Joe Riis

South Dakota native Joe Riis is a wildlife biologist turned National Geographic photographer and grantee. Riis, who completed his first feature for National Geographic at the age of 26, has tracked pronghorn migration through Wyoming, shot the rare Gobi bear in Mongolia, captured magnificent caribou in the Sacred Headwaters of British Columbia and photographed tiny toads in Guyana. When he’s not out shooting, he lives in a cabin that he built on the prairie of his great grandparent’s South Dakota homestead. He is featured in Return to the Tepuis (Mountainfilm 2013) and went on to make a short film titled Gobi Grizzly (Mountainfilm 2015). Riis is the director of photography for the film Elk River (Mountainfilm 2016).