In December 2025 a good friend and I ventured into the waters around Papua New Guinea and also took a foray inland to photograph colorful tribes.
In places like Stetin Bay, the water is remarkably clear, revealing steep reef walls, sponges, and schools of barracuda cruising past. The biodiversity is staggering. Coral gardens here are largely untouched, bursting with healthy hard corals and clouds of small fish.
Enjoy the photos, and have a great weekend!
After a lifetime spent chasing light across the globe, I’ve come to appreciate something surprising: some of the most meaningful photographic experiences are waiting right here at home. The U.S. still finds ways to catch me off guard, and I’m always looking for fresh ways to see familiar places. Over the coming year, I’ll be returning to a small collection of landscapes I know deeply. Each one offering its own creative challenges, rewards, and of course excellent company.
We’ll begin in Katmai, Alaska, where only two spots remain for what is, quite simply, the ultimate bear experience. Massive coastal brown bears, intimate encounters, and constant photographic opportunity make this trip raw, exhilarating, and unforgettable. If one thing nudges you toward Katmai, let it be this: there is nothing else quite like it. Closer to home, the Olympic Peninsula delivers lush rainforests, wild coastline, and gentle spring light that invitesslow, thoughtful composition. Mount Rainier is all about scale and atmosphere and is an ideal classroom for refining your approach to foregrounds and dramatic landscapes. In the Columbia River Gorge, we’ll turn toward abstraction, focusing on motion, color, and form. That creative thread continues in Astoria, Oregon, a playful mix of fog, boats, bridges, textures, and graphic surprises. This trip always sells out quickly, and with just two spots left, now’s the time to claim yours.
For those looking to travel outside the U.S., there are two standout international journeys coming up as well. In Morocco, we’ll explore dramatic desert landscapes, and vibrant markets. It’s an endlessly rich mix of culture, color, and texture that feels both exotic and welcoming. Later in the season, New Zealand offers a completely different experience: autumn color across the South Island, with glacier-carved peaks, misty fiords, and some of the most photogenic landscapes on the planet. As with all these trips, the focus goes beyond destination. it’s about learning how to see, sharing the experience with curious and passionate photographers, and creating in an environment where the pressure is low and the inspiration is high. Wherever you choose to join us, I hope to see you out there in the field!
Recently, Seattle lost one of its greats. Ann Wyckoff passed away at the remarkable age of 98, and it’s hard not to smile when thinking about the life she lived. Ann had a deep love for adventure and an unmistakable verve for life that she passed on to her children and everyone lucky enough to know her.
I crossed paths with her family in 1980 when I climbed Kilimanjaro with her daughter Martha. A few years later, in 1984, Ann joined our Ultima Thule Everest Expedition, spending a week with us in Lhasa, Tibet. The food there was pretty awful, but Ann had thoughtfully brought along a stash of pickled vegetables. They were fantastic, and somehow perfectly summed her up: prepared and generous. Funny what sticks with you after all these years, isn’t it? She will be deeply missed.
I’m excited to be the Keynote speaker for this year’s Nepal Spine Foundation fundraiser! This event will take place at the beautiful and exclusive Rainer Club in downtown Seattle on February 7th.
The Nepal Spine Foundation Fundraising Dinner and Auction supports our mission to advance spine care and neurosurgical education in Nepal through our partnership with Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital.
I’ll be giving a keynote speech that includes a slide show of recent work, and I’ll be joined by renowned alpinist and featured guest Graham Zimmerman.
Kick off the evening with a relaxed cocktail hour where you can grab a drink, enjoy appetizers, and catch up with friends while browsing our silent auction and Wine Toss. Afterward, you’ll move into the Cutter Room for a seated dinner created by the Rainier Club chef, with flavors inspired by traditional Nepali cuisine. It’s a great chance to settle in, enjoy something truly special, and soak in the atmosphere—VIP tables will be right up front for the night’s program.
The main event brings it all together with a warm welcome from the Nepal Spine Foundation’s co-founders, live traditional music from local Nepalese performers, and of course, Graham and myself.
Whether you come as part of a table or snag an individual seat, it’s shaping up to be an inspiring, fun, and meaningful night. Tables and individual tickets are available, along with sponsorship opportunities for those who want to support the cause even more.
I hope to see you there!
As the year draws to a close, I want to wish you warm holiday greetings from all of us at the Art Wolfe office. This has been a remarkable year of photography, shared moments, and creative discovery in some extraordinary places around the world. I recently posted my gallery of images from a wild 2026 that began amongst tens of millions of pilgrims at Kumbh Mela, took me through Saudi Arabia and the rainforests of Peru, and began winding down with nothing less than my first trip to Egypt.
View Art Wolfe’s 2025 In Review Gallery
I’m deeply grateful to those of you who have traveled with us time and again, and equally excited about the new friendships formed along the way. Thank you for trusting us to guide you, support you, and challenge the way you see photography. I look forward to continuing the journey together and to welcoming both familiar faces and new friends in the year ahead.
Click here to view the entirety of Art’s 2025 year in travel gallery.
In 2025, my travels took me across an extraordinary range of landscapes, cultures, and wildlife. India opened the year with unforgettable moments in Bandhavgarh National Park photographing tigers and birds, followed by the immense spectacle of the Maha Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj and the timeless atmosphere of Varanasi. Japan offered a dramatic contrast, from snow macaques in Nagano to the iconic red crowned cranes of Hokkaido. Along the way I explored cultural traditions in Saudi Arabia and Bhutan, and worked with form, texture, and color while photographing landscapes, culture, and abstracts in Vietnam.
Closer to home, I spent time in Oregon focusing on natural patterns and abstractions, and in Hawaii documenting the powerful Halema‘uma‘u eruption at Kilauea. Other highlights included the Tetons, Yellowstone, Glacier Bay, and Katmai in Alaska, as well as California’s Elkhorn Slough and the landscapes around Durango, Colorado. In Peru, encounters with spider monkeys, caiman, and giant otters made for remarkable wildlife experiences. The year concluded in Southeast Asia with Thailand’s Taoist Nine Gods Festival and the luminous Festival of Lights in Bangladesh.
Thank you to everyone who joined me on tours and events throughout the year. Your enthusiasm and curiosity made these journeys even more rewarding. I hope you will consider joining me in the field again in 2026 for another year of exploration and photography!
EXPOSURE CONTROL
A big challenge for photographers is that the camera simply cannot capture the range of brightness in the world that we can see. When we look at a subject with our own eyes, we can see all sorts of detail, from the brightest areas to the darkest areas. Unfortunately, the camera cannot. And when there is strong contrast between bright and dark areas, the camera will emphasize, even overemphasize, that contrast.
This can be especially problematic with bright skies and dark landscapes. It can be impossible to get a single exposure directly from your camera that captures both a good sky and good ground at the same time. Another problem can occur when you are photographing a subject in the shade against a bright, sunny background; the exposure range can be so extreme that, once again, there is no correct exposure to get a good image.
The first thing to do is accept that sometimes you just have to say no to a particular picture, recognizing that it may be impossible to get a good image given the lighting conditions since no exposure will be correct. If you can recognize this, you will start looking around for images that you can say yes to. That’s an important decision to be able to make.
To get a better photograph, in certain situations, there are things you can do to control the way light comes into your camera. A traditional way for landscape photographers to deal with a bright sky is to use a graduated neutral density filter.
This filter is half clear and half gray with a blend, or gradient, through the middle. By placing the dark part of the filter over the bright part of the scene, such as the sky, and the clear part of the filter over the darker part of the scene, such as the ground, you can balance the light coming through your lens so the camera can get a good exposure.
The challenge with a graduated neutral density filter is that it creates a line through the image. If you have a mountain or tree going into the sky, it will be darkened as well as the sky, for example. Unfortunately, this is starting to be a very dated look for photography. A graduated neutral density filter can still be helpful in knocking down bright light or brightly lit areas in the picture to balance them with the rest of the image, but you just have to use it carefully so the effect is not obvious.
Another way to work with multiple image exposures is to shoot an exposure for the bright areas, then an exposure for the dark areas. These two images are then combined in the computer by using the best of each. Shooting two images like this is actually quite easy to do.
Start by locking your camera onto a tripod. Shoot one exposure that makes your sky look good, then shoot a second exposure that makes your ground look good. Bring the two images into Lightroom, where you can adjust the sky picture to make the sky look its best, and the ground picture to make the ground look its best.
Then you send the two pictures over to Photoshop as layers. Put the two pictures on top of each other as layers and make sure they are lined up. Then simply remove the bad part of the top picture, revealing the good area of the bottom picture in that section of the image. You can do this in two ways. The down and dirty way is to simply use the Eraser tool by setting it to a large size and 0 hardness (a very soft brush). You then erase the bad part of the picture.
The second way to do this is to use a layer mask. Add a layer mask to the top picture/layer and use a large, soft-edged (0 hardness) brush to paint black onto that layer mask and block the bad part of the top picture.
For more tips and tricks, or a great gift for a photography enthusiast, my popular how-to books The Art of the Photograph and The New Art of Photographing Nature can be purchased in my online store, and are also available as a bundle.
If you’d like to see the masking process in action as a future lesson for the blog, leave a comment below. Although there are a lot of helpful tools these days to help you auto-mask and adjust exposures, nothing beats knowing how to manually edit your photos without relying on automated tools that might not always give you the best results. A fundamental understanding of masking is an incredible tool for any photographer to have available to them.
Condé Nast Traveler just named Tanzania, Morocco, and Namibia some of the top places to go in 2026 and I’m thrilled to be heading to all three, with room for you to come along. We’ve put together photo tours that dive right into what makes each place so special, whether it’s Tanzania’s quiet corners of the Serengeti, Morocco’s mix of cultures and dazzling landscapes, or Namibia’s wild stretches of desert and coastline. These aren’t your standard trips; they’re uplifting, immersive adventures built for people who want to really experience a place and come home with one-of-a-kind images they’re proud of.
I like to keep these groups small so we can slow down, follow the good light, and make the most of every moment. These tours offer a unique opportunity to see and photograph some of my favorite parts of the world at their best.
🌍 Tanzania – January 2026
Step into the heart of the Serengeti. Capture dramatic scenes of wildebeest families in motion, apex predators on the hunt, and the untamed rhythms of African wildlife in its natural habitat.
🌍 Morocco – March 2026
A vibrant photographic journey through Morocco’s mountains, deserts, coastlines, and richly layered cultures; an inviting kingdom where travelers feel at home while discovering endless inspiration.
🌍 Namibia – August 2026
Explore surreal desert landscapes in Swakopmund, rugged wildlife regions in Damaraland and Etosha, and the cultural richness of Windhoek while photographing Namibia’s striking contrasts.
Looking for something more local to fit into your busy schedule? I’ll be leading several no-fuss workshops in the Pacific Northwest this year, including the Olympic Peninsula, Mount Rainier, the Columbia River Gorge, Abstract Astoria (just two spots left for that one) and more!
Happy a happy Holiday Season!
As this year winds down, I want to take a moment to thank you for being part of my extended photographic family. Whether you’ve joined me in the field, collected a book or print, or simply followed along online, it’s our customers, clients and friends that allow me to spend my life doing what I love most: exploring the world, telling stories with a camera, and sharing the beauty of this planet with others. I’m incredibly grateful, and I wish you and your loved ones a warm and peaceful holiday season, and an inspiring year ahead filled with new images, ideas, and creative endeavors.
I’ll be skipping the traditional turkey this year in favor of salmon at a small family gathering here at home; it seemed fitting for a nature enthusiast from the Pacific Northwest. As I look ahead, I’m already excited for the journeys to come, including returning to Katmai, Alaska in 2026 to spend time with the bears like the one featured in the photo for this post. I am happy to have a small break to reflect on everything that I’ve experienced so far this year but I’m also looking forward to one of my busiest years of international travel.
Until then, thank you again from myself and my staff for your support, and here’s to another year of photography, exploration, and creativity!
If you’re looking to cross someone special off your holiday list, consider gifting them my wildlife magnum opus – Wild Lives! This “Big, Beautiful Book” is just that—full of the most iconic images I’ve captured over the years, from dozens of countries and insightful text by my good friend Greg Green.
Order before the end of November and get a free calendar – choose from Big Cats and Baby Animals. Choose the standard edition of Wild Lives or the Collector’s edition that comes in a gorgeous clamshell case with a signed print and more.
