This is a quick one but I’ve had some questions about the way I photograph bears and rhinos so close without frightening the animals or jeopardizing my own safety, so I’m posting this as a place to direct people interested in this. Please don’t read this as a review or an endorsement, just a guy telling you what’s working for …
Three Questions For Choosing Your Gear
In two days, I pack the truck and head north up Vancouver Island to meet my wolf guide, Tom, before spending two weeks camped on a remote island, waiting for coastal wolves to wander in front of my cameras. 🤞 Maybe some otters, bears, or eagles, too. I can’t wait. Packing for a trip is always a mix of excitement and indecision. …
Grizzly Bears: Big, Beautiful, and…Noise-Free?
There is a powerful argument to be made for photographing what intrigues you, what you love, or that by which you are obsessed. Making photographs takes time, so that curiosity, love, or obsession serves you well when your best work demands not fractions of a second or even minutes, but hours, days, or—in the case of longer projects—even years. Bears have …
A Bigger View? Is An External Monitor For You?
At 50, my eyesight isn’t what it once was. I’ve been wearing eyeglasses since I was about 15, almost as long as I’ve been a photographer, and shooting with glasses has never been easy. They spend a lot of time on top of my head when the camera’s to my eye, and my diopters are constantly moving around, depending on …
Packing For An African Safari
I arrived in Kenya a couple of days ago, and after looking for rhinos for two days in Nairobi National Park, I’m now settled in on the Maasai Mara and eager to get back to work behind the camera. No clients this time—just me and my best friend and a chance to photograph our favourite place on the planet. I’ve been asked …
Best For What?
For years, the article that got the most traffic on this blog was titled “The Best Travel Tripod?” Google sent people there in droves, but most of them didn’t stay long because I stubbornly refused to give an actual answer to that question: what’s the best travel tripod? Instead, I tried to encourage a particular way of thinking for readers to find …
What’s Missing From Your Photography?
I was both excited and nervous about going to Kenya recently after a two-year absence. Beyond the extraordinary experience of just being in my happiest of places, there is always the pressure of the photographs. Will they be stronger than they’ve been in the past? Will I find ideas that interest me? Will my new gear and my growing familiarity with …
New Year, New…Gear?
The danger of sound bites is that they lack nuance, and they sometimes come back to bite you in the ass. A dozen years ago, I coined the phrase, “Gear is Good, Vision is Better.” Some of you were around when I sent that out into the world. Some of you started reading my words because I wrote it. It …
Are You Using the “Right” Camera?
There is tremendous freedom when you finally stop worrying about meeting the expectations of others, most especially the expectation of doing things the way you should do them. For years, my Achilles heel was the expectation that I had to do certain things and use certain gear because that’s how the so-called pros did it. That’s how a “real” photographer …
New Thinking > New Gear
In the eternal quest for better photographs (and you can define that however you’d like), we all tend to spend a great deal of money. You probably already know how I feel about this. When I look back at the money I spent on gear that made promises that were never kept (and yes, I know, I heard what I …