Today we’d like to introduce you to Skip Hobbie
Hi Skip, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
As a kid I wanted to be a wildlife biologist. in the ’90s at the dawn of the cable channels like National Geographic and Animal Planet, I saw that as an opportunity to indulge my wide ranging interests. Rather than being an academic that focus on one area of expertise for potentially decades of their career, I could be filming eagles in Alaska one week, and snakes in the rainforest the next. So I went to film school at UT Austin and while taking my Advanced Documentary course, I made a film about Fire Ants. Call it Luck, Fate or Serendipity, but a year later and right after I graduated, National Geographic came to Texas to also make a film about Fire Ants and hired me as their camera assistant. That got my pinky toenail in the door, and was the start of a very slow march towards success in this very competitive career.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It’s never been easy freelancing in this business. Because filming wildlife is an exciting and attractive career, it’s competitive. That means jobs are few and far between, and rates aren’t nearly as high as in other sectors of the film industry.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
When it comes to filming wildlife, my specialty is actually that I’m a generalist. Some individuals really specialize and become an expert filming sharks, or filming from safari vehicles or helicopters. I’ve focused on being more well rounded so that like I did with my PBS: Nature – Big Bend film or the feature Deep in the Heart I could tell the stories of animals as diverse as salamanders deep in our aquifers, camera trap for ocelots, or filming fast flying hawks hunting bats. As with those two films, you can tell I’ve also tried to make telling wildlife stories about Texas part of my expertise. I was very lucky early in my career to get to travel the world filming for National Geographic, but it made me appreciate all the amazing and important wildlife stories we have here in our beautiful state of Texas that weren’t being told.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
It’s not so much about an app, but I’ve got a great community of friends that all chat on a Slack group to talk about anything and everything. Books, movies, our kids, work stress, etc. Many of them have been close friends since college, so we lift each other up in support, but we’re also quick to razz each other and take someone down a peg if they’re becoming too full of themselves.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.skipswildlife.com
- Instagram: skipswildlife
Image Credits
Len Neccefer, Eric Schmidt, Fran Hutchins
