A month into the coronavirus pandemic, photographer Joel Sartore woke up early at home in Lincoln, Nebraska, and went outside to grab the newspaper. Grounded from traveling his usual six months a year, he’d been moping, unsure what to do now that his 2020 trips were canceled.

On the porch, a panoply of bugs buzzing around a light caught his eye—dragonflies, cicadas, june bugs, and many more. Suddenly, his funk lifted.

“I thought, I bet I could stay busy through this pandemic by photographing insects and other invertebrates,” Sartore says. As the founder of National Geographic’s Photo Ark, he aims to document every species living in zoos and wildlife sanctuaries around the world. (