Nicholas Hess (Director), Michele Forman (Producer) | 2025 | 19 min.
2026 Official Selection
Meet Alabama’s salamanders like you’ve never seen them before and fall for their undeniable charm. We dive into the salamanders’ hidden world of wonder, crawling right under your feet and all around you, with the scientists and salamander superfans who can’t get enough of these quirky critters.
| March 14, 2026 | Ashland | OR | Ashland Armory |
Nicholas Hess (he/him) is an award winning wildlife photographer and emerging conservation storyteller and filmmaker specializing in reptiles, amphibians, and the underwater world. His passion for photography and conservation began in 2011 in Southern California where he learned to take photos of snakes and tidepool creatures. He earned a B.S. in Marine Science at Eckerd College in 2025 with minors in Film, Journalism, and Spanish. In alignment with his interdisciplinary education he strives to tell conservation stories through mediums of film, photography, and writing, to speak for the misunderstood, undervalued, and poorly-known species in nature. His studies and work has taken him across Latin America, the South Pacific, Australia, and Southeast Asia in pursuit of revealing the beauty of the weird and wonderful. Now, he seeks opportunities to highlight the challenges of conservation, and celebrate wins, species, places, and people.
