AT A GLANCE
- Known for
- Camera-trap pictures of big cats: snow leopards in Ladakh, the cougar P-22 under the Hollywood sign, tigers and jaguars
- Works in
- Color, digital
- Camera
- Canon, Nikon, Sony and RED; remote camera traps with infrared beams and flash
- Also
- National Geographic photographer since 1991; works with his wife, journalist Sharon Guynup
- Start with
- Tigers Forever: Saving the World's Most Endangered Big Cat (National Geographic, 2013)
- Links
Steve Winter (born c. 1956) is an American wildlife photographer who has worked for National Geographic since 1991. He is best known for his pictures of big cats, many made with camera traps he sets up like a studio in the wild. His work with journalist Sharon Guynup has helped change laws and protect animals.
The story
In the winter of 2007, Steve Winter set up camp in Hemis National Park, high in the Indian Himalayas. At night it was 30 to 40 below zero. Each day he climbed to 15,000 feet or more to place remote cameras. “I knew beyond doubt that I would probably never see a snow leopard,” he said.
Animals were not part of the plan. He grew up south of Fort Wayne, Indiana. His father gave him his first camera when he was seven, and at eight he decided to become a National Geographic photographer. But the dream was about people and faraway places. He covered Mexico, Haiti and a coup for Time. Then, in 1992, a corporate job took him into a Costa Rican rainforest for the first time. He knew nothing about that world, so he went out with the scientists who did. That trip turned his work toward nature and conservation.
So in Ladakh he did what he had learned to do. He asked local people. Tashi Tundup, who had worked on a snow leopard project in Hemis, showed him 13 places where the cats marked their territory. Winter chose seven for his cameras. He set each one at the cat's eye level, with the infrared beam where he wanted the animal in the frame. As it turned out, he saw two snow leopards in the first 24 hours. But the pictures came from the traps. His snow leopard in a snowstorm was named the overall winner of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2008.
In 2012, in Los Angeles, he told biologist Jeff Sikich that a mountain lion under the Hollywood sign would really tell the story of urban wildlife. Sikich looked at him like he was crazy. Eight months later he texted: a mountain lion was living in Griffith Park. Winter worked with camera traps there for 15 months. The cat, P-22, walked past at night, and a four-second exposure brought up the sign. Winter did not like the light, so he changed it. Twenty-eight days later P-22 walked by again. The picture ran in December 2013.
The cat became a star. The city named a P-22 Day, and the photo helped inspire a huge wildlife bridge over Highway 101. “So I had an incredible attachment to a cat I never saw but I saw him all the time in this photograph,” he said.
The work
- c. 1956Born in Indiana; grows up south of Fort Wayne
- 1991Starts working for National Geographic
- 1992First trip into the rainforest, in Costa Rica; turns to nature
- 1998First National Geographic feature, on the quetzal in Guatemala
- 2008Overall winner, Wildlife Photographer of the Year, for a snow leopard
- 2009First prize, Nature stories, World Press Photo, for snow leopards
- 2013P-22 photo published; book Tigers Forever
- 2019Story on captive tigers in the U.S., with Sharon Guynup
- 2026Retrospective book Big Cats
Lessons
See the picture first. Winter says it is very important to picture the image in your mind before you set up a camera trap. P-22 under the Hollywood sign was an idea months before the cat arrived.
Ask the people who live there. In Ladakh a local expert showed him where the cats left their marks. He says nothing replaced the knowledge of local people.
Think like a photojournalist. He tells wildlife photographers to learn to photograph people and to look for the moment, not only the face of an animal.
Try this: find one place near home where an animal passes often, like a bird feeder or a path a cat uses. Decide the frame first, with the camera low at the animal's eye level. Then go back many times, or use a remote trigger, until the animal walks into the picture you planned.
Gear
Winter says a camera is like a hammer or a drill: a tool. He has worked with four brands, Canon, Nikon, Sony and RED, and values low-light performance most.
Kodak Instamatic: his first camera, a gift from his father when he was seven.
Canon EOS-1D Mark III: his main camera in 2008, with lenses from 16mm to 1200mm.
Camera traps: a camera, flashes and an infrared beam that fires when an animal walks through. For P-22 he locked the camera in a quarter-inch steel box on posts set in the ground, so visitors could not steal it.
Studio flash: he lights many camera-trap scenes like a film set, using what he learned working in movies and television.
Books
Tigers Forever: Saving the World's Most Endangered Big Cat (National Geographic, 2013). Made with Panthera, the big cat conservation group, and written with Sharon Guynup. It brings together about a decade of Winter's work on tigers across Asia. Readers follow him into the leech-filled jungles of Myanmar, among poachers in Sumatra, and close to a tiger mother and her cub. Next to the beautiful pictures are hard ones: dead tigers, orphaned cubs and a snare set by poachers. Scientific American called it both a call to action and an indictment of human greed. A good book for anyone who loves big cats and wants to see how one long project is built.
Big Cats (National Geographic Books, 2026, due in November). A large retrospective with about 170 photographs and stories by Winter and Sharon Guynup. It has chapters on the cougar, jaguar, leopard, snow leopard, tiger and lion. It also tells how some pictures changed things: P-22 and the wildlife bridge in Los Angeles, the Tiger Temple in Thailand that was closed, and the U.S. law that banned big cats as pets. A wide overview for animal lovers, and a look behind the lens for photographers.
In his words
“In every situation the important thing is to come out with pictures that people have never seen before, and make people ask ‘what?’ ‘why’ or ‘wow’.”
“If you want to be in wildlife photography, know how to photograph people.”
