Paul Nicklen
Paul Nicklen is a photographer, filmmaker, and marine biologist whose work defends the natural world with reverence and urgency. From the deep blue to the Savannah, his imagery transforms awe into action—using storytelling to inspire protection of life on Earth.
Reverent Witness
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Raised on Ice
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Wild
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Reverent Witness • Raised on Ice • Wild •
More about Paul
Paul Nicklen is a Canadian photographer, filmmaker, and marine biologist working at the intersection of art, science, and conservation. For more than three decades, he has documented Earth’s wildest and most fragile places—creating intimate, arresting images that stir emotion and demand urgency.
Renowned for both beauty and technical mastery, Nicklen’s work transports audiences onto polar ice, into remote coastal communities, and beneath the ocean’s surface. His photographs have been exhibited across five continents and collected by cultural leaders, heads of state, and royalty.
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His impact has earned the field’s highest honors. In 2025, Nicklen and his partner Cristina Mittermeier shared a National News & Documentary Emmy Award for Photographer, directed by Academy Award winners Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi. Over his career, he has received more than 30 major distinctions, including Wildlife Photographer of the Year and World Press Photo Award for Photojournalism. He was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame as its youngest living member, holds honorary doctorates, and is a member of the Order of Canada.
A Sony Artisan of Imagery and Rolex Perpetual Planet Explorer, Nicklen believes images and the stories they call can spark movements. In 2014, he co-founded SeaLegacy, using powerful ocean storytelling to ignite protection. For Nicklen, accolades are just mile markers—each in service of a single pursuit: inspiring humanity to act and safeguard life on Earth for generations to come.
Speaking Topics
Science
Exploration
Nature
Conservation
Navigating the Future
Resilience
Watch Paul in action
Presentations
Hope & Reverence
For fifteen years, Cristina Mittermeier and Paul Nicklen have followed a single thread: bearing witness tothe wild places that hold our planet together, and to the creatures and people who depend on them.That thread has carried them beneath the polar ice and into the open ocean. Now it carries them toAfrica. For the first time, the two National Geographic photographers and SeaLegacy co-founders sharea stage together, bringing the same eye they have trained on whales and ice to the elephants, the greatcats, and the migrations of the African wild.Hope and Reverenceis not a new direction. It is the nextplace a lifetime of looking has led them, and proof that the work of protecting one wild place is the workof protecting them all.
“We’re trying to climb to the tallest mountain and scream that this planet is dying and that WE are at risk. But the only emotion greater than fear is hope.”
– Paul nicklen