THAT'S THE SPIRIT. Jim Backus, a local and longtime professional photographer, has had incredible experiences capturing wildlife through his lens. Pictured is a Spirit Bear in the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia, Canada. 

Ask wildlife photographer Jim Backus where he’s been and the answer is a bit like that old country song: He’s been everywhere, man, from Yellowstone, British Columbia, and the Baja Peninsula to the Amazon Basin, the Himalayas, Kenya, Botswana, and Iceland. 

And the menagerie of animals the Eau Claire resident has captured with his Canon is even more impressive: caribou and moose, peregrine falcons and whooping cranes, wolves and whales, snow leopards and Himalayan wolves, zebras and lions, and dozens more over the past 25 years.

“I’ve seen so many great things in my life,” he said during a recent interview near a display of his work at Decadent Gifts & Gallery, 329 Water St. “When I look through that lens, I get such a rush looking into that animal’s eyes. And it’s still like that for me. I’ve probably seen more things than anybody in this city.”

That may not be an exaggeration: Now in his late 70s, Jim estimates he spends about 30% of his year traveling across the continent and the globe, camera in hand. (This February, that meant a weeks-long trip to East Africa.)

Ideally, the animals don't care much about the presence of a human being. But you can't say the same for Jim: Wondrous encounters have impacted him deeply.

An elephant with her baby, photographed last month in Tanzania.

Jim first became interested in photography as a kid, but he says he began taking pictures in earnest in his 20s when he traveled the country taking part in motorcycle races. About 30 years ago, he began photographing wildlife while on fishing trips in remote parts of Canada. 

A few years later Jim’s photography took a more professional turn after he visited some art galleries near Yellowstone National Park. “This looks like fun,” he thought, and he began to take workshops, network with photographers he admired, and learned how to create the best images he could.

“People come to me and say, ‘What advice do you have?’ and I tell them, ‘Practice, practice, practice.’ You know, go shoot your dog in the backyard because it doesn't cost anything,” he explains. That’s one advantage of digital photography: On a trip to Africa a few years back, for example, Jim took 12,000 photos. “Out of that, I got 300 that I was proud of and put on my website,” he says.

His photography trips usually consist of a few other photographers and a local guide, and involve long hours in the forest, bush, or tundra waiting for just the right moment to capture an image. For years, Jim toured the country selling his photographic artwork at shows, but now you’ll find his prints and photo books for sale at Decadent Gifts & Gallery. 

These days, Jim’s camera of choice is a mirrorless Canon R5 Mark II with lenses that range from 10 to 600mm. He totes that gear – along with his patience and determination – whether he’s tracking snow leopards at 13,000 feet in the Himalayas or spotting birds at Wisconsin’s Necedah Wildlife Refuge.

Some of Jim's work can be viewed and purchased at Decadent Gifts & Gallery, pictured.

Jim has photographed many endangered, rare, or elusive animals, perhaps most notably the “spirit bears” of British Columbia. Spirit bears are a subspecies of black bear that carry a mutant gene giving them white hair. There are only a few hundred such bears, and Jim estimates he’s photographed about 35 individual animals during his 11 trips to the region. As their name suggests, the bears carry a spiritual significance for the indigenous people of the region, and two First Nations tribes now control access to the coastal rainforests where they live. 

Wolves and bears are Jim’s favorite animals to photograph, and the’ve provided numerous breathtaking moments. Last year, for example, Jim was among a cluster of 40 photographers snapping images of grizzly bears on a mud flat along the Alaskan coast. Suddenly, a mother bear with two cubs saw a fellow grizzly she didn’t like.

“She charged that other bear and ran through a group of people who looked like they thought they were going to die, but she didn't have anything but that other bear in her mind,” Jim recalls. 

Despite such close encounters, Jim doesn’t feel threatened by the wildlife he photographs. Staying safe means following a few simple rules. “The last thing you do is hide from an animal,” he advises. “You want them to know that you're there and you've got a connection (with) them, so you’re not scaring them. There’s only a few reasons why a bear will attack you, and one is if you startle them.”

Landscape shot with bison, photographed in the Grand Tetons, Wyoming.

Ideally, the animals don’t care much about the presence of a human being. But you can’t say the same for Jim: Wondrous encounters have impacted him deeply. Consider the time he found himself amid the Great Migration of animals across East Africa’s Kalahari Desert. 

“The guide took us out and we parked in the middle of the line of animals,” he recalls. “I’ve never seen anything in my life like this. You looked both ways and as far as you could see, which was probably six miles, it was solid animals walking a quarter mile wide, just eating grass. What follows them are the predators: the lions, the cheetahs, the leopards, the hyenas are all following them, and that’s their lunch line.”

View Jim Backus’ wildlife photography at Decadent Gifts & Gallery, 329 Water St., or online at magoonaturephotography.zenfolio.com.