I recently sat down once again with Parimal Deshpande for an episode of Earth Is Our Witness – in which I was the subject rather than the Artist-In-Residence. We’ll be releasing the episode in its entirety this holiday season. Until then, enjoy this segment on photographing wildlife in Africa as I discuss a variety of subjects ranging from conservation to technique – and stay tuned for more as we approach the release of Wild Lives!
Don’t forget to follow Earth Is Our Witness on Youtube, Instagram and Facebook for more amazing photographs and the stories behind them.
Happy Friday! The Grand Teton workshop is a wrap & it was fantastic, to say the least. Never before have we had such great luck with finding wildlife, bears in particular. We were blessed by the presence of Grizzly 610 and her three second-year cubs. Not only is 610 a hero mother, she is a tough survivor—in early October she was struck by a car, but came out of it OK. Born in 2006, She is a famous bear with her own Instagram and X accounts with thousands of followers (including me). Bison abounded, moose were off foraging in the lakes and willow thickets, and birdlife was all aflutter. Of course, the landscapes were breathtaking, with robust fall color.
All-in-all, a fantastic workshop full of variety and most importantly, great company. Check out what’s coming up this spring and take a trip with us!
A while back I went to Thailand in hopes of capturing the millions of bats that erupt from caves every evening, forming an hour-long stream of the furry fliers. My goal was to capture sharp images of plentiful bats to form patterns, and with the latest camera technology – mission accomplished. I can’t wait to see these printed in WILD LIVES, which releases in just about a month – preorder your copy today!
It’s another WILD Wednesday! Wild Lives will be published on November 28th, and there’s still plenty of time to pre-order your signed copy. Until the book’s release, we’ll be celebrating Wild every Wednesday with new behind-the-scenes footage and stories.
This week, I’m highlighting the location where the cover of Wild was captured – Katmai, Alaska. I lead tours in this location annually, and yet I always manage to come away with something different! It’s been an incredible experience to have been coming here for so long and seeing recognizable juvenile bears mature into adults and have cubs of their own. It should be noted that much of this video was shot on an iphone in 4K and is cropped in a bit making the animals appear quite close. Always keep a safe distance between yourself and any large animal! Even in the dramatic cover of Wild Lives, where my demise looks imminent, I’m a comfortable distance away shooting with a telephoto lens, and this bear is focused on charging for fish – not hunting photographers!
Books arrive next month – time to do some arm-stretches before the signing begins!
Welcome to the first of several WILD Wednesdays. Each Wednesday up until the official publishing date of Wild Lives on November 28th, I’ll be previewing the book with some behind-the-scenes footage from a handful of the many locations I visited to capture images for this massive, beautiful book – and I can’t wait to share it with everyone!
This week I’m sharing footage captured in Ladakh, India where we set about locating the elusive, legendary snow leopard. While there are some easier ways to capture this cunning cat, I wanted to ensure the photos I captured were indeed ‘wild’, and not an opportunity I would be sharing with numerous other tourists and photographers. This meant shooting from a distance. Fortunately the latest lens, software, and printing technology allowed for the creation of sharp images that both emphasized these great cats as well as their place in the rocky environments where they hunt.
Enjoy the video and tune in next Wednesday for more behind the scenes of Wild Lives. For fans of Tequila Time and Earth Is Our Witness, Parimal and myself have a special episode of Earth Is Our Witness in store for you as well! While you’re here, don’t forget to pre-order your signed copy!
I arrived home from my most recent trip this past Sunday and received an incredible birthday gift from friend and colleague Frans Lanting – the beautifully packaged and presented Collector’s Edition of Bay of Life, Frans & Chris Eckstrom’s epic book chronicling the rejuvenation of California’s Monterey Bay.
An area ravaged by rampant utilization by man during the gold rush which stripped the area of life and resources, Bay of Life documents the resilience of nature and the ways in which like-minded people can come together to help restore an ecosystem to not only a state of recovery, but one in which it thrives.
This message of hope and rejuvenation speaks directly to me. If you’ve caught any of my recent talks regarding my own projects, you’ll know the emphasis I put on describing how wildlife populations in many areas are beginning to recover after an initial decrease due to the influence and reach of man.
Though our climate situation remains dire, nature’s ability to rejuvenate when coupled with human awareness, consideration, and conservation efforts is remarkable. This book project not only documents this significant symbiosis between nature and man – it also helps educate and fund future endeavors to protect this beautiful habitat via the Bay of Life Project.
In a win for wildlife and indigenous communities, the last remaining oil and gas leases on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have been cancelled. The US is on track to produce more oil and natural gas than ever before and tapping this vital ecological sanctuary was always a bad idea.
Called “the place where life begins” by the Yup’ik and Gwich’in, the refuge is home to 250 animal species including vast herds of caribou that migrate from wintering Canada every year to calve on the coastal plain, grizzlies, wolves, and millions of migratory birds from as far as Antarctica. As long as I have been photographing, which is a long time indeed, it has been the focus of heated debate over resource extraction. One thing we should know is that this ban is not permanent, and more advocacy must be done to make sure this biologically rich area remains wild and untouched forever—a gift to future generations.
There’s no place like Katmai, there’s no place like Katmai, there’s no place like Katmai. I wish it were that easy to be transported to this extraordinary living laboratory of Alaska’s brown bears. This year we had better than ever photographic opportunities with the bears. From afar with our 100-500mm lenses set at the upper end of the focal length we witnessed at-times violent interactions between older siblings over salmon, tender moments between protective mothers and their cubs, and diverse birdlife of the tundra and waterways. The landscapes are vast and glorious, the wildlife abundant–truly a privilege to behold!
I’ll be heading back to Katmai next summer for two workshops – take your pick and join me next year! Save a few hundred bucks with early bird pricing through October.
Glacier Bay has been a favorite location of mine since I started teaching workshops there in the early 1980s. A small boat cruise in this vast watery landscape is the best way to witness the ecstatic breaching whales, the bevies of sea otters, and the flocks of cormorants, ducks, and puffins. The weather cooperated, which is never a given in Alaska.
A great advantage of the way we run this workshop is that when others are heading in to a harbor for dinner, we are able to stay out and work the best light of the day in late afternoon into evening. As a highlight, we were rewarded with gorgeous backlighting of surfacing whales. Never passing over the opportunity to experiment, we employed panning to photograph the waterlilies in a glacial kettle in one of our forays on land. Referencing Monet in one’s photography is always a good challenge.
The new owners of the Alaskan Song yacht are proudly continuing the great hospitality we have enjoyed in past years, making it easy for friendships to grow between our fellow travelers. I can’t wait to return in 2025 – Sign up today and reserve your spot!
The first decision every photographer must make is simply what to photograph. The best place to start, of course, is finding what appeals to you. If finding subject matter to photograph is easy, making it stand out is harder. Our first impulse when something catches our eye is to simply point the camera, center the subject, and shoot the picture. No surprise, then, that when we look at it later, we are all too often disappointed and wonder, “Why did I take that?”
The novelist and critic Henry James wrote, “In art, economy is always beauty.”
In a landscape, there is often a glut of information. For that reason, artists who sketch in the field will often take a piece of cardboard with a rectangle cut from the middle. By holding it
up to frame various sections in the scene, they can isolate what has potential to make a strong composition.
This can also be a valuable aid for photographers who have trouble visualizing the potential field of view of different focal length lenses. The closer you hold the hole in the board to your eye, the more it approximates the field of view of a wide-angle lens. The farther away you hold it, the more it resembles what a telephoto lens might see.
Isolating the subject is the first step in making a strong composition. This can be achieved in a number of ways-coming in close, backing up, looking down, looking up, changing the direction
of the light on the subject, waiting for another time of day, blurring the action or stopping the action, using selective focus to blur unwanted elements, putting a light subject against a dark background. All of these are potential creative solutions that We will address throughout this book.
Isolating your emotional response to the subject may be more complicated and take time and practice, but it is an important step for an artist. If you can analyze why you feel drawn to make a picture, and work to express the feeling clearly, chances are someone looking at it will ah respond with more than passing interest.
The image gallery above are all examples from my travels to Kenya in which I wanted to focus more on the emotions, textures, and compositions of isolated subjects and families. I’ll be heading back to Kenya in January – join me and make your own memories!
I arrived home from my most recent trip this past Sunday and received an incredible birthday gift from friend and colleague Frans Lanting – the beautifully packaged and presented Collector’s Edition of Bay of Life, Frans & Chris Eckstrom’s epic book chronicling the rejuvenation of California’s Monterey Bay.
