Rob Sabatini, dentist and wildlife photographer, is showing through Sept. 30 at Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences' exhibition Wild Things/Far and Near. He was featured in a summer edition of "The Secret Lives of Dentists" in Virginia Living magazine:

 

The same drive that carries dentists and oral surgeons through the rigors of dental and medical school or running a practice often triggers a quest to perfect other skills, far from the sterile surfaces of their workaday life. How do some of our state’s top dentists spend their after-office hours? We met a photographer and a ballroom dancer, a group of cyclists, a musician and an artist, all who defy simple definition and all who strive to be the best in everything that they do. Meet some of Virginia’s most interesting dentists.

 

Periodontist and assistant professor Dr. Rob Sabatini encourages his students and residents at the VCU School of Dentistry in Richmond to adopt a hobby. “I always tell them, ‘it’s kind of too early for you, because of time commitments and financial limitations. But always be looking—always be looking for something that grabs you and makes you want to do it ... because some day, you’re going to have more time.’”

 

Nature photography “grabbed” Sabatini, 58. “I grew up in the Bronx, New York, which is like a concrete jungle. And I remember going places like Scout camps, and always wanting to catch frogs and stuff like that I didn’t get to do in the city,” he says.

 

Sabatini’s current exhibit at the Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences at VCU, Wild Things/Far and Near (through Sept. 30), comprises 32 photographs of animals from his travels both around the world and closer to home. The moments are intimate—a zebra grazing in the sunlight blaze in Kenya; sibling bear cubs nursing on a summer morning in Alaska—the timing, exquisite.