I’m a little late with this, but it’s still worth posting. This Sunday, August 8th at 3-5pm will be a wildlife photo exhibit and documentary by daredevil documentarist Choi, Ki-Soon from South Korea. The even will be held at 272 Liberty Street Gallery. They will be serving tea, and this event is free but will be accepting donations.
Ki-Soon Choi films and photographs endangered animals in the Siberian wild. He not only shoots wild animals, he lives with them. To film the nearly extinct Amur leopard, once native to South Korea, he built a “tree tent”, wired motion sensors up to his tent, then sat back in the cool night, which sometimes reaches down to negative 20 degrees, and waited for one of only 30 Amur leopards left in existence to cross the path of his camera.
Though Ki-Soon shoots wildcats from as close as 7 feet, wildcats who are sometimes not happy to encounter him and his lights during their night prowls, working with wild tigers was not the first time Ki-Soon looked death in the eye. While filming a trekking expedition through the South Pole in the winter of 1996-97, Ki-Soon was left behind by his group in the whirling of a snow storm. He managed to pitch a tent in the blinding white storm, and he lay down to die. Two hours later he got up, walked directionless through the storm for 12 more hours, perhaps in circles, and miraculously reunited with two of the members of his group. On that day he promised himself two things; to only work with animals in the future, and to never be scared of dying.
