North Bay Woman

42 NORTH BAY WOMAN | F A L L 2 0 1 9 her stories would find what she does exceptionally unusual, for Eszterhas, it's her norm. "I haven't really known anything different," she says. "This is something I wanted to do since I was a young kid and have been doing in various ways, always. The fact that I have this job and get to do this every day; I wake up feeling very grateful and very lucky." Born in San Rafael and now a Petaluma resident, Eszterhas grew up fascinated by every animal around her, from domestic dogs and cats to the beasts typically found in Marin County: raccoons, squirrels, foxes, bobcats, skunk, deer. "My parents gave me a little point and shoot when I was 6 years old. I would photograph all the animals in the back yard. I would pretend the cats we had were big cats in the Serengeti. I completely idolized Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. They were my 'thing.'" These days and for the past 15 years, Eszterhas spends at least four months a year living in the bush somewhere on earth. Africa. The Arctic. Australia. India. South America. North America. She even travels the world's oceans, where she photographs whales, dolphins and other sea beings. Most of these shoots are illustrations for features by writers in top magazines such as National Geographic and Nature. Others are for her own books. "Not every day is a field day," she says. "There are many days I have to work at my desk, editing images or doing the business side of my profession. That's not exactly dreamy. But the field days make it worth it for sure and they keep me going." The photographer describes herself as driven and passionate — two qualities that are essential in a profession where, as a woman, she has met with sexual harassment and physical danger. But the biggest ongoing challenge is spending up to 14 hours in a day, waist-deep in mud or covered in sand somewhere in the world, waiting for an animal that may or may not make an appearance. "I'll watch the birds go by, feel the wind in my hair, stare at a termite mound for 14 hours and get nothing," she says. "There's a lot of that. Every day is really, truly wildly different. A lot of the time it's physically very uncomfortable. You are always lugging heavy equipment." As an undergraduate at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Eszterhas majored in environmental studies with a fine art minor, all the while knowing that somehow, in some way, she would parlay her passion for photographing creatures into a career. "It was the marriage of wildlife and photography that spoke to me," she says. "Knowing animal behavior, becoming educated in terms of nature and ecology, all this meant more to me than just the photography aspects. I knew I could take a few courses on the technical stuff; the rest I would learn by doing it." Her specialty became shooting portraits of baby animals when, after graduating college and completing six years of work as director of public relations for the Santa Cruz SPCA, she took off to spend three years in Kenya, living in a bush camp in the Masai Mara Nature Reserve. There, she began photographing cheetahs, lions, hyenas and other wildlife. For the first year and a half, she lived in a tent without electricity, charging her digital camera off her car battery at night. "I got to know the rangers and they asked if I was interested in raising an orphan serval kitten that some tourists had found. I was lonely, and he was my baby. I raised him for eight months, keeping him in a little kangaroo pocket inside my clothes so he would feel my warm skin, listen to my heartbeat. He Clockwise: Grevy's Zebra, mother and young foal at Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, northern Kenya. A ring-talked lemur is curious about Suzi Eszterhas' photography at the Berenty Private Reserve, Madagascar. – Photo by Suzi Eszterhas, Arlene Davis

• Cover