Artist Interview: Bruce Leventhal
Bruce Leventhal’s “Periscope Up” - on display in the Santa Cruz Art league’s Members’ Exhibition until December 19, 2025.
Some artists discover their calling slowly, the result of years of practice and experimentation. Others seem to arrive there the moment they lift a camera to their eye. For Bruce Leventhal, a nature photographer with four decades of experience, the journey was a little bit of both.
While doing research in Alaska, photography became a means of documenting his work. Then, a trip to Costa Rica in the early 90s changed everything. He went there simply to take pictures—but came back with his first true piece of art.
He remembers it vividly: a bromeliad growing on a tree, tiny ants wandering across its orange bloom. When he got the slide film back, something clicked.
“It was the first picture I ever took that I thought, this is more than documentation.”
For Bruce, the early years weren’t marked by creative hurdles so much as practical ones. Back in the 80s and 90s, wildlife photography was an expensive craft, with lenses often out of reach financially. As equipment became more accessible and digital photography exploded, he faced a new challenge: standing out.
“Anyone with a camera today has the capacity to take photos of nature,” he says. “So then it became an issue of how do I differentiate myself from what I call an army of photographers.”
Decades later, Bruce has refined a style that is unmistakably his—minimalist, clean, and intentional. And that clarity keeps him grounded whenever creative blocks appear. Santa Cruz, Bruce says, is a wildlife photographer’s dream.
“I made the choice to move here partly because I knew that I would have anywhere from Yosemite to Big Sur to the Redwoods,” he explains. “Just this beautiful environment to take pictures.”
Living within reach of such iconic landscapes keeps his work constantly evolving—each shoreline, forest, or mountain range offering another chance to discover something beautiful. Among Bruce’s many images, one stands out: a pair of Red Crowned Cranes, isolated against a blank snowy landscape in Hokkaido, Japan.
The inspiration began not in the field, but in the classroom. As he taught his biology students about animal mating rituals, he described how these cranes reunite after ten months apart. The story fascinated him enough to cross the Pacific and see them himself. With their white bodies, black accents, and crown of red, the cranes embodied everything he seeks in his minimalist approach.
“Finding this couple of Cranes on a snowy background allowed me to produce minimalist images,” he explains. “These kinds of images are the ones I seek and get really excited about.”
Bruce’s work isn’t only about beauty—it’s about responsibility.
“I want people to be emotionally moved by my images and think about the value of nature,” he says.
As an ecologist and evolutionary biologist, he worries about the world’s diminishing biodiversity. Each photo is, in its own way, an invitation to care. Right now, Bruce’s photography is on display at the Ugly Mug Café in Soquel, California, where it will remain through mid-December. The collection draws from a concept called Biophilia, introduced in 1984 by biologist Edward O. Wilson—the idea that humans are innately drawn to nature.
Looking back across forty years of work, Bruce sees that thread clearly: a lifelong pull toward the wild.
Beyond the exhibit, he writes regularly for Nature Photography magazine and is developing a new book in progress: “101 Tips for Living a Full Life Behind a Camera.”
Interview by Gavin Kennedy