It was -30°F but Daniel D'Auria, MD, lay on the ice, focused on the Arctic fox trotting towards him.
The creature had a caribou shoulder in its mouth, likely scavenged from a kill made by wolves.
"I knew the best photo would be taken eye level with the fox," D'Auria told MedPage Today, recalling his experience in Wapusk National Park, which sits on the western shore of the Hudson Bay in Canada's Manitoba province.
D'Auria and a small group of photographers waited for the fox to run away, but it kept coming towards them.
"It stopped, hesitantly, a few times, then continued, eventually stopping about 80 feet away," he said. Even then, it continued on, directly toward their small group. In one image, the fox stares directly into D'Auria's lens.
"We created an opening between the few of us, and it passed right by us," he added.
The latter image was selected as "highly honored" in the 2018 Windland Smith Rice Awards from Nature's Best Photography magazine and was displayed in the Smithsonian for a year. It also fed D'Auria's passion for wildlife photography -- a hobby he's mastered since it was borne of burnout more than a decade ago. His experience can inspire other healthcare professionals looking to fight burnout, especially as they battle yet another surge of COVID-19.
An Epiphany
About 12 years ago, stressed out by the grind of his private gastroenterology practice, D'Auria decided that he "needed to get back outdoors more than I had been."
He'd dabbled in photography in high school and college and enjoyed it, but it had gotten away from him as life got busy with a family and a career.
So he signed up for a wildlife and nature photography workshop in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, run by photographer Richard Clarkson.
"For me, it was an epiphany," D'Auria said. "I saw Jackson Hole and the surrounding Tetons for the first time and I was completely awed."
He went back to Clarkson's Summit Workshops in Jackson Hole 3 years in a row -- he called it his "most inspirational week of the year" -- and each time he'd purchase better equipment and "immerse myself in it."
"I needed to get out and see what I'd missed through a lot of my life," he added.
He continued to sign up for workshops during his time off, learning from photography greats including Tom Mangelsen, Bill Allard, Dave Black, and Jodi Cobb. He even connected with them outside of the workshops, traveling privately with and learning from, for instance, Scott Frier, who was Jacques Cousteau's chief photographer in the early 1980s.
He'd also practice close to home, in his backyard in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, and in local wildlife refuges like Holgate Beach on the southern end of Long Beach Island.
"It isn't as much about the photography as it is about experiencing nature," he said. "It's about getting to see some of the things I grew up watching on TV, seeing them first-hand, getting to observe the animals."
In Nature
D'Auria's hobby has enabled him to observe and better understand wild animals in their native habitats all over the world. His Instagram feed and website are full of stunning images of polar bears, puffins, brown bears, bald eagles, moose, and other species -- often caught at just the right moment.
"When you see the animal doing something spectacular in its own environment, that's the best photo in my mind," D'Auria said.
Like the brown bear with fresh catch. Or the polar bear and her cub in the middle of playtime. Or the shot of a bluebird feeding its young, which he took in his backyard.
Getting the shot can be an adventure in itself, often requiring being outside in cold temperatures for long periods of time, or extra travel time and knowledge of local tides to get to remote locations.
For instance, one of his favorite locations for brown bears -- Silver Salmon Creek Lodge in Tyonek, Alaska -- involves flying in a small plane that can land on remote beaches during low tide.
It also takes patience to get the right shot, but that allows for time to get to know the animal better. When a snowy owl turned up on Holgate Beach in New Jersey a few winters ago, D'Auria spent the whole day with the Arctic visitor.
"I lay on the beach for hours," D'Auria wrote in his Instagram post of the bird. "If the bird slept, so did I. It only moved 2 or 3 times over an 8-hour period and my Arctic gear came in handy."
Consistent Empathy
Photography is an expensive hobby. Camera gear and trips are pricey, especially when using the top-of-the-line models. D'Auria shoots with a Canon EOS R5, which uses the latest "mirrorless" technology, and a 600-mm lens with an adapter than can double its zoom.
Yet it has paid off in other ways. In addition to the Smithsonian honor, D'Auria had a highly honored photo in the 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science and National Wildlife Federation photo contest. In that image, a herd of woodland caribou at Wapusk National Park in Manitoba stare directly into the camera, begging the question of what the animals see.
"I believe that a good wildlife image should tell a story. It should arouse emotion, and create a desire to know, see and understand more about the subject," he wrote in an Instagram post. "It should demand awe."
Sharing his experiences with nature through his images is another benefit. In addition to Instagram, D'Auria authored a series of children's books under his imprint Dr. DAD Books, which he sells through his website.
Perhaps most rewarding is the connection he's kindled with the animals themselves. If D'Auria encounters an injured animal, he'll nurse it back to health, or call on networks that can help. In one post, he held in his palm a wild house finch that had eye disease. "It's easy to treat if you can capture the bird," he wrote, "but most folks don't bother."
Those interactions with wildlife have led him to conclusions about human nature, too.
"Everything that humans do, you can see mirrored in animals in many ways, in basic forms," he said. "The only thing that separates us from animals, consistently, is the ability to empathize. The ability to care for another thing -- an animal, a human -- and to do it consistently, we are the only species capable of doing that."