Jonathan Blair began his career, now spanning more than 36 years, in radio and television production at Northwestern University’s School of Speech. His photography started with taking pictures of the stars – celestial ones – at the university’s Dearborn Observatory. A trip to the American southwest – to help set up an observing station near New Mexico’s White Sands – forever changed his outlook – photography would be a path to discovery!

Jonathan transferred to the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, to begin a degree in Illustrative Photography. He took a summer position with the National Park Service in Yosemite National Park as the Park’s photographer. Later he became a National Park Ranger, and probably would still be in a service he came to enjoy and respect, were it not for photography.

While a ranger Blair worked on several publications for the Department of Interior. These helped him gain credit toward his Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts and Photography from RIT in 1965. Later an internship at the National Geographic Magazine (under Director of Photography, Robert E. Gilka) helped launch his photography career.

Jonathan also attended the Polish National Film School overseas. Later he began shooting photographic essays for the United States Information Agency about US film and entertainment personalities. Blair has worked as a photojournalist, a photographic illustrator, and filmmaker. He has published photographs in Time Magazine, Life, Newsweek, and The New York Times. The photographic book, Outlaw Trail, with Robert Redford, was an international best seller published in several languages. His photographs also appear in worldwide advertising campaigns.

Blair’s first published photographs in the National Geographic Magazine included unique images from Yosemite National Park and California. Soon after his internship, Blair traveled to Asia Minor, Africa and Europe – all for the National Geographic. During the 1970’s he established himself as a contract photographer with the magazine, and began specializing in adventure stories taking him from the Berkshires to the Mediterranean Sea.

A November 1984 National Geographic Cover featured a 3D hologram of the African Taung Child – a human ancestor. Blair, working with the famed optical scientist Kenneth Haines, helped produce the first field hologram, shot in South Africa, ever done in anthropology. More than 9 million magazines went out around the world with the priceless fossil reproduced in 3D.

A new skill – underwater photography – also started to develop in 1971 while working on the Kyrenia Wreck in Cyprus. More underwater articles began to appear: the Glass Wreck (Turkey), the Quicksilver Galleons (Dominican Republic), Monterey Bay (California), the Lusitania (Ireland), Treasures from the Silver Bank (Dominican Republic), Life Without Light (Gulf of Mexico), and his most recent underwater adventure – the Last Dive of I-52 – which took him to record breaking dives 17,000 feet under the Atlantic in December 1998.

From 1996 to 2001 he worked on a series of 5 articles about the Rise of Life on earth for the National Geographic Magazine, which took him around the world in search of new images. His most recent story, The Big Bloom – about flowering plants – appeared in the July 2002 issue. Jonathan, through his agents, now has more than 12,000 images – representing his entire career – for immediate sale on line via the Internet.

Blair accepted a full time position with the Nauticos Corporation – an ocean discovery company – in December 2001, as their Director of Media Development. He was the photographer – and in charge of underwater imaging – on the first Nauticos expedition, during the spring of 2002, in search of Amelia Earhart’s airplane. November 2002 saw the debut of the National Geographic Channel program, Mystery of the Dakar – the successful Nauticos search for a long lost, and missing Israeli submarine. The 50-minute special was co-produced by Nauticos and the National Geographic Channel. Nauticos has been sold, and he has left the company, but the search for the Earhart plane continues.

Jonathan also completed a digital, underwater photographic assignment for Odyssey Marine Exploration, and the National Geographic Magazine. It was his 39th, producing images from the SS Republic shipwreck, for the September 2004 issue of the magazine.

Recently he conducted two digital photography workshops. The first one took place at the Delaware College of Art and Design, and featured a photographic field trip to the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. The second workshop took Jonathan out to the University of Wisconsin in Superior. There, the digital photography students ended up in an auto junkyard! (See “The Spring Room” photo featured in the Gallery.)

Blair now resides in the Catskill Mountains of New York State, where he has been renovating a log house, which he describes as having the best view in town -- Accord, New York.