Video: Photographing 12,000 Animals is Hard Work

For the past couple of years, photographer Joel Sartore has been working with Nat Geo on a photo project titled Photo Ark. The goal is to shoot portraits of the world’s 12,000 captive animal species to help stop the extinction crisis, as half the world’s plant and animal species are projected to go extinct by 2100. Sartore has added over 5,000 species to the collection thus far.

The 2-minute video above is a behind-the-scenes look at Sartore’s unpredictable shoots. “Think taking pictures of your pet is hard?,” National Geographic says, “Sartore must wrangle the unruly, distract the curious, and clean up all the unexpected messes that come with photographing wild animals.”