No one is an environmentalist by birth. It is only your path, your life, your travels that awaken you.

For me, an aerial picture is no different than a close-up portrait. It's a question of framing and angle. Helicopters are great for that. But I've also used planes. Of course, I always have a harness.

I'm not an expert when it comes to technology, but what changed things for me was autofocus. I used to have to throw away half my pictures because it was so difficult to get the focus right.

I wanted to be a scientist. I did a thesis on lions. But I realised photography can show things writing can't. Lions were my professor of photography.

I learned to be a hot-air balloon pilot to take tourists over the Masai Mara Reserve in order to earn some money and finance the work I was doing with my wife, Anne. We were studying the life of a family of lions for more than two years. Taking pictures was a way to capture information we could not put in words.

Will we be able to imagine a new culture of water?

An image of the earth, its landscapes, directly affects people. The beauty of the earth creates enormous emotion, and through that emotion, you can transmit knowledge and raise consciousness