FRAMES Photography Podcast
FRAMES Photography Podcast
Steve Gettle
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In today's episode, W. Scott Olsen speaks with Steve Gettle, an award-winning American nature and wildlife photographer whose four-decade career has taken him around the world, with work published by National Geographic, Audubon, the BBC, and other major outlets.
You can visit Steve's website here.
I was in Yellowstone. I was on Fountain Flats, which is a very flat area. And there was a young bull moose, and he was crossing this little stream and he stopped where there was a mound, and his hindquarters was behind the mound. And there was 30 other photographers there. And I wanted him to take just one step to clear so he would see, I'd see his whole body in the river. So it was mating season. So I gave one of these, oh, which is moose for like, hey there, big boy. And this moose, I wanted him to take one step. Well, he looked and he looked at me and he started running. And I had a 600 millimeter lens. I was, you know, 100 yards away. So I stepped, it was on a tripod. I stepped around my camera and raised my arms and the international sign for stop. I'm a person, not a moose. And this made the moose mad. And he came at me, he started running at me even more. And he was running by all these other photographers. And I had no idea how good my mating moose call was.
SPEAKER_01This photography podcast is brought to you by Frames, a quarterly printed photography magazine. Here is today's host, W. Scott Olson, with another fascinating conversation.
SPEAKER_02Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to another podcast from Frames Magazine. My name is Scott Olson. And you know what? I believe every single one of us who has or is a photographer has a kind of secret fantasy life of things that we would like to do. Things that are out there and they just call us. It could be the field, it could be the street, it could be the studio. But we always have this thing in front of us that we're chasing. And we want to go do that. It motivates our work, it motivates our passions. Sometimes it motivates our frustrations. And one of the things for me, because I love travel, I love being on the road. One of the things for me is to do more wildlife photography, to do more nature photography, to get out there and not just my backyard, although backyards, there's nothing wrong with those, but to get to the big places, to get to the big animals, to get to the sites that are just so large, they're a little bit bigger than my own imagination. And there is nobody on the planet right now that's doing a better job of that or providing more access for others to join him than Steve Gettle. Steve and his wife Nicole are, they've been on the, they're on the road 300 days a year, which is either heaven or hell, depending on how you look at it. Um they have they offer tours to more than 30 locations, six of the seven continents, 25 countries. And not just because they like to travel, it's because their work is fantastic. Um Steve's work's been in the Museum of Natural History in London, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, um, National Center for Nature Photography. I mean, just go, he's been in National Geographic, Canadian Geographic, Audubon, the BBC, his works in calendars from the World Wild and books, from the World Wildlife Fund, the National Wildlife Federation, contest winners all over the place. And for more than 30 years, now he's been out there taking pictures and developing a voice, developing a style, which is fantastic. And in the last several years, he's turned that around to education to say, okay, I've got a voice, I've got a talent, I'm gonna see if I can share that with the rest of the world. And today he's gonna share with us. I cannot tell you how excited I am to be talking with Steve today. Steve, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing, man?
SPEAKER_00Thanks so much, Scott. That was the most gracious introduction. I think I'm gonna have to I'm gonna listen to a recording of that every morning as I eat my Wheaties until the day I'm gonna.
SPEAKER_02There you go. God, did they still make Wheaties?
SPEAKER_00I'm I'm hoping so because that's the only thing that would go with that introduction. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_02You're welcome. And that's gonna be the disappointment. You're gonna go to the grocery store tomorrow and figure out that they don't. I'm sure they make Wheaties.
SPEAKER_00I can substitute Cheerios.
SPEAKER_02You are doing the work that fills my dreams at night. But let's go back to how this evening all got started for you. I know you did stock photography for a while. I know you owned a gallery for a few years. You know, there was a whole kind of ramping up to your career. And you say that you found your passion for photography just out of high school, but did a little bit of digging. I couldn't find out how. Did somebody just hand you an intimatic? Or you know, what happened after high school that put a camera in your hand? And then you said, oh, not only is this camera in my hand, this camera is going to be my life.
SPEAKER_00Well, I I've always been into nature. You know, as a as a young kid, I was the one hunting frogs and chasing dragonflies. So, you know, as as I was out exploring and and and witnessing some of these things, I thought, well, you know what? I want to be able to share this with people. And I can't draw, I can't paint. So the camera became my tool for sharing what I saw out in the wild. And I started off with, you know, just a basic, you know, a Minolta X370 and a 50 millimeter lens and you know, went from there. And then then I soon realized that, you know what, all of this gear and the things, the places I want to go, this all costs money, and I need to start start figuring out a way to fund some of that. So I I tried to work on monetizing things.
SPEAKER_02Okay. And how did that start? Did you know did stock photography even enter your vocabulary at that point?
SPEAKER_00Not at that point. I mean, obviously you have to have uh a body of work, but I think I started off with uh, you know, doing juried fine art shows around the country, usually just in in my local area, but then I expanded to throughout the Americas and uh I did that for about 20 years.
SPEAKER_02Oh man. Um you you you told in another interview that you recently found a bunch of your old three by five prints. Do you see yourself in those prints?
SPEAKER_00I I see a very young version and undeveloped version of myself in those prints. They are they're humbling. But that, you know, honestly, Scott, as you know you're aware, that's how we all start off, right? We all start off just drawing a frame around a pretty part of the world and pushing a button.
SPEAKER_02And, you know, I have got I I'm I'm gonna measure it in pounds, is what I'm gonna do. Um, you know the photographs that I've got at home that are family trips, that are just, you know, snapshots of everything. But there's something about, you know, was it the field work that captured you? Was it seeing the print in your hand?
SPEAKER_00Well, it was it was being able to put these memories into a uh you know longer lasting thing. And uh it was a reason and excuse for me to get out into the woods in the in the meadows and the the forest that I loved. And and we're talking Lower Michigan, right? Yes, yep, southeast Michigan.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so we haven't got giraffes and lions you know here. You know, we've got cardinals and robins and frogs.
SPEAKER_00Yes, which I still love to shoot. And that's actually, ironically, that's one of the things I I kind of miss shooting. I I love traveling around the world, but ironically, I do miss the things in my backyard.
SPEAKER_02Oh man. Well, you know, I I I have never lived in Michigan, but living over here in North Dakota and um having lots of friends and relatives on the east, I've driven the UP in Lower Michigan, you know, a bunch of times. It's just gorgeous, gorgeous country.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Michigan is a is a great state for a nature photographer. You know, we've got all four seasons. We've got, you know, some some significant wilderness in the uh in the upper peninsula, and you know, there's a there's a lot to photograph here.
SPEAKER_02Tell me about the early successes of your work when someone like someone else looked at your image and said, This is good. You you've got something to say here.
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, it it's funny. As as as I was getting my start, you know, I heard a lot of that. You know, I friends and family were all very, very gracious and and and gave me some good reviews on my work. But surprisingly, I I got humbled when I got in front of other photographers. I went and I I got involved in a camera club, and I thought, well, I've been shooting for five years. I've got pretty good good stuff, I've got good gear, I understand exposure. And I went in, I I exhibited some of my work, and it was humbling. I I learned exactly what I didn't didn't know.
SPEAKER_02Oh, did they they look at you and say, nice try-kid, or was that encouraging?
SPEAKER_00Well, they were more encouraging than that. But but uh, you know, I mean that's part of the process until you start getting in front of getting some critical feedback on your work from people who understand photography and understand uh you know how it works, that's when the real growth starts. And, you know, you can take that and grow with it, or you can get discouraged and and you know, give it up.
SPEAKER_02And were you getting outside of Michigan at this time, or was this still pretty much Midwestern flora and fauna?
SPEAKER_00There it was a lot of Midwestern stuff, but I was starting to go out to Yellowstone and go down to the Smoky Mountains into Florida and things like that. So I was getting out and about a little bit.
SPEAKER_02Oh, very cool. So, okay, tell me about I mean you you owned a gallery. Where did that come from?
SPEAKER_00Well, that was kind of an offshoot of the art show business. You know, when I was doing the art shows, I had a lot of prints, and and you know, that was uh I had a lot of friends that were in the art show business, and I joined forces with two other photographers. I was the wildlife guy. I had uh a good friend of mine who was uh a landscape guy, and then we had another guy that did, you know, European scenes. And uh we joined forces and opened a gallery in Sagatuck, Michigan, and it uh it lasted for three or four years, and then it just got to be too much with all of our travels and things, and and we closed it up.
SPEAKER_02Financially, would it have still been viable if you weren't traveling as much?
SPEAKER_00Um, I it probably would. Saga we we didn't have a great location. Sagatuck, Michigan was uh was a tourist area, so we did really good when the tourists were in town, but once the leaf peepers went away, it was a it was a struggle.
SPEAKER_02Well, no, I wonder because I mean I think galleries for photographers are like bookstores for writers. It's it's one of those fantasy things that we've got out there. You know, someday I'm gonna own a gallery. That would be cool. And then, you know, it's just a giant money pit.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, and it's a job. And it's, you know, we had employees, and you know, it was it was more work than that we were all able to do, even with three of us.
SPEAKER_02Well, then you know, you you say on your own website, you know, this is all going along splendidly, but then you decide to go into the direction of photo tours. And and you had initially until a worldwide event happened, um, you had no trouble filling the trips. Well, talk to me about, you know, Tuesday night, you're sitting at the dinner table and you say, hey, honey, let's start leading trips. I mean, why this step?
SPEAKER_00Well, I so the art shows, once digital photography, when I did art shows, it was all film. It was all, you know, I was shooting slides and making internegatives and doing prints. And then digital came along. And then all of a sudden everybody was a photographer, and everybody, you know, if you were going to buy a print and you had a friend who was a photographer and you could go to an art show and buy a print, you know, a lot that that business kind of slowed down a little bit. And, you know, digital opened the doors for a lot of people to get into photography because it was a lot easier to learn because there was this instant feedback. You know, when I first started taking pictures, I was shooting slides. I would take a picture, I take a note of exactly how I made my exposure. And then two or three weeks later, when I got the picture, the slides back, I would look at my notes and I go, Oh, I see why I screwed that up. I did this wrong. You know, and now with digital, we had instant feedback. So a lot of people were getting into photography. And I thought, well, all these people need to learn. And, you know, doing the shows was getting kind of old. And so I decided to move into that. And I kind of weaned off of shows and moved into workshops and tours. And first, it was mostly workshops. It was taking people to like the Smoky Mountains and Yellowstone and more very intensive training sessions and not so much big expeditions to other places, to places people wanted to photograph. It was just more of a learning thing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and you make a really good distinction on your website between tours and workshops.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, workshops and tours are are different things. I mean, there's absolutely learning in both experiences, but workshops are shorter, four or five days. Um, and it's, you know, seeing and and solving photographic problems out in the field with us, you know, working hand in hand with people. Photo tours are more location-based, epic locations, people places people want to go and photograph and experience things. And I think our job there is getting you into the places that you wanna where you can make these images. And there's absolutely a lot of learning involved on photo tours too, but it's more, it's generally more experienced photographers, and we're, you know, the the learning comes in doing things like, you know, hey, what what kind of a shutter speed do I need to stop uh uh running cheetah? Or you know, if we're doing flash photography or, you know, things like that, different techniques that people don't do in their normal everyday photography.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and you know, even the most experienced photographer is gonna benefit from a workshop because there's all sorts of talents and and skill sets that are not naturally part of our kit. Um, you know, I'm not a big filter guy. I would love to go to a workshop that is, okay, here's 75 different filters, you know, colors and haze and glow, whatever. Um, and and let's play with them. Let's let's learn each one. That would be a real benefit for you know for someone like me.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_02But still, what was your first tour when you said we are now doing tours? What was the very first one?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I would say we, you know, we kind of tiptoed into tours with things like like uh Yellowstone and Florida Birds, and and those are more like tourists and workshops. But again, the the line between a tour and a workshop is is not as thin as you think it is. You know, there's there's learning in in both situations. But then I'm sorry. And people were hungry, people were hungry for this. You got you had clients. I did. I had been working for 30 years to build a name and a reputation and and a body of work to support this. So, you know, that's that's one of the things, you know, back then it was was hard to build a name and and get yourself out there. You know, the only way to do it was through getting your work published in in calendars and magazines and things like that. Nowadays with social media, it's a little bit easier, but it's still difficult because there's a lot more of us trying to do it too.
SPEAKER_02I was gonna say, I mean, you know, these days you can have a killer shot, and it's one of 65,000 that were posted this hour. Um, you know, to for someone to actually see that shot um is probably more difficult now because back then you just had an editor you had to get past, um, someone that agreed with your style and your taste, and then you know, you're in the calendar or in the book.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00And then I hooked up with got an agent. You know, I'm working with Minden Pictures, who's uh, you know, uh uh nature and wildlife stock photography house. And stock is not anything like it used to be, but that certainly got me in front of more agents or more more uh editors and got my work out there more. So that was a big, a big step in my photographic career as well.
SPEAKER_02So, okay, you got you've been working all these years, you got a reputation, you got the this tour and workshop business that's coming up, you know, and and basically you're saying to the photographic world, hey kids, let's go outside and play. And COVID comes along. And suddenly, yeah, nobody is going outside to play. What'd you do?
SPEAKER_00We we shut down for two years. It was a real kick in the teeth. In fact, we uh we were supposed to go to Costa Rica, take a group to Costa Rica in, I think between the end of March, first part of April. And it was, it had just hit. We were leaving in like a week, and we sent out an email to the to the we had eight participants. We sent out an email to everybody and we said, okay, you guys, do you want to do this or do you not? We don't know what to do. And four of them wanted to go, and four of them didn't want to go. So we we we said we were gonna follow them, and then so we had to make a decision. So we ended up pulling the plug on the trip, and uh it was a good thing because we would have been we would have ended up stuck down there for a month or two. So, but so we canceled all of our workshops and our tours for for two years actually, and uh we built, we kind of redid our backyard and and put in a meadow and turned it into a photographic paradise. And then the other thing that we did was turned out to be a really smart idea was we I put together a series of talks and and uh lectures that I did, and we did them, we marketed them to camera clubs all over the country, and they were like one-hour presentations on you know, on macro photography, how to do birds, how to do mammals, how to do flash. You know, we had like 12 different programs, and we ended up doing this for 200 clubs all across the country, actually, all across the world. And we did them all for free. We just said, hey, give us, give us your email, and we will give you a program for all of your club. And it turned out that that was a great marketing tool, and you know, that expanded our our email list exponentially, and those are the people that are still coming on trips with us today.
SPEAKER_02I was gonna say you have got the teacher's gene because you know, I've been watching your Friday photo tips, I've been watching the other online video series that you've got, and they are remarkable. And I can, I can not only you know for camera clubs, for anybody. You start digging in there, and it's it's one of those, you know, those um dangerous things for me because I start watching one, you know, like on light reflections, and then I start watching another one, I start watching, you know, suddenly four hours have gone by. Uh and I've I've just been you know really digging your work. But you have got the that knack for not only demonstrating, but explaining it at a wonderful pace. Um so everybody, you got to go check out the video work and the YouTube stuff. A couple of things that you've said that I want to bring up. I have heard you know from a number of other editors, well-known, you know, nature and and um travel photography magazines, this kind of stuff, that they want the photographer to be the most educated person in the room. You know, not the writer. They want the photographer to be the most to be the most by educated, I mean informed on whatever the subject is. And a lot of them, when they're looking for talent, they're looking for specialists. They they only want, they don't want just a polar bear photographer. They want a left-handed male polar bear who's a Capricorn. Um, you know, they they they want a super level of sp of specialization. And yet you argue the other way. You know, you you photograph everything. What is the danger and the merit, if if you're into nature photography, if you're into wildlife, of specialization not enough or too much?
SPEAKER_00I I mean, there's certainly something to be gained for specialization. You know, if you're specialized in polar bears and you've got the best polar bear photography in the entire world, and someone's doing an article on polar bears, well, you're absolutely going to be the go-to guy for that. But, you know, I think having the variety of work and and the breadth of work, you know, especially for for just random images here and there throughout magazines and calendars, you know, there's there's absolutely a value to that as well. And, you know, I think the reason I photograph everything as nature is there's a couple of reasons. I love it all, right? And I think everybody should photograph what they're passionate about. And I think I probably have a little, well, I know I have a little bit of ADHD. So, you know, I'd like to photograph everything. And I think, you know, as I'm sure you're aware, and most photographers listen are aware, you kind of go through stages and you you get in kind of a rut, and you're like, oh, I don't know what to do. And I can I can be working on birds or mammals or things like that, and then all of a sudden I can change gears and go and and do macro photography, and it it kind of recharges you and helps you to look at things in a new light. And then the other thing is you can take some of these photographic techniques that I use in macrophotography and apply them to birds and and things, and it just it just keeps things creative and and uh keeps it interesting for me.
SPEAKER_02You you have said that you pre-visualize a lot of your shots, but but you are also open to serendipity. Um when you're dealing with wildlife, I mean, other than like you know, it might be a bird's nest or a hornet's nest or something like that, that's static. Um, how do you pre-visualize wildlife shots?
SPEAKER_00You know, like when I'm out in nature, I I get an idea, I see something, and it's always inspired by something I've seen and and have not been able to photograph. And I think, you know, boy, that would be this would be a cool picture if this happened. And and uh for an example would be I have a shot of a of a herd of wildebeest running by. And yeah, I know that one. I saw thank you. I saw these wildebeest running one time, and I thought, boy, you know what would be really cool is if I could get a static wildebeest in front of a flowing river of wildebeest running behind and then drag the shutter like a half a second and have that static wildebeest be sharp and then have the motion blur of all the wildebeest behind it. And that kind of popped in my head, and I just had that in my head for a long time. And eventually one day I got the opportunity to make that picture. So that's kind of where the pre visualization happens. And a lot of my work is things like that. Like I see something, I'm like, oh, one day I'm gonna I'm gonna keep an eye out for that situation because I'd like to make that picture.
SPEAKER_02You know, d tell me just a tech question then, because I mean I I love that picture and I love the story. But when you saw that happening in my life, that would then be looked down at the camera for about three. Three or four seconds, get all my settings right, look back up, and it's gone. How fast were you able to get set up for that shot? Or did you see it coming a long way?
SPEAKER_00No, I did set up for it and it did happen fairly quick. There was only maybe less than a minute to make the image. But, you know, I'm very lucky that I have my camera in my hand 250 days a year. So I'm pretty quick. I can flip settings away. And I shoot an aperture priority most of the time. I shoot a manual for certain situations, but I shoot an aperture priority a fair amount of time. So I just I dropped my I I knew exactly what I had to do. I had to drop my ISO down and stop down so I could get a shutter speed that was was going to blur the background. And I could do that in, you know, four seconds. And then it was just a matter of keeping everybody in the vehicle still so we could do these slower shutter speeds.
SPEAKER_02No, but no no bouncing around about the shocks anymore. Stop breathing. Um okay. Now now you you just brought up another thing that that always makes me wonder about wildlife tours. Um, and you said the vehicle. I have seen a couple of uh videos of other people. They're on some tour and they for about a half second they pan back towards the vehicle, and you see 12 other vehicles behind the one that they're in. Is is is the wildlife tour business getting overcrowded?
SPEAKER_00I think, yeah, absolutely it is. Um I think it's not it, and it's not so much the wildlife tour business. I think it's just the the wildlife, I mean wildlife photography tour business is the wildlife business, right? You know, the the parks over in Africa and you know, Yellowstone and all everybody wants to get outside, especially after COVID, there was a huge influx in in nature tourism. And it's a blessing and it's a curse. And, you know, a lot of the places that we go to, like, you know, you hear about all the vehicles that are all the at all the the interesting sightings in the Mara. And the Mara is a big, giant, you know, 10,000 acres, I don't know how many acres it is, but it's huge. And I think as you do places like that more and you have good guides, you know, the tourist guides are all following the radio. Like they're like, you know, they have radios and they'll call and they say, hey, there's a cheetah hunting here, and 50 vehicles will go there. We ignore that stuff. We go off on our own and try to find our own things. So and then you don't have so much of that stuff. And it's a big enough area that you can do that.
SPEAKER_02If you go on a photo tour, I mean, thinking now as a client, do you should I really spend a lot of time educating myself about what I might see? Um and the reason I'm thinking about this is is a little bit of an aside because again, in you uh another series I didn't mention the title of behind the image series, you you talk about photographing a fox out in Yellowstone and the behavior that it does before it pounces uh on a my mouse or a vole or something. That's natural history. That's not photography, that's understanding animal behavior. Is is is that really necessary?
SPEAKER_00I I would say that's probably if you want to be a serious wildlife photographer, I would say that that's one of the more necessary things is to have that field craft to understand animal behavior and understand what they're gonna do. Because I always tell people, I don't want to be where the animal is. I want to be where the animal's gonna be. Right. So the more you understand that that animal behavior, the better off you're gonna you're gonna be to get yourself in that position, right? And if you're going on a photo tour, hopefully, you know, like we have amazing professional guides that we've worked with for over a decade that that have taught me all of this stuff, and then I know it. And if you're going on a photo tour, you can lean on that, but you're gonna learn that stuff too, you know, and it is absolutely a super important skill because you know, a lot of animal behavior is very predictable. Like if you see a duck or a goose or a or a loon and it's dipping its head underwater, rolling water off over its back, the next few seconds it's gonna get up and do a wing flap, which is a dramatic thing that you want to photograph. If you see, you know, uh uh a group of male lions that are you see them at two o'clock in the afternoon and they're all laying down and they got a big giant gut because they had filled their bellies all night with with meat, when they wake up in the afternoon, the first place they're gonna go is to a water hole. So if you know this behavior, then you can predict it and you can get yourself in the position.
SPEAKER_02Um I'm chuckling because speaking of where the animal's going to be, you have a story about a bull moose that stopped where it was, but not where you wanted it to be.
SPEAKER_00Oh gosh, that's an embarrassing story.
SPEAKER_02Well, okay, give me beginning, middle, and then tell me the whole story.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so I need to preface this that this was 30 years ago before any I knew.
SPEAKER_02Oh, sure, oh sure, okay.
SPEAKER_00I wouldn't do this today. But I was in Yellowstone, I was on Fountain Flats, which is a very flat area, and there was a young bull moose, and he was crossing this little stream and he stopped where there was a mound, and his his hindquarters was behind the mound, and there was 30 other photographers there, and I wanted him to take just one step to clear so he would see I'd see his whole body in the river. So it was mating season, so I gave one of these, which is moose for like, hey there, big boy. And this moose, I wanted him to take one step. Well, he looked and he looked at me and he started running. And I had a 600 millimeter lens, I was, you know, 100 yards away. So I stepped, it was on a tripod, I stepped around my camera and raised my arms in the international sign for stop. I'm a person, not a moose.
SPEAKER_02Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_00And this made the moose mad. And he came at me, he started running at me even more. And he was running by all these other photographers, and I had no idea how good my mating moose call was. So I decided it was the better part of Valor to exit the situation. And I grabbed my camera and I my $10,000 lens and I started running towards the row of cars that were on the road. And this moose kept coming and kept coming. And I was I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna make it to the cars before the moose makes it to me. And I was just ready to throw my my expensive camera down to stop the beast when he turned. Oh, so I'm sure you get the shot. No, I did not, and I did not die, which was the better part of the story. And I will say that to everybody out there, don't do that. I was I was I was a young buck in the prime of life and thought I knew everything. And that was that's a bad movie. You should never do that. The goal, the goal of nature photography should be always to not interfere with the natural behavior of your subject. And that's that's the most important takeaway of that whole story. And please don't, if you find the video of me running from the Bull Moose in Yellowstone on YouTube somewhere, don't send it to me because I really don't ever want to see it. Does it exist? I have no idea. I've never searched, but there there was a whole row of cars, and I I wouldn't be surprised. But it again, well, this was well no, this is yeah, I'm trying to think if this was before cell phones. It may have even been. It was a long, long time ago. Oh.
SPEAKER_02Now the other question is did any of the other photographers get the shot?
SPEAKER_00I'm sure they got a lot of interesting shots. Yeah. Yeah. And I was out there alone, so I I don't I I don't know if any anybody got, I didn't see any of the pictures, but there was a lot of interesting behavior that developed there. And there was a lot of photographers. I was surprised that he honed in on me so well, but that's that was his job, I guess.
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SPEAKER_02Um, I once saw a picture of an expedition to Antarctica. And what they were on the boat, they were crossing, doing the passage, and there were probably 12 photographers in identical tour jackets, all standing at the railing, all with you know their expensive gear, all taking a picture of the same iceberg. And my first reaction was, you know, how sad. These are all going to be exactly the same picture. There won't be any kind of originality or voice in it. And then somebody sort of patted me on the head and said, wake up. No, these are going to be all individual pictures, all different settings, different croppings, different framings. Um, and that you really can have a group of people and originality at the same time. What what's your I mean, how how do you talk about voice when you've got all your clients lined up in a row?
SPEAKER_00Well, and that's absolutely true. One of the one of the things that we do after our tours is we have a client gallery that we host on our website for each trip, and clients are able to submit pictures to that gallery. And we'll have, you know, anywhere from eight to, you know, six to eight, maybe sometimes ten photographers on a trip. And it is amazing to me and very often humbling to me to see the different pictures that everyone makes on the exact same trip. And we're all standing in front of the same things often. But you know, like you say, everybody has their own vision and their own voice. Um, you know, and that's it one of the things that we do when we're on tours is suggest to people, hey, you know, notice this tree that you can use in the background, or look at what's happening to the light over here, or you know, so but it is amazing to me how everybody does see things in their own unique way. And uh that's one of the fun things about photography.
SPEAKER_02Is voice teachable, or is it something you simply have to develop from lots and lots and lots of experience?
SPEAKER_00I think yes to both. I I think you know, I I I I heard some, I don't I I would love to credit who who I heard this from, but but they said something like your your style, your voice comes from a set of habits that you use in your photography that you use over and over that they become part of your style. And I think that's the part that develops. But it is absolutely teachable. You know, people, when you first get started in photography, you're so excited to have a subject in front of you that you just look up, you frame the subject, and you just reflexively take a picture of the subject. But as you as you work in photography more and more and you get more comfortable and you get a little bit more relaxed, and you understand photography and your brain's not all cluttered up with all the technical part, and you're just working on composition and light and things like that, you start to photograph, Marcel Van Usten calls it more proactively, right? Where you're going beyond the subject, you're considering the background, you're considering the light, you're considering other elements in the in the picture that you can frame with your subject, and you're starting to what I call make pictures more than just take a picture, right? You're you're trying to, you'd you're being more proactive in the whole thing.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Um let me ask you about two images because I think their backstory is very different. Um, on your portfolios on your website, you've got one image of a bunch of wolves chasing a bison. Um tell me the story of that image.
SPEAKER_00That was a that was probably one of our most exciting ones. We've been doing winter in Yellowstone for, I don't know, we've probably done a dozen or more trips out there. And wolves are always high on the list, and and you just got to get lucky. So it was funny. So we're in a snow coach in again, this is on Fountain Flats where the moose came and got me. And and we were we were photographing uh a set of trees that everybody photographs out there called uh the Bobby Sox trees. And one of the other coaches came by and said, Hey, we just saw the wolves over here by this geyser basin. And so we all jumped in the in the thing and went down there and we saw the fresh wolf tracks where the wolves were, and uh we saw we were tracking them. We didn't see the wolves, but we saw which direction they were moving, and we noticed that they hadn't crossed the road. So there was a river on one side of the road and then the road. So we knew that the wolves were probably not gonna cross that river and we could keep track of whether or not they crossed the road. And there was a herd of bison on Fountain Flats. So the guide and I decided that maybe the wolves were gonna go to Fountain Flats and try these bison. So we drove down along the road, making sure that we didn't see the tracks cross the road. So, and then we went over and we went to Fountain Flats and we just sat and waited for the wolves to come. And it was really foggy. And so we were we stopped and we started photographing the bison in the fog, and they were all covered with frost, and it was really fun. And it had been like 10 or 15 minutes, and I went up to to Shaggy, our guide, and I said, Hey, Shaggy, you think we should go back down the road and see if maybe the wolves stopped? And uh I said, Maybe they're not coming here. And he he looked up, he looked over my shoulder and he said, Those wolves, and he pointed over my shoulder. And honest to God, Scott, these wolves just materialized out of the fog. It was just my hair standing up, just thinking about it. So the the bison saw the wolves too, and they all kind of gathered together to protect each other, and the wolves didn't even try them. But we we photographed them as they crossed the road, and there's a uh a pass that goes from Fountain Flats. I I can't remember the name of the pass, but it goes over to Hayden Valley. So we photographed these wolves, and everybody had great pictures of these guys going through the fog and crossing the road and out in the meadow with the fog. And uh we thought it was over. Everybody was high-fiving each other. We got in the in the in the truck and and there the the snow coach and started to leave, and we're turning around, and they had disappeared into the pass. And then all of a sudden, I looked up and there's a dozen bison running out of the pass where the where the wolves had gone. And I'm like, they're coming back. And Shaggy yells, everybody get off of the coach. And we all jumped out of the coach, and behind these bison were these wolves chasing the chasing the bison. And uh, and everybody, we it was just one of those dumb luck things, and and everybody got some pretty cool pictures. It was a pretty amazing thing. And they ended up the the the bison ran to the bigger herd on the other side of the road, and they all gathered and and the bison didn't get a meal, but we got we got fed some really incredible pictures.
SPEAKER_02Now, on a technical side, tell me how you were set up for this shot.
SPEAKER_00You know, there was there was really no time to set up. I just told everybody I said, get your shutter speed up. And, you know, I had so when I'm shooting in the snow, I do shoot in aperture priority a lot, and not to get too technical because I don't really like to get into all this stuff too terribly much. But when I'm shooting in the snow, I usually shoot in manual exposure metering because the the white snow is gonna screw up the meter. So my camera was set up in manual, and I was was not at a fast enough shutter speed. So I I you know opened up the lens a little bit, got a faster shutter speed, and uh, you know, I just got up to a 500th of a second and told everybody to make sure they were there. And like it, the whole thing lasted, gosh, maybe a minute and a half, two minutes. You know, the chase part of it. Not even probably not even that much, but uh, you know, so there again, there's not if with wildlife photography, sometimes there's just no time to react. You just gotta you just gotta throw it up and and hope for the best.
SPEAKER_02And hope for the best, yeah. Um, you have said in a couple of other places that you really are a straight out of camera, you know, um that's where your heart is, you know, even if you gotta fudge it sometimes. Um but in snow, I mean you're there's you the de Haze slider, all that stuff's gotta come in. Um, do you do a lot of post-processing? And and by a lot of, I don't mean generative, I mean more corrective.
SPEAKER_00Um, you know, I I honestly I try to shoot digital like I shot slides. I I try to do it in the camera. Now, I do post-process every single image that I show, but it's literally 15 seconds of moving a couple sliders around. Now, I will admit Lightroom has gotten some very interesting masking tools that I do use. And I'll, you know, I'll mask out a subject and cool down the background or warm up the background. And I do do more than I ever used to do, but I don't do, you know, any kind of like cloning out big things or anything generative or anything like that. And when I do, and I have on a few occasions cloned out a clump of grass in front or added some uh some canvas because it was too close to the edge on a on a moving subject or something. And when I do that, I put a DM next to it and I say, this is a digitally manipulated image, and this is what I did to it. So I try to be honest about that stuff.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's there's deception and and dishonesty, I think, is is really the words we need to be using for the whole conversation about AI and the rest of it. Now, it's not a matter of did you alter the picture? Because you altered it the minute you know, you tweaked the contrast a little bit. Sure. Um, but but if you're lying, that then that that is a different thing entirely.
SPEAKER_00I think the deception, and you know, look, I'll be honest, there's an art form in that. I I see some of the stuff people do, it is just absolutely amazing. And I I would love because I don't I don't even know how to make a layer, Scott. I mean, I just I don't do that. I I just and the one of the main reasons is because I got into this because I wanted to be out in the field. I don't want to be sitting behind a computer and I shoot a lot of pictures. So if I keep it, I have to process it to send it to my agent. And, you know, so I don't want to spend a lot of time on each image, but I would love to send, send, sell or give some of my best images to someone who's really good at processing and say, hey, do what you would do with this and just see what they did, because I think that's an art form and it's beautiful.
SPEAKER_02Uh-oh. And you know, there are those services. I think a lot of wedding photographers use them more than anyone else, um, where they will go through and process your 500 photos for you. Um, I wonder what would happen if you were to send them a bunch of nature picks, a bunch of wildlife picks.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, see, I don't think I'd be interested in that. I'm talking about someone who's gonna make love to it and just bring out the best in it, you know, like someone who's gonna spend an hour really working it over.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Now, okay, so we've got drama, we've got excitement, we've got, you know, the you know, everybody, you know, move, move fast. You're also the guy that's setting up lasers to catch moths and growing your own mosquitoes. So tell me about tech, first of all, but then the the more what do you want to call it, made photo. I mean again, I'm thinking of the mosquito stuff and in your behind the image series or the lasers to trigger the shutter for the moths.
SPEAKER_00So that that's again, that's the ADHD in me. Um, and I think I I I I think I'm kind of a geek. I'm kind of a bit of a nerd.
SPEAKER_02Um no other photographer is, just so you know.
SPEAKER_00So I, you know, one of the things that I'm always trying to do with my work is to try to do something no one else has done. And and obviously a lot of my work is not something no one else has done. But when we get into the high-speed flash and and uh some of that uh that more technical stuff, that is making images that that people haven't done before, um, or at least not done very often. And I think that's what attracts me is is trying to show people something that they haven't seen before. And you know, honestly, God Scott, the as you know, that's getting harder and harder to do now that everybody's got a camera. But it's it's one of the challenges. And I enjoy the technical part of of doing those things like doing focus stacking and and uh high speed flash to to freeze a moment and show people something they haven't seen before.
SPEAKER_02And and you got a real love for macro photography.
SPEAKER_00I do, yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, that that's is that just you know, on a continuum or is that opposite to the other stuff?
SPEAKER_00Um, well, as you say, it's part of the same thing. It's I think growing up in Michigan, you know, photographically growing up in Michigan and growing up in Michigan, Michigan is a great place for macrophotography. We have cool nights and and still nights, and we can go out in the morning and find dew-covered insects. And, you know, there's a lot of great macrophotographers that have come out of Michigan, John Shaw and Larry West and and John Gerlach, and it's just a great place to do macrophotography. And macrophotography, like out in the field early in the morning doing that metal photography, it's just like going on a safari, you know. I mean, you can find jumping spiders and and and crab spiders that are hunting and robberflies, and you know, there's a life and death struggle that goes on on a smaller scale that you can you can do. And it's it's super accessible. You know, it's you can get a macro lens and a tripod and go out in the meadow in the morning and be a world class macro photographer.
SPEAKER_02Let's go back just to uh because I'm looking at it again here. Um, the mosquito shot. Um, and again, this is from your behind the image series. Tell me about the idea, first of all, what you decided to. Do. And then walk me through that whole setup there. Because that's not just, you know, put your camera on a tripod pointed at a larva.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, it it was there was some forethought in that. You're absolutely right, Scott. Thank you. Um, so I decided lots of tech there. Yeah, I thought that I I just wanted to photograph the life cycle of a of a mosquito. So I I figured out uh how I'm gonna do that is I I made a little tiny aquarium out of uh pieces of small little pieces of acrylic, and the thing is maybe two inches by three inches by three inches. And I got some some larva and I put them in there, and this is all done on my kitchen counter, and uh and I started photographing them, and I I wasn't doing any focus stacking. I I think the picture that you're referring to, I have uh a stacking reel rail on there. So in the end, I did end up for the full-grown mosquitoes to get everything sharp. I had to do some focus stacking, which I actually didn't plan on doing, but the mosquitoes, once they so a mosquito they have a larval stage, and then when they hatch out from the larval stage, they go to the top of the surface of the water, and the mosquito extracts himself out of the larval stage, and he sits on top of the water waiting for the fluids to to pump out and fill and build his wings, and then they then they fly off. And they're they're on the top of the water like that for for a minute or two as that's happening. And that was that was the part that I really wanted to photograph. But I figured as long as I'm doing it, I'm gonna do all the stages.
SPEAKER_02To catch that moment, your alarm is set all all night, every 15 minutes or something. I mean, how in the world were you not at the grocery store when that happened?
SPEAKER_00Well, it's it's dedication. Yeah, you gotta be lucky. And I and you know, I had a half a dozen larva in there, and I probably missed half of them, you know. But it was in it was on the kitchen counter, and we would keep an eye on it. And you can tell when they're they're getting ready to go, they're hanging at the top of the water, and there's some changes that you can see that that kind of uh will uh let you know it's about to happen. But you know, you there's some luck involved too. You've got to be there when it happens. And sometimes it happens in the middle of the night, and sometimes it happens when you're at the grocery store. But I did get lucky on a couple of occasions and and was able to photograph it. And in the end, I was actually able to focus stack it because it was sitting still, and since it was in the house, it wasn't getting blown around. But I had to, I it was funny, I had to turn my head every time I exhaled because if I if I exhaled in the direction of the mosquito, he would sail right across the whole little little aquarium. And I was I was had to reset it up all over again.
SPEAKER_02Well, well, I I I will admit to a you know uh fascination with with that um clip you had on there. Simple because over here in in western Minnesota, you know, we have mosquitoes the size of small children. It's just absolutely uh horrible at times. And so I thought, really? And then of course, you go down the rabbit hole, and it's beautiful. Beautiful work. It if you had a new book coming out tomorrow, what image would you put on the cover?
SPEAKER_00Oh I have no idea. What's I don't I have no idea. That's an impossible question.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, think pictures from the last six months.
SPEAKER_00I think right now, my favorite picture that I've taken in the last, well, let's say the last year, because I got one that climbs right to the top. Is it's okay? We I was actually on safari with my sons. We uh my Nicole and I took my boys. I have two boys there, 23 and 28, and we were able to take them on a safari last year. And the I think it was actually the last day we had a group of eight lion cubs with two mother lions, and they just kind of materialized out of the bush, and we were photographing them. And at one point, they they laid down and they just it was like I had orchestrated them and said, Okay, you sit here, you sit here, and just they all just sat in two perfect little triangles, and you can see all 20 of their eyes, which is impossible. You know, when you have 10 cats, they're all looking every which way, and they're not all looking at me. You know, it's not like I clapped my hands and made them look at me. They they're just but it's that that was just a really lucky, lucky chance to be there when that happened. And then, you know, I was able to stop down and keep them all sharp and and focus in the right spot, and everything just came together really nice for that shot. So that's that's the one picture I took last year that I'm super proud of, and I like a lot.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm looking at that picture right now in your portfolio. Um, and it is a gorgeous, gorgeous shot. But how close were you, man? I mean, this is either, you know, a cabillion millimeter lens or you you're closer than people should probably be. Well, we're in a safari where you're cropped in a lot.
SPEAKER_00We're in a safari vehicle, and it's not I I think I may have cropped that like five percent. I had a 180 to 400 zoom, so I was able to zoom. So um, and they're probably 20 yards.
SPEAKER_02That's it.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Yeah, so so the wildlife in Africa is very accustomed to safari vehicles, you know. Um a quick story. Nicole, the first lion Nicole had ever photographed was in the Ngoragor crater, and it was a big, beautiful black mane lion. And we're we're sitting, and the lion is is off on a little ridge, and he's sitting there majestically, and there's a nice out-of-focus background and beautiful light on him, and she's photographing him, and and we're all photographing him. And this lion, it's it's in the crater, so there's no trees, there's no shade at all. So this lion gets up and he sees that we're sitting there for a while, and he comes walking right at us, and we're photographing, then he's walking at us, and he's getting closer, we're going vertical and photographing him, and then we're switching lenses and going to the 80 to 200 and photographing him, photographing him. And the lion comes and he flops down and he flops right into the shade of the vehicle because he wants the shade. So, so and you know, this is Nicole's very first big male lion, and we're all super excited, it's really fun. And when the lion flopped down, he flipped his tail, and his tail ended up between the front tire and the back tire of the vehicle. That's how close he was. So, but this presents a problem because now we can't go forward or backward without running over this lion's tail. So, and and the and the photographic opportunity has now ended because he's right underneath our vehicle. So we're like, what are we gonna do? So our guide Steven he says, Oh, I got an idea. He says, Okay, he gives the guy, I think his name was Eric. He gives Eric, who's in the back seat, who's by the lion's rear end, he gives him a bottle of water and he says, Okay, just pour a little bit of water on the lion's, reach out the window and pour a little bit of water on the lion's tail. And hopefully the lion will switch his tail to get to get out to get it out from underneath the vehicle. So he gives Eric the water, and Eric's putting his hand out and he's a little shaky, he's getting ready to pour the water. And just before he pours it, Steve goes, Wait, wait, everybody else roll up your windows. So just for safety's sake. So, but but Eric poured the water and the lion moved his tail, and we were we were able to leave.
SPEAKER_02Tell me about working with your uh a spouse. You know, do the two of your visions match that well? Do they you know contradict each other in a healthy way? Um, because I can imagine the two of you put you in the same situation, you're gonna come up with different pictures.
SPEAKER_00No, absolutely. Yeah, we're both different photographers. I'm I'm uh Nicole is is about connection and emotion and evacu of evacuate evocative images. And I'm more I'm more of a technician and uh, you know, we just see the world completely different. But, you know, it's we work together. It's amazing. And I, you know, we're gone, like I think you mentioned, we're gone almost 300 days a year often. And you you couldn't have a family or a wife if you were gone that much. So it's it's wonderful that that we're able to do this together and that we get along so well and and can work in these conditions without any stress. I, you know, it's it's just amazing. If you'd have told me that I could find someone I could spend that much time in in situations like that and not want to kill each other, you know, we we do we do very well that way. And it's wonderful to share that with each other.
SPEAKER_02I but you being on the road that much, I can imagine the conversation now. You know, how many of you seen my keys? Oh, they're in Sierra Leone, sorry. Tell me a story of a shot you really wanted, but it just went to hell. It didn't happen. Oh gosh.
SPEAKER_00Oh, there's so many. Let me think of it. What the what a yes, I most recent one. I kind of blocked those out.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_00Um oh we had so in in the Mara, this is just a recent one. In the Mara, there the Masai Mara in Kenya, there is a group of five male lions, big, giant, black maned male lions. When when lions, when male lions reach their full majority majority, their their mane goes black. And there's a group of five really large male lions that just took over a pride of lions. And uh we were coming over this hill trying to get to these lions. And as we came over this hill, like 300 yards away, way further than you could even ever photograph, we saw all five of them walking in a line right at us, which would have just been an amazing picture. But by the time we got up there, they had fallen apart, and you know, some of them had laid down. Um that's probably the most recent. We had another another situation in Botswana where uh a young cub went up and gave this big beautiful male a kiss right in front of us, and we couldn't get our lenses on it. So, yeah, I mean that kind of thing happens a lot.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and the reason I ask is because I think those are the ones that that oddly become motivators. The shot that we could see in our eye, but we couldn't quite get into the camera. It keeps us coming back. Um I look at all of those as successes in an odd way in terms of keeping us fresh and keeping us uh engaged.
SPEAKER_00Right. And those are some of the images that I pre-visualize. I'm like, okay, I missed it this time, but next time maybe I'll get it, you know.
SPEAKER_02Give me a picture for you know ghetto photography here and and and the tours. You've got all sorts of tours uh coming up. Um I don't know if anything is still available this year, um, but you've got you know stuff coming up next year. What what are the most what are the hot ones?
SPEAKER_00Well, Africa's a big one. Um, Costa Rica, uh, I love Costa Rica. There's so many things to photograph in Costa Rica. You know, you've got the birds, you've got the poison dart frogs, sloths, you know, amazing birds. We do a lot of, you know, we call Costa Rica uh a tour, but really it's a workshop because we do a lot of different types of photography in Costa Rica that people don't usually do, like nighttime flash photography and macro photography. And so there's uh and then we also bring our high-speed flash setup for doing hummingbirds in flight. So that's a that's a really good one. And it's there's a lot of learning that takes place at that one. Um we do, I think we're doing like six or seven locations in Africa. Nicole's favorite location in Africa now is Madagascar, which is just lemmers, lemurs, lemmers. The lemurs, yes. Lemurs, thank you. Yeah, yeah. Lemurs are just you know how monkeys are super cute, but they're just not the most nice animals in the world. Lemurs are like nice monkeys. They're just they're just super sweet and super gentle, and it's a it's a really cool trip. Um what else do we do that's really fun? Uh walking with pumas in Patagonia. Um that's a that's a really special trip. Just because the you know, the the pumas are so accepting of photographers now that we work on this ranch where the pumas are acclimated to people and the landscape, they're just in such an epic landscape. It's it's really crazy. But you know, we we do photography tours for photographers. Um, you know, we are photographers. Nicole is Nicole puts together the trips, and she's really wonderful at, you know, she finds these beautiful boutique lodges, you know, that are in wonderful locations, and she just does such a wonderful job putting together the trips, and she really enjoys it. Like, I don't even know where we're going. I will go out to the package box, and out there's an Amazon box, and it's I open it up and it's the birds of Sri Lanka. And I'm like, baby, are we going to Sri Lanka? She's like, I'm thinking about it.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm looking at your um your list of things here. The Falklands would call to me, Newfoundland would call for me. Um, every single one of these looks like just a wonderful, inventive, instructive, and uh, you know, just use a technical term here, really cool trip uh for photographers to be on. Um, but as good as the tours are, man, I want to come back. Your work is outstanding. Um the the you you have that eye, you have that way of making a normal picture, uh, you know, hummingbird in flight, which we've seen a million times, absolutely unique and absolutely your own. Um I've I've enjoyed this conversation. This has been wonderful. I am a fan. Thank you, sir.
SPEAKER_00Oh, thank you so much, Scott. I I appreciate it, and I really appreciate your insightful and thoughtful, thoughtful questions. It's it's it's nice that you you you it's a very apparent that you did some homework for this, and I I appreciate that effort, and it's made it way more interesting for me and hopefully everybody else out there.
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