The Big Picture: About a Bug’s Life

For Jack Kelly Clark, one of the biggest rewards of his career has been the knowledge that his photos help farmers reduce the use of pesticides.

More than once, Clark has met grateful growers carrying dog-eared copies of integrated pest management guides that help them determine when—and if—they needed to use chemicals. The guides, produced by the UC-wide Integrated Pest Management Program, feature Clark’s photos from cover to cover.

Clark initially planned to become a fisheries biologist. But looking back, he says he was inspired even as a teenager by the interplay of light, film and natural beauty.

As a college student, he worked summers for the state Department of Fish and Game, surveying fish spawning streams in Humboldt and Del Norte counties on California’s far north coast. “I was seeing all this beautiful country, and I thought I should record this on film.”

He bought his first camera soon after and quickly got hooked on photography. Shortly before graduating from UC Davis with a bachelor’s degree in zoology, he got a half-time job as a darkroom technician at what was then Agricultural Extension Service, now Cooperative Extension. He soon worked his way into a photographer’s position, and since then, Clark built his career and an international reputation with artful photos that reveal the unseen in the world all around us—close-up views of a mite eating a grape leafhopper nymph, fungi releasing a cloud of spores, a ladybug dining on aphids, an ant tending scale insects. His photos are featured in agricultural reference books, entomology Web sites and scholarly journal articles, as well as in the farm pest-management guidebooks. One volume that he takes special pride in, Wine Grape Varieties in California, required him to work Labor Day weekends 11 consecutive years to capture images of lush grape clusters on the vine.

Clark said he felt privileged to work over the years with renowned UC researchers. “I just had some of the most marvelous conversations over the years with people who are passionate about their work. It’s all about the people you get to work with.”

— Kathleen Holder