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Community
Call of the wild
Street Paper vendor Bryant Carlin
captures a rapidly changing landscape
BY BRIDGET MOUNTAIN
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
ryant Carlin plans on spending most
of the next two years without a roof
over his head. He’ll be in the Olympic
Mountains. Carlin is a wilderness
photographer, and the pursuit of his craft
sends him to remote places in search of .
captivating images. He also sees it as a
mission; a mission driven by a sense of
obligation to document what he sees,
because he knows it’s not going to be there
forever.
Carlin got his first camera at 15; he’s
been a photographer ever since. His interest
in the wilderness developed later, when he
took summer trips to Florida and to Smoky
Mountain National Park to capture the
changing color of the autumn leaves. That
exposure helped him realize how quickly
things change, and he realized then that
documenting the wilderness was his calling.
Carlin doesn’t have a formal degree in
photography. What he has is a degree in life.
His experiences growing up in the
wilderness of Alabama taught him to capture
B
Bryant Carlin
Last time he was tracking them, the
campground had to shut down for a couple
of days because a cougar was tracking the
elk.
The same storm shut down Seattle, while
film-that-ether people oex?mod4o-- JB rvant was.in the Olympics d o c u m e n tin g
m is s.
He moved to Seattle in 1994, thinking the
city was a gateway to Alaska, where he
wanted to go to become a wilderness
photographer. Instead, he fell in love with
the Pacific Northwest landscape, where the
winters were a lot easier to survive. Having
more natural light to work with at this
latitude than in Alaska’s was also a draw.
For his upcoming assignment, Carlin will
be traversing the Olympic Mountains to be
a research photographer. A big part of what
he will be doing this winter is capturing
sunrises and moonrises when the mountains
and the distant Seattle cityscape light up.
This spring he is going to be in the
Queets Rainforest, when the Roosevelt elk
are giving birth.
During the summer, he’ll be on the
eastern face of the mountains, and will
travel back to the Queets in the fall, when
the bull elk will battle each other for
domination during the rutting season.
“I’U get to know these elk herds very well
because I’ll spend about five months with
them, between the spring and fall,” Carlin
said. In turn, they will start to recognize him
and become more familiar with him. “When
I did my three-month journey, I got to the
point where one herd would let me be
within 20 to 25 yards of them out in the
wild, as long as I didn’t press them,” Carlin
said.
Being able to build that relationship will
help Carlin capture the elk in their habitat
“I want to be able to photograph two or
three cows giving birth,” Carlin said. He
doesn’t just want to capture elk staring at
him and his camera; seeing how they live in
nature is key. “Another thing that happens
when an elk gives birth is that it attracts
cougars,” Carlin recalls from experience.
t h e w in te r.
This will just be one of the many dramas
that Carlin will be documenting over his
25-month expedition. He also wants to find
an active bear den and a fresh cougar kill.
Cougars like fresh meat, so once they are
done with their prey, Carlin wants to be able
to see what other critters the fresh k ill
attracts.
While documenting how and why other
animals congregate, Carlin will be spending
most of his two years in the wild alone, save
for a few supply runs and occasional visitors.
He will leave behind a well-crafted
community.
Carlin is part of an organization called
Conservation Made Simple, a nonprofit that
aims to empower people to acknowledge and
reduce their environmental impact.
Real Change, Street Roots sister paper in
Seattle, helped Carlin get connected; he was
selling the newspaper at his usual spot when
he noticed a young man with a really nice
camera. He struck up a conversation with
him.
“I gave him my contact info and about a
week later he contacted me and we started
an interview process,” Carlin said. “Because
he met me as a Real Change vendor, he
knew from the start where I was coming
from economically.”
Carlin started selling Real Change when
another vendor recommended he give it a
try. He had been homeless for almost a
month when he discovered the paper.
Most of Carlin’s family still lives in
Alabama. He grew .up in a middle-class area
outside of Birmingham; “where I’m from in
Alabama is a place that could be compared
to (the Seattle suburb) Kirkland,” Carlin
said.
He has a sister who is four years younger
P H O T O S B Y B R Y A N T C A R L IN
Above, the Queets R iver in the Olympic
Peninsula. A t right, young Roosevelt elk
foraging in Northeast Washington.
than him and a half-brother who is about 20
years younger.
“I’ve maintained close relationships with
family even with the struggles that I’ve had
with homelessness,” Carlin said. He gets
back to Alabama about once a year and all of
his close family has been up to visit him
before. His family knows he’s homeless; that
hardship has made it difficult on his
relationships, but family is family and
everyone understands.
Carlin is also an alcoholic, and he knows
that this illness is a contributing factor to
his struggles with homelessness. “Beyond
the obvious economic situation in Seattle, I
do think it’s true that once you start to see
chronic or long-term homelessness, the two
driving factors are addiction or mental
health, or a combination of the two,” Carlin
said.
“What I think is the hardest p art about
dealing with alcoholism is the fact that it is
legal. You can buy it everywhere,” Carlin
said. He talks about how he goes out into
the wilderness to take a break from the city
and to get away from his alcoholism. He
doesn’t drink when he’s in the mountains.
“At the end of the day, you have to learn
to say no. There is no escaping alcohol,”
Carlin said. He has been living on the street
for about five years, but has been a Real
Change vendor off and on since 2004.
Though Carlin has struggled with
addiction and homelessness, he hasn’t let
that stand in the way of being a
photographer.
If you would like to learn more about
Conservation Made Simple, make a
donation to Carlin’s project or see more of
his photography, log onto their website.