Andy Best has been everywhere, man. It's why when talking about ways to spread the word about our national parklands, and the importance of preserving them, we thought Best would be true to his name in terms of lending a little perspective. Best has spent his fair share of days trekking America's National Parks. And when we first linked up with him, he was already on the way to Kenai Fjords National Park with his family.

For Best, it's easy to talk about why these lands are important to protect. He's spent most of his career dreaming up frames in the world's most beautiful locales—they've helped shaped him. And now, they're helping to shape his daughters, two members of the next generation whose love for the wilderness is exactly what can help save it. The journey to Kenai Fjords isn't easy, especially with two little ones in tow. But as Best explains in the piece he put together for us, it's important for him to stoke their passion for the outdoors, so they feel a sense of responsibility toward these wild places when they’re older. When he returned from Kenai Fjords, we caught up with Best about this idea, and about how staying on the move keeps his creative juices flowing.

Bespoke Post: Can you tell me the abridged version of your life story and how you ended up where you are today?

Andy Best: I grew up in the arts. My grandmother was an oil painter. We grew up in her studio when we were in the summers learning how to paint and do pastels and sketch and I was always into that. My dad was always into photography, and so I started picking up a camera at a young age and then started making short films.

Later on when I started my own business, you had to do all of it—editing and shooting, you name it—so that you could stay busy enough to be solo. So I pursued a lot of that in Portland, a lot of the brands up there slowly built my client base. Working with [outdoor brands] took me further out into nature, where I loved to be and grew up in. Slowly my social media, by proxy, just exploded, which was fun and also interesting because I never wanted to be camera-facing.

I kept following doors in this industry and realized that I didn't have to be anywhere specific to work. So I moved onto the road like eight years ago and have utilized that opportunity or that lifestyle to dig into projects where I can go and be places and spend more time studying the light and the angles and the places that have gotten me more work and I've always tried to pursue. Now it's more pursuing more meaningful work, trying to get more involved in work that matters like conservation or working with parks.

Eventually it led me to one of my goals, to be a contributing National Geographic adventurer and I’m hoping to keep continuing down this path of that Nat Geo world. In a nutshell.

Bespoke Post: It feels like good timing to be gravitating back towards filmmaking and video just because the digital world that we live in now is doing the same. You see still photography getting deprioritized on social media in favor of video. So it's kind of serendipitous that your feelings went more that way at the same time.

Andy Best: Totally. Yeah. And that's always my love. I love cinematography and documentaries. I love to tell the stories and I'm trying to work on my writing. I took some time off. I had a big writer's block and I spent some time being sort of holed up in my house in Bend with severe depression and just creator's block. And then I took up a cinema camera again and I was rejuvenated, excited to get back to my roots, and took the family out on the road again before COVID hit.

Bespoke Post: That creative block that you had…what does that feel like? How do you find your way out of it?

Andy Best: I found that when I moved off the road to go to Bend, I had a big lull in work coming in. I'm really hard on myself, and I just hit rock bottom with it all, and didn't feel like I could create anything that meant anything, that was different.

I was at a loss for finding a story. So I felt like, What am I doing wrong? Is it me?" Was my work any good anymore? I was really down on myself and I didn't know where to go with it, didn't know how to find that space again. I needed to go somewhere new again and see not the same old place or shoot the same old thing because I kept going out and feeling like I was just doing the same things over and over again.

And so I took some time away and did small things here and there. It took a couple years before I did two big projects, one in Scotland and one in New Zealand, where I got to shoot a project and then stay a week to 10 days after to explore and see new things. It took that to see and experience a new place to really flip a switch in my head to be able to feel inspired enough to create, because it just seemed like... I don't know, it's hard to explain, but I used to be able to see frames, and you can see it because you can feel it, and when you feel it, you learn. You use all your tools to find the best way to capture the frame in a meaningful way that actually evokes emotion in someone. And I just didn't feel like I was able to do that until I got to a fresh place.

Also, I became a dad, and it jump started my life again. It kind of broke me away from the spiral I was in. I think for me this weird notion that I have to constantly be moving, in a way helps because seeing fresh things, I guess rejuvenates that creative muscle and allows me to get inspired to be able to make something that actually conveys the emotion you feel when you're standing there.

Bespoke Post: Drastic change is hard enough. It's even harder when you need to do a drastic change in order to create change at all. That's a tough ride.

Andy Best: And to me, my confidence went out the window. I was looking at other peers and creators and storytellers and filmmakers and it just inundated with awesomeness. And I just literally thought I lost whatever talent or eye that I had. And I would actually email some mentors and ask, "Have you ever felt like you lost your power, if you will?" And I imagine that I got definite answers about chapters and people's creative lives and their careers. And they urged me to work on a good personal project. It's something different and something new and it really does help to go off and set yourself up with your own little project to find, to exercise that creative muscle. When you have those breakthroughs, whether it's a project or how a project turned out, it's jarring enough for me to rebuild or show myself that I can still do it. I didn't lose anything. It was just a mindset that you get lost in.

Bespoke Post: Something you and I have talked a lot about is this idea of empowering the next generation of protectors of our environment. I'm wondering if you could talk to me a little bit about why that's important to you and why that should be important to anyone.

Andy Best: Yeah, I think when I was out solo a lot, before kids, I was roaming around seeing a lot of really beautiful things, taking a lot of beautiful photos, but then sort of hit me that it felt like I was taking more than I was giving back. And you see so many people mistreating wild spaces. And I was always kind of grumpy about it because it didn't seem like there was a lot of education for the people that were getting out as frequently as they were. And with Instagram stirring up the world of young photographers, it was like people were going to go out at all costs to get a frame, to get likes. And it’s super disheartening when you're out and about and you see people that have gone beyond barriers that say don't, or basically just mistreating these special places that truly helped grow my career and shape my life.

So the first degree of influence is what I always think about with my daughters and it'll spider web out from there. Teach them, educate them on how to properly tread lightly, leave no trace, leave a better trace, be kind. There's a lot to it in that if we empower our first degree of influence, our circle of friends, our family, our children, and be kind to those that aren't in that first degree.

But it's just a big part of my story because as I've gone around, I always would try to put a little note with anything that I've created to [inspire] some wherewithal that you have to take care of these places, not just use it for your personal gain. And so as my account grew and I started doing bigger work, I felt it was my responsibility for my little circle or community of people that follow me, and anywhere my work goes, to have some sort of message like that, because otherwise what would we have left if it's all trashed? You wouldn't be able to go out and enjoy anything.

Bespoke Post: What's the first memory you have that has always stuck with you, the first time you were enamored by a landscape or you started to see the light hitting in the right way that moved you?

Andy Best: In the area I grew up, near Yellowstone, we have a cabin that's been in our family for a long time. And I remember as a kid driving up there for the weekends. It's on a lake and you'd stand on the deck and look out at the lake and the mountains, and it's just epic and beautiful. You'd have moose walking around the meadows. There was this lore about the place that always made it feel otherworldly. You get out on the boat and you'd drive around get different angles of the mountains and I remember as a kid just being like, Where are we? What is this magical land?

The Parklands box was created in partnership with our friends at Parks Project, whose goal is to protect and preserve parklands for generations to come by educating, advocating, volunteering, and activating park supporters to get involved in conservation

It sounds cliche, but that's why I like photography or filmmaking because you get into those spots and you want to look around like, "Who else is seeing this? Can you believe this?" Getting to those spots, you know it when you're there, you feel it. I've been seeking those moments I think since I was a kid.

Bespoke Post: You're not only capturing these moments with your photography and videography, but you're living amongst them all the time. Is it easy for you to take that for granted or is that something that never really wore off for you?

Andy Best: That's a great question. It gets a lot harder to feel that. So that's why in some ways I had a hard time, and that was another little sliver of why I stepped away for a couple years, because I felt like I had been so inundated that I couldn't see it anymore. That's where it's important for me to keep the variety going so I can feel it again, because it does wear off. I mean, coming from Mexico or the desert in the winter and then going into the mountains, you feel it again. Or you go from the mountains over into the grasslands and it blows me away.

So it's incredibly important for me to continually shift around because otherwise you can take it for granted. If you live in Bend and if you go to Crater Lake all the time, it'll never feel like that first time you saw it.

Bespoke Post: So what’s at the top of that list of the coolest things you’ve seen?

Andy Best: Well, it's hard. I always say that it's like asking somebody what their favorite song is, but I have some places that I really enjoy. The Northern Lights to me—and anything to do with the night sky —those are the times I get really excited. Anything to do with astro photography, Northern Lights. But also massive cliff lines or gnarly mountains with glaciers on them, or just more of the extreme landscapes are the things that make me really contemplate a lot of my existence. Those are the places where we're all the least adept to be in. And I think primal feelings come out and in those moments where you're like, I don't think I should be up here. Survival mode is firing off and it adds to the emotion of the whole experience.

I guess it could all go back to continually finding perspective or really contemplating your place in all of it.

Bespoke Post: When you look at the night sky or a mountain range that's enormous you feel small and you feel unimportant, but it's almost a different kind of empowerment.

Andy Best: Totally. Your problems don't really matter that much when you're in those spots.

Bespoke Post: It puts your problems in perspective.

Andy Best: They don't really matter.

Andy Best on The Importance of Preserving Our Parklands