Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. In an age of noise and haste, Jim Brandenburg found greatness in patience. A single wolf mid-leap between ice sheets, a timber wolf peering shyly from behind a tree — his photographs distilled the wild into fleeting moments of clarity and made him one of the most revered nature photographers of his generation.

He died April 4th, aged 79. Raised on the prairies of southern Minnesota, Brandenburg spent his life circling back to the landscapes that had shaped him. Though his career took him across the Arctic, Africa and beyond, it was the quiet woods and cold rivers of home that stirred his soul. For National Geographic, he produced 23 major stories, working with a thrift of film and an abundance of instinct. His images graced not only covers but the public imagination, changing how people saw the natural world. Wolves were his great passion. Where others saw menace, he saw social grace and fragile beauty. In Brother Wolf and White Wolf, he celebrated a misunderstood species with the care of a journalist and the eye of a poet. It was fitting that four of his photographs were chosen among the 40 most important nature images of all time by the International League of Conservation Photographers. Brandenburg’s work was marked by technical mastery but never overwhelmed by it. His experiments with digital photography, his haunting low-light exposures and his restraint — all marked…This article was originally published on Mongabay