Photo © 2008 Elena Black

Justin Black is a landscape and nature photographer and the founder of Visionary Wild, providing world-class workshop and travel experiences for passionate photographers. He is extensively experienced as a photo workshop instructor and organizer, gallery curator, stock photo agent, picture editor, artist consultant, project manager, and senior executive. He was the long-time General Manager of Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light Photography, and he served as Executive Director of the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP), establishing ILCP as an independent NGO and overseeing the most productive period in the organization’s history.

Raised in Washington, DC and Virginia, Justin pursued his undergraduate studies in Fine Art Photography and Art History at George Washington University, where the maturity of his work was recognized through awards in graduate-level juried competition. A promising career as a photographer and licensing specialist led him in 1999 to Galen and Barbara Rowell’s Mountain Light Photography in Emeryville, California, where he managed marketing and licensing of the Rowells’ image collection, assisted Galen, and taught seminars on nature photography.

Justin Black with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Washington DC, September 2003.

In April 2002, the Rowells consolidated their business at the base of the 10,000-foot escarpment of the majestic Eastern Sierra in the Owens Valley town of Bishop, California, and Justin joined them there as General Manager. Following the Rowells’ tragic deaths in the crash of a chartered airplane in August 2002, he continued to run the successful gallery, image collection, and workshop program, and participated in a number of Rowell legacy projects, including service on the boards of the Rowell Fund for Tibet, and the Rowell Award for the Art of Adventure. For the 2006 book, Galen Rowell: A Retrospective, Justin contributed two essays, and served as photo editor and photo prepress editor.

In June 2009, having accepted the position of Executive Director of ILCP, Justin and his wife Lena relocated back to Washington, DC. ILCP’s mission is to further environmental and cultural conservation through photography, and Justin is very proud of the contributions he made to set the organization on a steady course, empowering the photographers of the ILCP Fellowship to make a real difference in the world for many years to come.

All the while, Justin has been an active photographer, and his fine prints are represented by The G2 Gallery in Los Angeles, California. Trained classically in the black & white zone system and the color darkroom, until 2009 large format film remained Justin’s medium of choice, but major advances in Nikon digital SLRs led him to finally trade in his beloved K.B. Canham 4x5 view camera for the Nikon D3X and PC-E Nikkor tilt-shift lenses. He has also done commercial and editorial assignment work and provided stock images to clients as diverse as World Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club Books, Fujifilm USA, Mastercard, and magazines such as National Geographic Adventure, Sierra, Via, American Photo, Outdoor Photographer, and Rock and Ice, among others. A gifted teacher, Justin has been an instructor on more than sixty photo workshops. He rebuilt and expanded Mountain Light’s photo workshop program between 2003 and 2009, served as an instructor for the summer arts workshops at Lake Tahoe’s Sierra Nevada College for several years, provides custom instruction on a one-on-one basis, and serves as an instructor and program manager for every Visionary Wild workshop and expedition.