{"id":277634,"date":"2026-05-20T04:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T04:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/277634\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T04:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T04:29:09","slug":"tracing-the-career-path-of-acclaimed-photographer-with-exhibit-in-st-pete-from-outdoorsy-vermont-kid-to-outdoorsy-montana-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/277634\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracing The career path of acclaimed photographer with exhibit in St. Pete: from outdoorsy Vermont kid to outdoorsy Montana man"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto by Ronan Donovan.<\/p>\n

Ronan Donovan<\/a>\u2013a wildlife biologist turned visual storyteller, whose work is featured in an exhibition, Wolves: Photography by Ronan Donovan, on display at the James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art<\/a>, in St. Petersburg\u2014recalls a lifelong love of animals, and exploring the wilderness, that he forged growing up in rural Vermont.<\/p>\n

Give or take a detail, these passions represent the Donovan narrative thru-line coursing through all phases of his life, up through the present moment, where he\u2019s living in Montana, participating in this interview while outside, occasionally noting when he spots a sandhill crane, or a fox runs by.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This storyline runs so deep that even when he got into some criminal trouble as a teenager, he says, racking up two felonies for stealing, his punishment involved being sent to wilderness therapy (in southeast Oregon). For youngsters who are struggling and a bit lost, like he was, Donovan recommends The Student Conservation Association, touting the organization two different times during our conversation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And most of the key episodes of his life seem to involve working (a) outside and (b) with fauna of one kind or another. So, for example, there was a stint lobstering in Maine, and another stint, post-college, helping a PhD student carry out research in California on spotted owls.<\/p>\n

Somewhere along this path, during the spotted-owls stint, Donovan picked up a camera and started shooting. Which, it\u2019s safe to say, widened out, so to speak, and re-directed his narrative.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A subsequent research tour-of-duty, studying chimps in Uganda, led to some profound experiences with those great apes\u2014and inroads as a photographer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those chimp images constituted a turning point in his career, later yielding various projects in print and on screen\u2026notably including the exhibition Wolves: Photography by Ronan Donovan, which continues through Sept. 7 at the James Museum, in St. Pete.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo by Ronan Donovan. Ronan Donovan\u2013a wildlife biologist turned visual storyteller, whose work is featured in an exhibition,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200,12750,4624,3629],"class_list":["post-277634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-talking-animals","tag-wildlife","tag-wmnf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}