival, because we will protect what we fall in love with.
What is the intersection between technology, art and science? Curiosity and wonder, because it drives us to explore, because we're surrounded by things we can't see.
When a dragonfly flutters by, you may not realize, but it's the greatest flier in nature. It can hover, fly backwards, even upside down.
I love all of the ecosystems - mountains, deserts, rainforests. They're beautiful, and nature has so many different flavors to it.
I'm Jewish and respect the traditions of Judaism, but through all the time I've spent photographing nature, I also have a deep appreciation for the power of the universe. No, not the power of the universe, but just celebrating life.
With high-speed cameras, we can do the opposite of time lapse. We can shoot images that are thousands of times faster than our vision. And we can see how nature's ingenious devices work, and perhaps we can even imitate them.
A third of our food comes from pollinating plants.
The sound of a million butterflies flapping their wings is indescribable. It's very heavenly.
I think we need to do some deep soul searching about what's important in our lives and renew our spirit and our spiritual thinking, whether it's through faith-based religion or just through loving nature or helping your fellow man.
I like to do films that celebrate life.
I became passionate about nature filmmaking when I graduated from UCLA, and one of the things I always wanted to do was shoot really high quality film, so I got into time-lapse photography - so that means when you shoot a flower, you're shooting, like, one frame every twenty minutes, so that's basically two seconds of a film per day.
I want viewers to see that everything is connected, even the little guys like pollinators and flowers.
When I heard that the bees were in trouble, the fact that they're disappearing and not coming back to the hive, which is a big issue, since a third of the food we eat comes from plants, I figured you couldn't tell the story of the bees without the story of the flowers and how they basically have evolved together for over 150 years.
Basically, the intersection between the animal world and the plant world is where life regenerates itself over and over, billions of times each day. It's the foundation of life on our planet.
I grew up in Brooklyn, and my parents were Holocaust survivors, so they never taught me anything about nature, but they taught me a lot about gratitude.
What I want to do with my filmmaking is help kids experience the truth and wisdom of nature no matter where they are, whether or not they have the opportunity to go to a national park.
We're giants, and we're unaware of things that are too small for us to see.
