Michael John Balog, an Award Winning Wildlife Photographer, was born in Cleveland, the "Heart of Rock and Roll."
A surgeon, Dr. Graham, saved Mike from certain blindness before school age. Spending the first fourteen years of his life playing baseball all summer, Mike's intense interest in art and photography was cultivated by the suburban schools. His parents loved Wyoming and knew the benefits of raising their children in a small western town. Mike and his wife Debra ultimately purchased the family business, a small motel a couple of hours from Yellowstone in 1983.
Mike and his wife are UW alumni, and met on the Laramie Campus. Their only goal was to live in the Wind River Canyon, someday; now they've lived in the Canyon for nineteen years. Mike tried to photograph the breeding hummingbirds with an old Nikon film camera many years ago, and found it to be impossible. A grizzled, old bearded mountain-man pointed Mike toward this new technology, digital photography.
Conservation Philosophy ~ "John Muir was right, there needs to be Wild Places where people can go and reconnect with what's truly important; finding something that makes us feel human again and, to touch a part of ourselves that has been lost in this digital 21st Century. More than ever before in human memory, it will become increasingly important for mankind to experience Mother Nature in all her green and pine-scented glory, and the animals that have lived in the forest for eternity. There are few Wild Places left that haven't been ruined by the hand of man, and we must save the Wilderness, or loose a part of ourselves that can never be reclaimed."
written by MjB
A surgeon, Dr. Graham, saved Mike from certain blindness before school age. Spending the first fourteen years of his life playing baseball all summer, Mike's intense interest in art and photography was cultivated by the suburban schools. His parents loved Wyoming and knew the benefits of raising their children in a small western town. Mike and his wife Debra ultimately purchased the family business, a small motel a couple of hours from Yellowstone in 1983.
Mike and his wife are UW alumni, and met on the Laramie Campus. Their only goal was to live in the Wind River Canyon, someday; now they've lived in the Canyon for nineteen years. Mike tried to photograph the breeding hummingbirds with an old Nikon film camera many years ago, and found it to be impossible. A grizzled, old bearded mountain-man pointed Mike toward this new technology, digital photography.
Conservation Philosophy ~ "John Muir was right, there needs to be Wild Places where people can go and reconnect with what's truly important; finding something that makes us feel human again and, to touch a part of ourselves that has been lost in this digital 21st Century. More than ever before in human memory, it will become increasingly important for mankind to experience Mother Nature in all her green and pine-scented glory, and the animals that have lived in the forest for eternity. There are few Wild Places left that haven't been ruined by the hand of man, and we must save the Wilderness, or loose a part of ourselves that can never be reclaimed."
written by MjB
© Michael John Balog