The penguins are posing, the polar bears are nursing, and Meline’s eyelashes are frozen.
For OVS alum Meline Ellwanger, these were brief glimpses into her past year as a wildlife photographer that she shared earlier this week with students and teachers at the Littlefield Student Commons.
Meline, a 2021 graduate of the Upper Campus, has been traveling the world photographing wild animals, from the Sahara desert to the African jungles, Antarctica, and Canada.
Meline returned to Ojai Valley School on Monday, as part of the school’s Distinguished Speaker Series, to share her images and stories from her worldwide adventures. 
“My most challenging travels have been to some of the harshest places on Planet Earth, the Arctic, and Antarctica,” said Meline, who, in taking a gap year before starting at Montana State University, has traveled the globe.
“The way that life can still thrive in these environments is fascinating and being able to document it was incredible,” Meline added. “I put myself into -43 degrees weather, photographing with frozen eyelashes and numb fingers to capture these amazing moments and share them with the rest of the world.”
In college, Meline plans to study wildlife ecology and conservation, while minoring in zoology. Taking this year off has allowed her to go to all these amazing places to expand her photography portfolio.
“I didn’t want to just go out of high school and immediately go into college,” Meline explained. “I wanted one year where I could just focus on what I love most and use all of my time to focus on it.”
To share her photography with the world during her travels, Meline used Instagram and Tiktok.
She amassed over one million views on a Tiktok she posted giving an overview of the work she has done so far. Meline’s work has also been featured on prominent photography accounts such as NatGeo Germany and NikonUSA. 
For her work, she was named the 2021 Young Wilderness Safari Photographer of the Year by Wilderness Safaris, a foundation dedicated to helping preserve wildlife.
Assistant Head of School Crystal Davis, who oversees student life at the Upper Campus, was the driving force behind getting Meline back to campus to present her polar photography.
Ms. Davis said she was in awe of her Senior Capstone Project, and knew that Meline should come back to the OVS campus to present her work.
“At graduation when I learned what her plans were for her gap year, I asked her if she would come back and speak as part of our Distinguished Alumni Speaker Series because based on how I had seen her grow as a student and based on the quality of her Capstone presentation,” Ms. Davis said. “I knew that she would put together something really interesting for us.” 
Ms. Davis felt a sense of pride in Meline during the presentation, especially at how confident Meline became to be throughout the years.
“I thought the presentation was professionally presented, I thought the substance of the information in it was edifying and I thought that she interacted with our student body in a way that was inspiring and graceful, and poised, ” Ms. Davis said.
“We [the administration] got together several years ago and came up with what constitutes for us the portrait of a graduate, what qualities we would like a graduate of the Upper Campus of the Ojai Valley School to embody,” Ms. Davis added. “As I watched Meline give that presentation, I was thinking to myself, and I told her this afterward, that I felt like she embodied all the characteristics of the Ojai Valley School portrait of a graduate and it made me really proud to see her in that role.”
For her presentation, Meline talked about how she sat for hours in frigid temperatures to photograph polar bears just 15 feet from her lens, trekking through the swampy Ugandan jungles to find mountain gorillas, crisscrossing the globe to discover cheetah cubs, elephants, and penguins
Her presentation was beautifully crafted and packed with tons of information on climate change and polar bear anatomy.
One of her most memorable moments during her travels in the past year was seeing a mother polar bear nursing her three cubs.
“She was super relaxed with their presence which is always a great feeling as a photographer that you’re not disturbing any of the wildlife,” Meline said. “She just nursed her cubs right in front of us. Like I just get goosebumps thinking about it. That was one of my most incredible moments throughout my entire career.”
