Born in Alaska and raised in the wilds of Iowa, Drew spent countless hours outdoors as a youth building forts along the Iowa River and delivering an incalculable number of newspapers. The travel bug bit him hard as a teenager when his family lived on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, their base for exploring Turkey, Greece, Ukraine and western Russia. After stints living on the east and west coasts of the U.S., Drew made his way back home to Alaska in the late 1990s. His first job there sent him to a bear-viewing camp where he found his calling: bears. Since then, Drew has spent more than 20 years observing and photographing brown bears, black bears and polar bears across Alaska and Canada, including six seasons running the bear photo-identification program in the famed McNeil River State Game Sanctuary, home to the largest congregation of brown bears on Earth. Even when he isn't guiding, much of Drew's time is spent pursuing and photographing Alaska’s varied megafauna. While best known for his work with bears, Drew’s nature passions are varied, ranging from the northern lights to musk oxen to monarch butterflies. 

Drew got his start in photography as a youngster in the darkroom of his parents’ small-town newspaper. From there, it was an easy expansion into wildlife photography as he combined two growing interests, and conservation emerged as a driving motivation. Stemming from his belief that imagery can be a powerful tool for change, Drew has made conservation an important theme in his photography. In 2019, the Alaska Conservation Foundation awarded Drew the Daniel Housberg Wilderness Image Award for his use of photography in the fight against the proposed Pebble Mine. As president of the nonprofit organization Friends of McNeil River, Drew works with a broad coalition of Alaska. Natives, conservation organizations, photographers and businesses to bring permanent protections to the Bristol Bay region of Alaska.

Drew enjoys exploring many different photographic styles and editing techniques to push the boundaries of what is possible in wildlife storytelling. Always a student, Drew looks to constantly adapt and experiment with new approaches to nature photography. View Drew's latest photography portfolio additions on Instagram at @drewhh.

Winters are generally a slow time in the bear-viewing business (think hibernation), so Drew fills his downtime cross-country skiing, editing photos, making homemade pretzels, and staying up all night to photograph the northern lights...until it's time to get back into the field with his camera once again.

Enjoy this selection of Drew's nature photography: