After filming sharks in Palau, Jim returns to his dive boat, camera in hand.
While shooting film in Alaska, Jim Larison narrowly escaped a violent airplane crash in the Bering Sea, 1979.
His arm still in a cast, the violence of that night still written on his face, Jim returns to the crash site and inspects the wreckage of the airplane’s cockpit and the seat he occupied on that fateful night.
During his long career as a cinematographer for the National Geographic Society, Jim spent a great deal of time up close with his subjects—here, an especially cooperative Rocky Mountain goat on Montana’s Gunsight Pass, 1982.
JIm’s favorite motion picture camera, the exquisitely engineered Arriflex 16SR.
Jim puts down the camera long enough to play with a friendly stingray in the Cayman Islands 1987.
For months at a time, Jim, his wife Elaine, and their two sons, John and Ted, lived in “the bush,” filming brown and black bears in Alaska, 1991.
John and Ted Larison showing off in their parents’ dive gear, Great Barrier Reef, Australia 1986.
John and Jim while skin diving in the reefs around Heron Island, Australia.
Elaine Larison crampons her way to the top of The President in Yoho Provincial Park, Canada…
…and records the sounds of a Howler Monkey in the Brazilian rain forest, 1991.
Jim ascends vertical ice while filming on Mount Robson.
Clinging to the west flank of Mount Hood in Oregon, Jim works with Gene Griswold (top) and Doug McGuire (left) to film a high-altitude rescue.
Crossing the Wapta Icefield, preparing to climb Mount Habel.
There is nothing quite like climbing, then standing on the top of a snow-covered rocky mountain! That is what I call “A ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH!”
Jim and Elaine enjoy a “birds-eye-view” overlooking Chicago in 1993.
Ted Larison—one very happy buckaroo—during the filming of Sagebrush Country, 1985.
Jim Larison 2010.
Credits
Web site created by Jim and Navah Larison. Photos by Jim and Elaine Larison, James Hicks, and Ken Parton.