In his latest project, called Life: A Journey Through Time, Frans Lanting charts, through his photographs, the vastness and importance of time, an element he feels is often absent from natural history photography. “We tend to look at nature as if everything happens in the present,” he says, “and my goal was to interpret the past.”

Equipped with an arsenal of Nikon cameras, both digital and film, Lanting set out to capture a new view of nature. Throughout the project, he used mostly natural light and only employed Nikon Speedlight strobes to add light to situations that needed it. Here, he recounts the process behind four shots in the series.

Moon Jellies

These elegant and mysterious animals floating in dimly lit tanks in the Monterey Bay Aquarium are named Aurelia labiata but are commonly called moon jellies because of their translucent, moonlike shape. Lanting waited for just the right moment to capture their ethereal beauty using a Nikon D2x and a 70–200mm Zoom-Nikkor lens. “I captured the image at 800 or 1600 ASA because the light levels were very low,” he says. “One of the advantages of digital capture is that there is far less loss of quality as you capture images at higher ISOs or ASA ratings.” To avoid reflections off of the thick glass between him and the jellies, Lanting shot his pictures through a hole cut in a swatch of black fabric, which he hung in front of his camera. A moon jelly’s color has much to do with its diet. A mainly crustacean diet will produce pink or lavender hues, while an orange tint suggests that the animal has been dining on brine shrimp. These creatures are directly related to some of the earliest animals present on earth, having a lineage linking them to the oceans of almost 600 million years ago.

The Human Brain

This image was photographed with a Nikon D1 with a 105mm macro lens. A wafer-thin slice of an actual human brain, it is part of a museum research collection used for medical educational purposes. Lanting shot the photograph using a light box to backlight the specimen. “Humans are also part of the story of life,” he says. “The interesting visual idea imbedded in this image is that yes, they are brains; but our brains, when you look at a cross section, appear to follow the same kind of fractal patterns that drainages on a tidal marsh follow, or the kind of branching patterns you see in trees.” These are the patterns of a human cerebellum, an ancient part of the brain, which human beings have in common with all other vertebrates, Lanting says. “As humans, we share up to 98 percent of our genes with our nearest relatives, chimpanzees,” he says. “It is the remaining 2 percent that makes us different and enables us to understand and connect with all other expressions of life on earth.”

Lava River

“The Lava River was photographed with a Nikon F6 with a 70–200mm f/2.8 lens on a tripod, because I used a slow shutter speed of close to a full second after dark,” Lanting says. Shot in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, this incandescent river of lava surging across a landscape of black basalt occurred during a nighttime eruption at Pu’u O’o, the active vent of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano. What illumination Lanting had came from the red-hot lava itself. “Because the rest of the landscape is already dark, it really appears as a very graphic image,” he says. “I was above this lava flow on the slopes of an active volcano, and it was a pretty dicey situation. We had to wear respirators because there were very noxious fumes, and we had to be very careful.” Ultimately, this image was chosen for the cover of the book. “Even though it doesn’t show anything alive, specifically,” he says, “fire is, in a symbolic sense, connected to the beginnings of the planet and, therefore, with the primordial energy that gave rise to life.”

Sea Kelp and Penguins

This image was made on film using a Nikon F100 camera and a 17–35mm f/2.8 Zoom-Nikkor lens. Shot on an island south of New Zealand pounded by a tremendous surf, the image has behind it a large idea: of looking at the very energy of the waves, ultimately charged by the pull of the moon. “It’s the moon that gives us tides,” Lanting says. “It’s the moon that really causes the bulging of oceans around the planet.” To capture this image, he used a slow shutter speed of a bit more than a second. To enhance color in the water and in the kelp, he applied a polarizing filter. In the distance was the large community of penguins, some standing still and others moving about. Penguins cannot help but draw attention, but Lanting says, “It’s really the kinetic energy of water that makes the image.”

In addition to the picture book, Life: A Journey Through Time, Lanting's project includes a traveling exhibition and a multimedia musical performance with a score by Philip Glass. Details can be found on the Web site www.lifethroughtime.com

© 2007 All photos copyright Frans Lanting, All rights reserved.