Michael "Nick" Nichols

Nick is a wildlife photographer for National Geographic. http://www.michaelnicknichols.com/
I am really drawn to his work. He uses remote cameras that are triggerd by animals breaking an invisible beam. Some animals are so afraid of humans that it’s nearly impossible to photograph them up close. The trick is to have the animal make the kind of image that you would do if you were there.

He used this method to capture images of leopards. "In that first foray, after months of trial and error, we only had one publishable image (of a leopard with half his face out of the frame). Since then, we’ve refined the process, with much better results, as you’ll see here.Leopards have a huge range, from Northern China and Siberia all the way down to South Africa. The only place they can be seen regularly is in the private game reserves of South Africa, where baiting and hidden radio transmitters have been used to habituate them for tourism. They are incredibly secretive — a few even survive on dogs, pigeons, and rodents in the streets of Bombay."
"Legend (and maybe fact) has it that one leopard killed over 500 humans before finally being killed by the famed tiger hunter Jim Corbett. They are not meant to be seen except with a fleeting glance that leaves you unsure of what was there."

He took the famous image of Jane Goodall with the gorilla reaching out to touch her hair. I like this because she is not afraid of the animal and uses disarming body language with him.
I like the intimacy in his photographs. They make you feel like the people or animals do in the image.