Aspen’s award-winning photographer receives Ansel Adams Award

Pete McBride was as shocked as anybody when information of the celebrated Ansel Adams Award arrived.

“I knew nothing about it,” he stated. “I got a notice about it a little bit in advance, telling me to be available to try to listen. And then I got an award in the mail.”

The 2025 Ansel Adams Award for excellence in conservation images, given by the Sierra Club, acknowledges McBride as a profession achievement honoree for his many years of labor documenting fragile landscapes and provoking environmental motion.

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“It’s a super great honor,” stated McBride, who grew up within the Aspen space and now lives in Basalt. His household has been within the native space because the Nineteen Sixties, and his father, John McBride, began the Aspen Junior Hockey Program.

McBride added, “I don’t ever pretend to be in the ballpark of Ansel Adams, but I’ve worked as a photographer and filmmaker for more than 30 years, and now I do a lot of books and public speaking as well.”

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He credited Adams with inspiring him to “think and look differently with photography” and to “use the camera as a tool.” He started his images profession working within the days of darkrooms and following a few of Ansel’s methods.

The lifetime achievement award locations McBride amongst distinguished conservation photographers who comply with in Adams’ custom of utilizing imagery to guard wild areas. 

“I never had a dream of being a photographer,” he stated. “I was going to be an architect or a doctor.” 

After graduating from Dartmouth University, he began working at newspapers and fell in love with the arc of storytelling. He even labored at The Aspen Times for a short time.

As he started getting tales into greater publications, one project led to a sequence of utmost images assignments from documenting Sherpa route-builders on Everest to scuba diving alone underneath Antarctic ice highlighting local weather change. But it was finally his father’s suggestion to give attention to water that remodeled his work.

His father’s recommendation to do a narrative on water led to a source-to-sea journey on the Colorado River 15 years in the past, starting what would turn out to be McBride’s signature physique of labor. He has since produced three movies and two books on the Colorado River, together with “The Colorado River: Chasing Water,” printed in 2024.

His upcoming guide, “Witness to Water,” will compile his tales from National Geographic and Outside magazines with private reflections on following the Colorado River for 20 years. He’s additionally engaged on a kids’s guide and a documentary. His river work to boost consciousness consists of the excellence of being the final particular person to paddle the Colorado River to the ocean, in addition to his 800 miles trek via the Grand Canyon. He calls it “a thirsty death march” that was “more than a walk in the park.”

During the pandemic, McBride explored one other conservation theme with a guide on silence and the ability of quiet within the pure world, inspecting its significance not only for wildlife however for human psychological well being.

“I think these are all related to the Ansel Adams Award,” he stated, commenting on his efforts with wild areas, landscapes, the pure world, wildlife, and conservation. “In today’s divided world, I think there’s power in story and art, trying to bring us together and remind us what’s important.”