I came home from Zambia with a small handful of images I love. Maybe eight. The jury is still out. But a couple of them I really love. The rest are just meh, a collection of sketch images that don’t make me lean in or quicken my heart. Far from failures, they’re what it takes to get me to the good stuff. Between game drives last week, I found myself telling one of my guests that I was experiencing something like “diminishing returns.”
But that’s not it. Sure, the returns are fewer, but they’re also much better. I’m using a different metric than I once did, measuring my best work in single or low double digits instead of the bigger numbers, hoping I’d come home from a trip with many more workable photographs.
These days, I don’t want workable. I want WOW. I want wonder.
These latest images might not be your wow, but they are mine. That’s what I’m aiming for, and if I hit that target, then the returns aren’t diminished at all.
But there’s something else I’ve noticed. The longer I do this, the more I get a sense of what works and does not work for me, the more I know what gives me that “Hell, yes!” response to the photographs I best love, the more I am willing to leave the camera in my lap and give myself over to the wonder. Or to pick up the camera—photographs be damned—and let it pull me closer to that same awe but relax into the watching, into absorbing the light, the moment, and the wild thing that has allowed me to share its space.
There is nothing diminishing about wonder. Or being in the moment and letting it pull you above the fray of your daily life and the din of the endlessly chattering monkey brain.
I’ve noticed something else. This freedom to simply watch, with no expectation that what I’m looking at might become a photograph, often becomes exactly that: a photograph. More times than I can count, the camera has revealed something that I didn’t know about myself. It has proven me wrong so many times. And from that comes curiosity and exploration, and often, the kind of new perspective that leads to new work.
“I don’t like baboons,” I’ve said so many times. Nasty little buggers. And yet this time, my camera showed me backlit baboons, and I let my gaze linger a little longer, finding myself first questioning my prejudices, then succumbing to the wonder.
I said the same thing about hyenas (evil critters!) until I saw a mother tending her cub so tenderly that I fell in love. Watch a white-backed vulture for long and you’ll find all kinds of things to fully draw your interest, if not your emotions. And don’t even get me started on hippos, but somehow I found myself eye-level at a hippo pool, having the time of my life—and from the looks of it, so was the hippo!
It’s not just wildlife, either. The camera has this amazing way of showing us everyday things in new ways, if we let it. I woke on one of the eternal flights home, somewhere between my connections in Nairobi and Frankfurt to the light of dawn painting red squares on the cabin wall, pairing as best it could with the blue of unlit clouds, and it took my breath away.
What’s that quote? Life is not in how many breaths we take but how many moments take our breath away? Perhaps the same could be said of photographs: it’s not how many moments we capture, but how many moments captivate us.
I may make fewer photographs than I once did, but there’s nothing at all diminishing in the evolution of my craft. With or without it in my hand, the camera has amplified my life, extending the briefest of moments into years of enjoyment. I’m guessing it has done the same for you. More than trophies, the best of them are a collection of silent whispers: “Remember when? Wasn’t that…incredible?” They allow us to drop an anchor, of sorts, into the fast-flowing current of time, to hold ourselves within it for much longer than our forward-looking minds seem to do on their own.
We learn young to look ever-forward, but as time pulls us along and so much of our life is converted to memories, the ability to hold still within that tidal pull of time becomes more important. Not to always be looking back, but to have a present imbued with the flavour of all that we’ve lived. These things don’t pass us by; they accumulate. More so when we have a net to catch them with. The camera has helped me widen that net and tighten the spaces between the holes. Maybe it’s the net itself. I wonder at smaller things now than I once did, and where there is wonder, there’s a chance at not only a photograph, but a life.
For the Love of the Photograph,
David
Do you photograph wildlife? My publisher has had a lapse in judgment and is letting me write another book, this time about photographing wild things. Before I get too deep into it, if you photograph wildlife, would you be willing to answer a couple of questions? Take the time and I’ll draw three names for a signed copy of the book when it comes out. Click here to take the quick survey.
Want to come with me? Want to join me in Zambia to photograph leopards next August? How about grizzly bears in B.C. in September? Get your name on my Adventure List and you’ll be the first to know about these opportunities. I’m putting the next Zambia trip together now; add your name to the list and I’ll send you details once they’re solid.
Comments
David, as always an inspiration. Backlit baboons are the only way I like them myself. You mentioned the memories that photographs bring. Let me emphasis that point. Last fall my very healthy, active husband had an ischemic stroke. Many little miracles happened to get him to a stroke trauma center in time. He has aphasia and struggles to speak and his cognitive abilities were hit hard. A new normal. But……my photographs, I can sit beside him and when one appears on the screen he either remembers it immediately and we talk about that trip or, he has no recall at all. I then recount the trip and what we saw and did and watch the joy and wonder fill his eyes. I take the trip twice all because of my photographs. Keep snapping.
Janet, what a beautiful and heartbreaking note. I am so sorry for the challenges you’re both going through. It all underlines the importance of living our lives while we can, and of making photographs for ourselves, of all the smallest moments in life. I worry some of us will be so concerned with the “epic” stuff, the blue ribbon stuff, that we forget it’s not those moments we’ll want to remember as much as the little personal moments. What a gift these photographs can be. I love how you put it: I take the trip twice. My best to you both. Courage, my friend.
Absolutely love the giraffe and bird photo. Beautiful light and perfect timing.
Loved this article. It is not just about photography, but about life as well as photography as part of life. Thx
Thank you, Margie. I was particularly tickled by that one. I went all that way to photograph leopards and the image I am most excited about is a picture of a giraffe!
Love this, David. “The camera has this amazing way of showing us everyday things in new ways, if we let it.” In Shambhala Buddhism, we might call this “ordinary magic.”
As always, thank you for sharing your experiences with us.
Love that, Tif. Ordinary magic. Thank you for sharing that.
I have long read your posts, and enjoy them immensely. The post today came just after I read Alex Kilbee’s post where he talked about times when he experiences dry spells in his photography – something that we all experience, whether as a photographer or in other endeavors. He has a quote that I think dovetails with the sentiments you wrote about in this post.
“Inspiration is a delicate thing – like a butterfly. Snatch at it, and it will fly away. Hold out a calm finger, and just occasionally it’ll perch on that finger for a moment.” – Alex Kilbee, Saturday Selections, August 2, 2025
I find that when I try to push through an inspirational dry spell in my photography (a hobby), my photographs don’t get better; rather, they become worse because I have no emotional connection to the photographs I make. This, in turn, makes me less motivated to go out and make photographs. It becomes a vicious downward cycle rather than an impetus to a more creative, artistic state.
On a recent early morning trip across the Cedar Mountains in mid-southern Utah, I had the privilege of witnessing a most beautiful sunrise. Rather than rush for a camera to take a photograph (and it would have been a beautiful one), I left the camera where it was and just took it in. I have no tangible reminder of that morning, but I will never forget it because I experienced it rather than spending my time trying to capture it and never truly experiencing it at all. The butterfly came to me that morning and, because I did not try to snatch at it, it stayed and inspired me in a way no photograph will ever do.
As I have started to be more present rather than scrambling for a camera and fumbling through settings to “get that photograph”, a more mindful/contemplative (I don’t really like either word, but they will do for now) approach to photography, I am making fewer photographs, but finding that my rates of taking a photograph that I love which, admittedly has been low to begin with, is now increasing. Letting the photograph come to me rather than relentlessly pursuing it is paying off.
Thanks for your inspiring thoughts, as always
Beautiful Larry. There’s another aspect to your sunrise story. With the photograph it will always remain as it was. Without the photograph the moment grows in your mind. Your memory of the experience is free to fan out, to be better, more important to you with every telling. Often the camera helps us see things, but there are times it just gets in the way. The notion of snatching at the butterfly is beautiful and, I think, very apropos.
What was the name of the Hippo again? It’s amazing to think that of all the things we saw on that trip, that the images that captured you weren’t the big moments that you often seek on a safari – the lion kill or the leopard hunt – but it was in the quieter moments. Thanks for a fantastic trip!
Phil! His name was Phil and he was a very naughty hippo. A bit of a jerk, really. 🙂
Bbeautiful words. I saved the last two paragraphs to read again later.
Your beautiful words capture thoughts as well as your camera captures photos. I saved the last two paragraphs to read again later.
Thank you, Vivian.
Your images are incredible but your perspective absolutely captures what I have been thinking about – it’s almost like you read my mind!
Thanks, Taryn. We clearly think in some similar ways. 🙂
I know you think very, very carefully about your images and how to process them to get exactly what you want. I do agree that the images above are truly interesting as well – I’m not sure I could cull my images down to so few, as that is a skill in its own right. But I had two questions looking at the images above. The first was on the giraffe – why did you leave the little round lighter spot to the right of the birds wing, and perhaps that smaller bright spot above the right ear? And on the baboon family, the collection of animals backlit by the sun is fantastic, but the bright corner below them is very distracting to me. Perhaps an article about when to stop with processing might be interesting!
All of nature and its “beings” (except the human ones) are a wonderment to me and love getting out to photograph it for me while I do share hoping others will appreciate what I do but if they don’t … so be it. I have not gone to far off places for lack of time/money and now my age (83) is becoming a factor too. Love your images and perspective of it all.
There’s wonder aplenty out the front door, Hubert. I’ve been thinking it might be time to get a macro lens and spend some time with the bees that attend our lavender in the gardens…
Hi Steven! I LOVE this question! The short answer is this: those images are just a starting place. I’ve done basic work on them but before they get printed or published I’ll do more work on them. I love that little spot of light to the right of the giraffe, but I’d like it more if there were several of them. Will I clone it out? I’ll probably do so and then see how it feels. Or I’ll leave it. I’m less drawn to perfect images than I once was and little imperfections like this are sometimes a little more poetic than a perfectly cleaned image. Same with the baboons. I might dial down that lower left corner, but I might also amplify it to make the scene a little more luminous. At a certain point I think you know when you’re done with an image, at least for now, but it’s a gut thing more than a head thing. And who knows? In 2 years, if I feel the image endures, I might come back to it and re-work it completely!
I love all these! So wonderful photos and, yes, hippo is really having a good time🤗
I love those hippos! I didn’t know I did, but now I can’t wait to spend more time with them! 🦛
Love the baboon and hippo; can’t wait to be with all those magnificent creatures again!
Counting the months!!