Steve Winter

Director, Media
Steve Winter

Steve Winter is the Director of Media for Panthera and has been a National Geographic photographer for almost two decades. Growing up in Indiana farm country, Steve dreamt of becoming a photographer after receiving a camera for his seventh birthday. Over the next few years, Steve’s father taught him the basics of photography and cultivated his artistic interest in the field. After graduating from the Academy of Art and University of San Francisco, Steve’s childhood dream became a reality when he began his career as a photojournalist for Black Star Photo Agency. Since then, he has gone on to produce stories for GEO, National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, Fortune, Natural History, Audubon, Business Week, Scientific American, and Stern, among other publications. He has also photographed for non-profits and commercial clients including the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Merck Pharmaceuticals, Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation, and many others. Winter became a National Geographic Society Photographer in 1991, covering a multitude of subjects for the magazine, including Cuba, Russia's giant Kamchatka bears, tigers in Myanmar's Hukaung Valley, life along Myanmar's Irrawaddy River, jaguars in Latin America, and snow leopards in Ladakh, India.

In 2008 Steve was crowned BBC’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year for his photograph of a snow leopard taken in Ladakh. One of the images captured on this trip was recently selected as one of the “Top 40 Nature Photos of All Time” by the International League of Conservation Photographers. To learn more about Steve’s journey into India’s snow leopard land, watch the National Geographic video “Searching for the Snow Leopard.”

In 2011, Steve also received the Global Vision Award from Pictures of the Year International for a group of 40 photos showing the front lines of tiger conservation, taken in India's Kaziranga National Park. In 2012, Steve received his second consecutive Global Vision Award from Pictures of the Year International for a series of 40 images made in Sumatra, Thailand and India that show both the beauty and natural history of tigers—and documents the conflicts between tigers and the people that share their habitats.

Also in 2012, Steve’s images from Indonesia, Thailand and India earned him the prestigious Wildlife Photojournalist of the Year Award and the Runner-up Prize for The Gerald Durrell Award for Endangered Species from the 2012 Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition.

View Steve’s 2011 & 2012 Global Vision Award-winning photos.

Selected Videos Featuring Steve Winter

National Geographic Live: Robot vs. Tiger  National Geographic Live: On the Trail of the Tiger
National Geographic: Searching for the Snow Leopard  Photographing Tigers in Kaziranga National Park with Steve Winter - Part 1
Photographing Tigers in Kaziranga National Park with Steve Winter - Part 2  Speaking of Faith: The Last "Pure" Pygmy and His Gift

Selected Articles Featuring Photographs by Steve Winter

Panthera Press Releases Featuring Steve Winter