Frans Lanting merged his two great passions – photography and environmentalism – into one quest.

Before becoming one of the world’s great photographers, before his work for National Geographic and before meeting his wife, Chris Eckstrom, with whom he co-created the Bay of Life project, Frans Lanting was an environmental economist.

As a student from the Netherlands, he took a trip to Monterey and to Big Sur. He encountered two things that changed his path forever – the photography of Ansel Adams and the Westons, as well as the seascapes and landscapes of the Monterey Bay area.

Bay of Life is a multidimensional project Lanting and Eckstrom launched earlier this year. Its immediate product is a book, Bay of Life: From Wind to Whales, that immortalizes the local mix of physical features and microclimates, where all life is being shaped by the powerful influence of the ocean. But the book is just a beginning; there will be multiple editions of it, as well as a traveling exhibition, a website, a series of events, an educational campaign, and a charitable fund in Santa Cruz. You can meet Lanting in Monterey twice this week – at the B&H Optic West Conference where he will deliver the opening keynote address on Sunday, Nov. 6, and during a photo workshop on Tuesday, Nov. 8.

Weekly: So California photographers were your early heroes?

Lanting: It was a big reason why I became a photographer later on. This project, Bay of Life, is a tribute to all the great people that lived and worked here. And we have this unique history in Monterey Bay of artists and activists collaborating for the greater good. Ansel Adams was an activist in his day. We are now collaborating with other activists, and scientists, and community organizations, who take the steps in healing the Monterey Bay because there are issues on the horizon. It’s going to take a concerted effort for all of us to work to safeguard the quality of life here.

You live north of Santa Cruz. That’s outside of the Monterey Bay area.

Different people define Monterey Bay in different ways. For some people it’s just a marine environment, to us it’s much bigger than that. We can define it by the watersheds. All the rivers, all the streams that drain to the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, we consider being part of Monterey Bay. That includes all the streams on the north end of Monterey Bay, north of Santa Cruz. All the streams in Big Sur also drain to the sanctuary. Inland, the entire Salinas Valley and Pajaro Valley – to us it’s all part of Monterey Bay. One of the things we embraced in this project is looking at Monterey Bay as a whole. It’s a unique confluence of land and sea. The ocean has a tremendous influence on the quality of life on the shore, and vice versa.

Many of the photos in the book are yours. But many are not.

Chris and I are the creative co-creators of this project. We want to open it to others to collaborate. We have so many excellent photographers, artists, scientists and activists. It’s not only our story­ – we want to celebrate the achievement of others. So we reached out to other photographers, to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and searched for historical photographs that documented the era of exploitation.

The book includes incredible closeups of salamanders. How did you make a salamander stay still? How do you find them?

We rely on specialized knowledge and the participation of others. We worked with a salamander expert to help us find one. Those Yosemite creatures [arboreal salamanders] are very rare and come out only on certain conditions. One of the salamanders in the book lives in the trees, and another one can be found in only some parts of Santa Cruz County. We were lucky to find one.

How do you get so close to animals?

You have to give them space and you have to give them time. I try to understand animal behavior. And I’m waiting for the moment when they reveal themselves in a way that makes for more than a standard picture.

What is on your photographic Christmas wish list?

There are many things farther inland. The Salinas River is an amazing habitat that deserves to be documented better.

FRANS LANTING PRESENTS at 10am Sunday, Nov. 6 as keynote speaker at B&H Photo’s OPTIC West at the Monterey Conference Center. Free. bhphotovideo.com.

SEASCAPE PHOTO WORKSHOP happens from sunrise to sunset on Tuesday, Nov. 8 $995. Visit bayoflife.net to register or to buy the book.