Put the coffee on, maybe pour a glass of wine. This will take you about eight minutes to read, but it might be a great way to recalibrate for the year ahead. If you’re looking for the winners of the Gura Gear Giveaway, you can find those towards the bottom of this piece. My first camera was relatively easy to use. A …
Oh Sh*t! (When it Hits the Fan, This Kit Helps)
I was about to photograph a beautiful family of cheetah in gorgeous morning light when my camera returned an error message and wouldn’t—no matter what I did—focus. It wouldn’t even fire. By the time I got my lens swapped onto another body, the action was all over, and I was down a camera at the beginning of a month-long trip. Or …
Everything But The Cameras
The holidays are coming and though this is not about that, there might something in here that you could give to your favourite photographer, especially if that’s you! This is decidedly less philosophical than some of my blog posts, but I thought I’d show you what’s in my camera bag. Not the cameras and lenses, but the other stuff, the …
What’s in My Bag?
The right gear matters. I get a dozen emails a month that start with “I know you don’t like to talk about gear, but…” So let me stop you right there. I love talking about gear. As long as we’re talking about gear in terms of how it allows us to make the photographs we want to make, and doesn’t …
The Long & The Short of It
Among wildlife photographers, it is the long lens that gets all the glory. The bigger the glass, the more serious one is assumed to be about one’s craft. Less a tool than a symbol, sometimes, the bigger telephoto lenses telegraph to the world that we mean business. How I envied those photographers as a younger man, how incredible I imagined …
Packing For An African Safari (Updated)
The notes below are specific to Kenya but having done safaris in Zimbabwe and South Africa as well, most of these suggestions apply just as well to other places. I’ve been asked over the years, both by my safari clients and others, what and how to pack for a trip like this, so it felt like this might be a good time …
The Perfect Camera Bag?
I am embarrassed by how many camera bags I own. Unlike the cameras and lenses that have come into my life and served their purposes before being sold to find a new life with someone else, my camera bags seem to have entered the house through a one-way door. Perhaps you share my shame. Tidy to a fault in other …
My Remote Camera Set-up
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 …