About the Director
Nicholas Hess (he/him) is an award winning wildlife photographer and emerging conservation storyteller and filmmaker specializing in reptiles, amphibians, and the underwater world. His passion for photography and conservation began in 2011 in Southern California where he learned to take photos of snakes and tidepool creatures. He earned a B.S. in Marine Science at Eckerd College in 2025 with minors in Film, Journalism, and Spanish. In alignment with his interdisciplinary education he strives to tell conservation stories through mediums of film, photography, and writing, to speak for the misunderstood, undervalued, and poorly-known species in nature. His studies and work has taken him across Latin America, the South Pacific, Australia, and Southeast Asia in pursuit of revealing the beauty of the weird and wonderful. Now, he seeks opportunities to highlight the challenges of conservation, and celebrate wins, species, places, and people.
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