The Wild Photographer
Learn techniques, tips, and tricks for improving your wildlife, travel, landscape, and general nature photography with Court Whelan. Whether you consider yourself a beginner, serious hobbyist, or advanced professional, this is the way to rapidly understand and implement new skills to elevate your photography to new heights.
The Wild Photographer
Talking with Arthur Lefo: His Approach and Techniques for Capturing the Best Wildlife Photos Possible
This episode is full of so many gems! Today I talk with Arthur Lefo, an extraordinary wildlife photographer out of Denver (and Jackson Hole) whose meteoric rise with photography has been nothing short of inspirational.
In this episode, we talk a lot about his strategy, thoughts, and workflow when setting up, taking the photo, and processing the result. We talk about positioning with wildlife, following the light, and his intuitive way to edit photos using mostly gradients and brushes. And we get some fantastic ideas and techniques for the best bear photography!
Again, this episode is chock full of amazing photography advice, thoughts and inspiration. Give it a listen and come away with some new tools and techniques for really mastering the art of wildlife photography from someone who has embraced the digital age and is absolutely crushing it.
Show Notes and Where to Find Arthur:
Arthur's Instagram Handle: @arthurlefo
Arthur's Personal Website: www.arthurlefo.com
Arthur's Company: Think Wild
I've got a really great episode here for you today. It's an interview with photographer Arthur Leffo, and this the quality of today's episode, the things that I've gleaned and learned and the Inspiration I personally took away from it makes me think I really should be doing a lot more of these interview style episodes. I hope you enjoy it, I hope you learn something I know you will and I hope you come away inspired. You know, arthur is a really fantastic photographer and he's self-taught and he's had this amazing rise to more or less Stardom in the wildlife photography world. He's leading his own trips and workshops, he's producing Sensational content and he's doing so with his own very, very unique style.
Court:We get into a lot of stuff today. A lot of gems await, but without further ado, let's get right into it. I present to you photographer Arthur Leffo. I Excited to be here today with Arthur Leffo. Welcome to the wild photographer. Thanks for having me. Absolutely, I know it's. It's hard getting a hold of guides out there. You're between seasons, so, yeah, thanks for making the time today. I'm stoked to chat with you and catch up. It's been a minute, yeah, yeah. Well, so yeah, so you're.
Court:You're like a really unique, interesting scenario here and part of the reason I wanted to have you on is, like, in my mind, you are a Kind of a relatively new photographer in the grand scheme of things, but you've had like a meteoric rise to like Really really high quality photography, like in other words, I know that probably it seemed like a lifetime to you, but in in years you've like kind of More or less started photography and are producing like some the highest quality wildlife shots I see on any platform, and so I don't know the you might, you might feel Otherwise in terms of your, your input and the longevity and all this, but I find it fascinating that you've accomplished so much in so little time and like you're at a level Well beyond a lot of pro photographers that have been doing it for a lifetime and you have a lifetime to go, so it's pretty exciting.
Court:I feel like this is Something interesting for the audience to hear about, because this is probably it's in some ways it's it's a bit of a dream, right, like you've kind of taken this new avenue, this new route with photography, with guiding, with wildlife, and Are just crushing it. So, yeah, do you mind kind of Tell me a little bit about the story that got you to where you are now.
Arthur:Yeah, absolutely. To be completely honest, I think everything kind of just unfolded in a way that made sense with regards to my life and, you know, the big picture when I talk about this is that Trusting my gut and doing things that were true to myself and that I just generally felt interested in on a soul level brought me Open the doors that brought me to where I am right and and opportunities sort of presented themselves over time. But to give you a sense of a timeline, I was always into photography From a very basic standpoint, growing up using my phone. You know, never really used a camera much, but knew how you know the inside features of iPhones and stuff worked to control exposure and all that, and I always just felt like I had an enjoyment of capturing still imagery and, you know, an interest in it, but I never found Something that drove me to pursue it the way that I have in the last few years.
Arthur:In 2018, when I went to Alaska with natural habitat, I Used my first camera, which was lent to me by the company, and I actually even talked to you, I remember, beforehand and you gave me a little Chee-Chee which I still think of and I still Reference the same kind of teachings with regards to just like the most basic settings and what they do and how you know your ISO and your aperture and your shutter speed to contribute to creating an image that might look different from another one Taken with different settings. So it was a very rudimentary kind of like top level understanding of photography. Justin Gibson was a guide on that trip as well, so you know his knowledge was also useful in the field when I was starting to just practice taking photos and playing around with different stuff and Ironically it's also Justin that led me to using my first Olympus now OM system camera At the time, which, as soon as I used it, I just loved the interface. It felt simple. I was on a Canon power shop before then, which is a nice camera that's just fool around on, but nothing To the level of a higher-end, you know wildlife photo camera and I loved. I loved the interface and the feel of the Olympus. So I actually bought A lens before I left Alaska, before I even had a body. I ordered a refurbished body on Amazon and bought a lens and Just came home and started playing around in Colorado, you know, would drive up flagstaff and take photos of deer on the side of the road and Take photos of sunrises out my door and in Boulder, which are often really really pretty, or sunsets too.
Arthur:You know, and and really just Hasually enjoyed photography. You know, we'd go up to Summit County to the ski house and there's foxes around there, so I'd take photos of the foxes any opportunity I had to take a photo. I would, and really just apply the knowledge that Again, very basic knowledge, but at the end of the day, like really the only knowledge you need, other than figuring out the settings of your camera and like sort of some more minute Inner workings. But Overall, you know those three settings are really all you need to understand to get to a point where you can take an amazing photo that touches people, that has emotion, that inspires people. And and the following year went out to Greenland, which was Maybe less inspiring on a photogenic level. I really did enjoy the more abstract photography for ice, which is something that's always fascinated me, but that was more of an inspirational trip on a soul level for myself, realizing that you know I needed to spend more time in the outdoors and and and find ways to share the outdoors with others as a profession, because that's Essentially what I had been doing my whole life, right from an early age bringing people out camping that had never been camping, or organizing all these crazy trips Paddling 80 miles down a river in Florida for a week straight on New Year's, you know stuff like that that I always sort of coerced my friends to Join me on these wild adventures.
Arthur:I would think up and you know, and one thing led to the next, and when COVID struck and you know a lot of layoffs happened and I ended up without a job, sort of spontaneously decided to move out to Jackson Hole because I was in Denver. I was suddenly jobless, single, and, and COVID was not making city life very interesting, so I ended up in Wyoming, sort of on a screw it, why not? Kind of mindset, right, I can always come back to Colorado, which I did and and and I took, having had no job and running out of unemployment benefits by the end of the fall. You know, I just took a basic job, I just started plowing snow, which you know Paid my bills and allowed me to have most of my days free, because I was only working when it snowed early in the morning and it's tedious and hard work but it pays well. And then the rest of the time, which was the majority of it, I found time to go out and and look for wildlife.
Arthur:And you know, I think really that move to get out to Jackson and and and Put myself in an environment where I had the opportunity to work on my craft every single day, every morning and every evening I'd go out for a drive and look for wildlife. You know, that put me in a position where I quickly progressed in terms of my creative vision. But, more importantly, I think something that really needs to be focused on is the connections I made and the, the people that I met through photography, which inevitably brought me new inspiration, new perspectives, new understandings right, I mean so many amazing people and friends I've made over the last three years since I moved out to Wyoming. But those connections and and kind of finding people to shoot alongside that had similar interests and similar creative visions Allowed me to get to a place where I refined mine even further.
Arthur:And really, I think the key thing I want to focus on when it comes to, you know, talking about this Far too kindly meteoric rise, you know I feel like I'm only getting started, but I really appreciate those kind of words, but at the end of the day, it's finding something that you are truly passionate about and that that really interests you.
Arthur:And one of my close friends, brooke, you know as, always said like the key to taking a good photo is to care about what you're taking a photo about, and I couldn't relate to that any Any more than I still do today, mostly because, you know, I think about other things that I've considered doing just for financial stability, like wedding photography and like I've never been able to bring myself to do it because I just have absolutely no interest in taking a photo anything that Does not exist in nature.
Arthur:You know what I mean. So all that to say that you know, by pursuing, by following, you know, interests that were near and dear to my heart and by, you know, kind of just shamelessly Messing around and creating more and more and working on my craft, starting with small things around my neighborhood and progressing to bigger and better Things. You know, when I moved to Wyoming and eventually started Leading trips up in Alaska is what led me to where I am today, and there's been nothing more but passion and a desire to get out there and to experience nature first, rather than trying to capture nature first, right, it always comes back to being outside and just enjoying nature.
Court:Heck, yeah, love it, man. So many good words of wisdom there and, yeah, I can hear the passion coming through. A couple of follow-up questions from that. One is what was that first lens you bought before you left Alaska?
Arthur:I still have it. So it's a 40 to 150 F2.8, which on the crop sensor on the Glenn system gives me 80 to 300 at F2.8.
Court:I thought that might be it, which is that single lens has made me pause multiple times in my very Canon centric career. Be like should I switch over? Should I switch over? And for those of you in the audience that didn't hear that it's basically an 80 to 300 F2.8 throughout in a relatively small, relatively affordable package. It's like what? $1500?.
Arthur:That's like $1,500. And I've since paired it with their newest flagship lens, which gives you the equivalent range of three to 800 at F4.5 all the way through which is Just insane, mind-boggling lens. That's an insane piece of equipment.
Court:I am jealous over those capabilities. If Canon could come out with that, that would be really stoked, although Canon did just come out with a price tag of $9000, but a 100 to 300 F2.8, which is pretty cool, but it's one of their big old L series, tip top of the line. Okay, cool, yeah, I thought that was the lens. You were gonna say, yeah, it is I still haven't. It's great, I actually love it, nice. And then so the other thing, a little bit more deeper of a question, is in those early days, well, I should say the first photographs I saw when you're posting on social, probably shortly after you move up to Jackson Hole, of moose in these beautiful reflection ponds, like right off the bat, just gold, like top level shots, and then it's like I think people are like holy cow, like instantly you were taking showstopping photos and so, yeah, indeed a mediocre price.
Court:But what did you learn? Or like maybe cause that's a big loaded question Like what were some of the most valuable things you learned kind of from like a technique style, from yourself as you're practicing, in those days when you really pivoted towards photography from yourself? Or what did you learn from others that you were shooting with? And specifically kind of like technique. I mean, I totally hear you on the idea of being passionate about the photos and I think that probably is one of the biggest lessons and, of course, networking and meeting people and getting influenced. I'm just curious like true technique and lessons photographically?
Arthur:Yeah, so it's kind of a two-fold answer. There's a couple of lessons that I'll touch on that are maybe two or three that are really useful from a technique standpoint while you're actually taking the photo. And then there's also some knowledge that I applied which is, I guess, relates back to technique, but it's more about anticipating, an anticipation of wildlife behavior, so specifically relating to understanding wildlife behavior. But the first few things that I think I applied immediately when I got out there that started helping me capture better images. The first thing which I learned rather quickly with shooting with some friends out there is getting low shooting eye level or below, specifically with relation to creating more softness in an image, especially when you're taking a portrait style wildlife photo, which most wildlife imagery ends up being portraits. Of course you get the wildlife and landscapes too, which are slightly different, but overall I think, getting low and using a low point of view and maximizing what a term I developed and sort of invented called the subject backdrop ratio, where basically it's just it's something I teach a lot of folks on the tours I lead but putting yourself in the mindset of thinking about how close am I to my subject and from my exact vantage point where I'm taking the photo. How much distance is there from my subject to the backdrop? And as soon as you get low, let's say you crowd your photographing say an elk or something, right, if you're standing up photographing the elk, there's a good chance that the background behind that elk is the floor that's 10 feet behind it. If you just take a knee, the backdrop instantly increases to 100 yards behind the elk and you're instantly capturing a far more pleasing image right off the bat just by taking one minor positioning adjustment. So I think shooting low was the first big thing that really really changed the quality of my images. The next thing was shooting far more images than I ever was before.
Arthur:So keeping my camera in burst mode and you have all these crazy settings now for autofocus and subject autofocus and this and that, assuming your shots are in focus, whichever way you choose to get them in focus, shooting at a higher burst rate was really fruitful, because I realized that the moments that I'm trying to freeze when it comes to wildlife photography are split second instances that the naked eye could never notice that half or even 10th of a second when an animal swing its head around to look from one side of something in its plane of view and switching and looking to its other side, and as it swings its head, there's a 10th of a second where its eyes are directly locked onto you, which can happen naturally too if an animal looks at you, but that's less likely, but that's split second. Or whether it be the split second where the animal is just facing the perfect way and the back, it's taking the step, it's the right pace in the step. Really, really minor changes in positioning on the animal's behalf for our subjects, has a huge impact on the final image. So I realized that by shooting more images which of course just takes up more memory and more time when you have to find the image just allowed me to have more selection to sift through. And what I find interesting is that, despite having taken a lot of my best images with intention, probably in the other half of them is taken not with that intention at all, and I only realize how good an image is when I go back and I look at my images and I'm like, well, thank God I was shooting 25 frames a second because I wouldn't have gotten this moment otherwise. So there's so much that happens that in the midst of the excitement amidst the emotion of being around wild animals, you don't notice, because you're just so busy experiencing that happens, that so many things happen that could lead to amazing images. So shooting at a higher burst rate was another big change I made. Even going from 10 to 20 frames a second is a huge jump in the amount of images you might get or not get. So that was another big thing. And then the last thing which almost might seem obvious, but to me at the time it wasn't is simply when and where I choose to shoot.
Arthur:With regards to light, it's easy, especially at the beginning, when you're getting into wildlife photography, to let yourself become completely enamored by your subjects and to just snap away at whatever you see. Right, the first time you see a bear in the wild, your instinct is going to be to take 2,000 photos that are mostly all going to be the same. You're going to be really stoked, but the more you do it, the more you're going to realize that a lot of things impact the quality of an image beyond the subject that you're photographing it right the background, the positioning of the animal, like we just talked, and the last thing I think that really contributed to turning good images. Great is shooting where the light is best. I have the saying where I suggest people to follow the light right.
Arthur:So if I'm shooting in the early morning and it's an overcast day, I'm going to shoot in the open. If I'm shooting midday and there's an epic wildlife sighting out in plain blaring noon o'clock sunlight, I'm going to enjoy the encounter, but I might not take a single photo. You know what I mean. I'm instead going to choose to shoot midday in the forest, where I might look for an owl roosting or something else just prowling in a more dimly lit environment. That's more conducive to creating solid imagery. So really just focusing on the conditions right and not shying away from bad weather, I think that bad weather makes the best photos, whether it be rain, snow, freezing, cold, like whatever it is experiencing the elements and all their harshness, however that might present itself, depending on where you are in the world, I think adds to images and adds to the story of what you're capturing with the animal.
Arthur:So, thinking about light and following the light to find the best settings to then be able to apply those other two little tidbits are. Those are the three big things that really brought my photography, I think from a technique standpoint to the next level. And last but not least, you know, I think, what really elevated it and I'm just thinking about this because you mentioned the shot of the moose in the water which was an incredible encounter that I've been blessed to have a second time this fall in the same location. I actually just shared that photo last week or two weeks ago, but had this another encounter with this beautiful bull moose in this absolutely beautiful watering hole beneath the Tetons, and that's only possible because of knowledge of behavior, right? So I think a lot of people think about like, well, you can know the animals and this and that, but at the end of the day, having a knowledge of the animals, day to day routines and just even if it's not on an individual basis just general knowledge of animals, tendencies based on the time of year and applying that to where you are in the field, allows you to anticipate these moments. To give you an idea, you know what this moose?
Arthur:This was a local watering hole where, at a specific time of year, moose hang out from time to time in this area and moose drink a lot of water. You know dozens of gallons a day of water and you know, just so happens, that I had seen the same moose that morning and came back in the afternoon and saw the same moose laying in the same spot. He had most likely not gotten up all day, and so I knew he'd be thirsty and I knew where the water was nearby and so I sort of preemptively walked over there because I was thinking, well, there's no way I'm going to beat a moose out there once he starts walking. You know he's, he's got me beat. But that knowledge of that you know individual moves to, but the anticipation of knowing, hey, he's probably going to go for a drink I'd be thirsty to, led to, you know, those shots being possible and you know, to kind of cap it off with regards to animal behavior.
Arthur:It's also and bringing it back to just enjoying nature. I really always emphasize this because it's so easy to pigeonhole yourself as a wildlife photographer into really wanting to create one specific shot. I've never gone out with the intention to create one specific shot. I always go out with the intention of let's see what's going on and kind of using the clues that are out at the time to see what might draw my interest, what looks interesting, what looks like it could be fruitful, rather than telling myself I'm going to go out today and get a photo of a moose under the Tetons. That's not how the best work is ever created. It's always kind of serendipitously letting things unfold and trusting your gut and following clues that day. So those are, you know to wrap it up, kind of five big factors that allowed me to go from taking, I think, good to great photos rather quickly.
Court:Awesome. Yeah, it's so cool to hear you say all that because, as I'm hearing you notch off each of these techniques, I'm like that they all encapsulate your work so perfectly Like. That's what I think of when I think of the photos that you produce is it's like it's choosing your background, it's getting low, it's getting that unique angle, it's capturing that really special hint of behavior, opportunistically, with just kind of making lemonade. You know, like knowing the conditions, knowing the wildlife and then just seeing how can I make this scene be the most beautiful it possibly can.
Arthur:So yeah, creating your own luck. Really you create your own luck. I don't believe in sheer luck. I mean there's things that happen but at the end of the day, it's by putting in the time and getting out there and trying and just again enjoying your time out there that you get into these situations that a lot of people might label as luck.
Court:Yep, yeah, no, fully agree. That makes me think of a couple things. So, yeah, the first one, when you talk about that background, that ratio, yeah, super important point, and I think it's worth mentioning that again just because for all the listeners out there, it's a really, really awesome technique, especially if you don't have the biggest, best lenses with those super big apertures like the 2.8 and the 4s, like my lens it's a great lens but like at 400 or 500 millimeters it's like 5'6, even 7.1. But if you can find a way to make that background behind your subject significantly greater in distance than the distance from you to the subject, you're going to get a great background blur each and every time. And, like you said, if you can get down low and shoot up where you know the beautiful teatons are in the background or those trees in the distance, yeah, it's everything.
Court:And then the frame rate thing. So I hope everybody caught that 25 frames a second is something that you referenced, and going from 10 to 20, you think made a huge difference which is staggering. Like that's awesome information. I think it's super valuable to know because I got to admit like I limit myself to about 10 frames a second because I don't want to go through all those photos. I don't want to go through all the memory card. Buffering and whatnot Makes me think I probably need to invest in a better memory card. But what do you look for? Because you're shooting on extreme burst mode, are you looking at a certain minimum transfer rate to enable that? Or is your camera just kind of super powered to not have to worry too much?
Arthur:I have about 90 shots. When I'm shooting at 25 frames a second, I have about 90 shots before I hit my buffer. I use the highest rate standard sand disk ultra 200 megabytes a second Nothing fancy. Although I shoot at a high burst rate, I am still selective about when I shoot. And if I'm shooting a burst it's because, again, I'm anticipating something, for example, the animal swinging its head around.
Arthur:Or, if this happened a couple of weeks ago, you're sitting in a creek with a moose drinking and you're waiting for the split second, the moose, after God knows how long, having his head down drinking it's incredible how much water they could drink in one standing but waiting for that split second where the moose lifts its head and the water is dripping out of its mouth, those are the moments where I'll choose to burst, because those are the moments I know I'd like to anticipate.
Arthur:Or sometimes, in some cases, and most often when I hit my buffer is when you're capturing something that might require more than just a few seconds bursting. For example, if a bear is walking straight towards me with its cub and I'm laying on the ground, I'm going to take way more than 90 shots of the 30 seconds this bear is walking towards me. So then it becomes it's like intermittent bursting, so I avoid hitting my buffer. So there's a strategy behind it, for sure, and I think using a bigger, faster card which now, like the R5s, take those newer the names escaping me, but those newer like really big format, two terabyte cards yeah, I forget what they're called.
Court:It's like a is it compact flash express? I think it's called.
Arthur:Yeah, something like CFE express yeah.
Court:There's like two formats, there's the A and there's the B, and I can't remember which one my R5 takes, but it's the less expensive of the two. I only know that because I work with a videographer quite often who takes the other kind, and they're like five times as expensive just because Sony takes those.
Arthur:But I am still selective about when I shoot right, and I have a general idea of, you know, the behaviors that are worth capturing versus the behaviors that are not worth capturing versus.
Arthur:So I still feel like you know, I come home with a respectable quantity of photos to sort through and at the end of the day I don't find it that hard to sort through, say, 500 photos of like the same 30 second encounter.
Arthur:What I find challenging and tedious is sorting through, you know, 500 photos of like 12 different encounters.
Arthur:To me that's more work because you actually have to look at every individual photo, whereas if I have 500 photos of an encounter, I can flip through them on my lightroom rather quickly and when the photo, when a photo stops you in your tracks, you know it's the one right. I can flip through rather quickly, maybe a quarter or half second per photo. But there's always that one photo where I'm like whoa and I and my mind just naturally wants to stop on it, and generally those are the ones that I trust. I kind of like to trust my gut when sorting through my photos and you have a general idea of what it is you're looking like, right, and in those photos you might have a burst of, say, 200 photos, 180 of those the animals either not looking at you or the eyes are closed. So you know you're not going to use those right and I feature in the future that I'll identify photos with eyes closed, eyes open and all this crazy stuff.
Court:And as of now.
Arthur:it doesn't add too much time to my workflow, and what I tell myself is I can always buy more memory, but I can never buy more time. And so I don't worry about deleting photos. I just go through my photos and I edit the ones I like and I back up everything I've ever shot, even if it's a photo of the ground.
Court:Really oh, okay.
Arthur:Yeah, I never. I don't put a single second into calling my photos just because two reasons First of all, it takes up a lot of time and again I can always buy more memory, and second reason is that there's a lot of photos that I've gone back to, old photo shoots from years past that I may have overlooked, that I end up finding and liking, sometimes more than the original photos I edited. So I am kind of a weirdo in that sense that I never delete a photo.
Court:Yeah, I think it's sage advice and like I'm going through some polar bear photos from a recent trip. It was just an epic one, it was a late season, it was snowy bears were everywhere and I'm I have like a very specific workflow of how I kind of cull the herd. I also don't delete much, but I do delete some. But I'm I'm now on like my tippy top best batch of photos. I'm editing them, I'm like really digging in deep, and then I just went back to like my so those are like my five star photos and I just went back to the one star photos that I sometimes delete. Um, and I have you know two, three, four in the meantime and I'm like some of the one star photos, I'm like, ooh, now that I've looked at what I thought was the best of that sequence, now some of the one star photos look, ooh, that's even more captivating or as captivating, just because I think I'm I'm so not tired but like used to looking at the photos I thought were best, something different really jumps out to me. So, yeah, I think that's super good advice on on multiple levels. And I really liked your idea of like skipping through the photos, going through quickly and what stops you in your tracks. And that's the one like awesome way to process all that stuff. Yeah, super cool.
Court:Well, while we're on the editing talk, this is another thing I wanted to hit in today's conversation because I view you as a processing guru and I think that you I'm going to put words in your mouth, but I think you took processing and editing very seriously from the get go. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but, like from the get go, like you, your photos always looked different. They always looked, you know, better for lack of a better word but like polished, but in a very raw way. Anyway, I want to, I want to hear about your, your view of editing, your, you know, your workflow, anything that you don't view as sensitive, proprietary information that you're going to sell as an online course later, or something you know within reason, whatever you want to share by editing, processing like what? What is the Arthur way?
Arthur:Yeah, so that's. I think that's a really interesting point to bring up for a couple of reasons. I think, you know, photography has evolved so much and I wasn't around pre-editing so I Can't really speak to that, but I, you know, I have a general sense of what what it used to be, you know, because of shot on film, so I know what that's like and I've shot DSLR so I know it's that what that's like, and and we've seen really a sort of reinvention of photography time and time again over the last 20, 30 years, and the way I describe it nowadays is that photography to me, is a three-part process. Right, if you go back to the film days, everything came down to one shot. You had your settings, you took one shot. It was either there or it was not, and and a story. Right, there was nothing else to it besides fully getting the shot right in the moment. And the more we've developed, you know, the industry from it from a tech standpoint and All these new features and higher resolution images and shooting raw and this, and that you know, we get to a point where, as I was saying, nowadays photography to me really is a three-part process. Taking the shot is just the first part.
Arthur:The last part, which I'll expand on, is the editing piece, and the central piece, which I think a lot of people oftentimes Maybe not overlook but, you know, consider, consider a little too lightly Is choosing the right photo. And, as I mentioned, we're taking more photos than we ever have because we're filling cards at record speeds, and choosing the right photo is really such a key component Of Creating a beautiful image. Right, it's not just taking the photo, it's not just editing the photo, it's having the right one of the thousands, or whatever it is you may have taken, of that single moment. But to go back to the editing, I think that editing is what has given rise to so much variety and so much new and inspiring work out there from so many different people. Right, what I love about editing is that you can be shoulder to shoulder with the same, with another person, one of your closest friends, enjoying one of the most exciting wildlife encounters of your life, and you don't need to worry about taking the same photo as that person because more than likely, that person Captured the photo in a different way, framed it differently, has a completely different vision and feel for that moment and therefore is going to edit it in a completely different way. And you know, I think that is Incredibly inspiring because it really shows you that you can create absolutely anything now with the post processing software you have.
Arthur:That being said, the way that I see post processing and I relate to it is that it's it's really for me, a way For me to bring back into the image the feelings and emotions of how the moment felt in person to me personally, back into an image right when you're shooting raw and you get onto your computer and you have that image. It's not going to be as glorious and saturated and Contrasted and the lighting is not going to be exactly what it was in person, naturally, because you're just working with raw data. But having lived that moment, that that moment lives on in your mind right and in your memory. And To me, when I edit, I'm just trying to sort of recreate this moment as I experienced. You know I'll never forget when I started getting into photography seriously and I was very proudly sending my parents a lot of photos I was taking, my mom would always say, well, is this edited? And I'm like bullmum. Everything you see everywhere on Planet Earth is edited nowadays. Does it look fake to you, does it look edited? And she's like no, but I was just curious. I'm like, well, if it doesn't and clearly you know it looks real natural, there's nothing wrong with it, and I think to me that's. That's really where the artistic creative expression piece comes out right.
Arthur:Cameras are getting increasingly easy to work with and we're seeing the balance in this three-step process. You know, back in the 90s being fully focused on capturing the photo. We're seeing more and more shifts towards how not just getting the photo, but then how you bring that photo to life and what that photo Felt like to you and what you can make it feel like to others. So when I edit, it's it's really just it's. It's very intuitive process and, to be completely honest, I've never taken a single course on editing. All I've done is mess around and find out and and Edited with other people that I, you know, friends, people around me. I think that's one of the most beneficial things for me was editing with others around me, because anytime you edit someone, you see them do something to edit their images that you're like oh, I never thought about doing that or it's cool. You do that way and you pick up new things that you, you know, integrate into your workflow and refine your creative vision with.
Arthur:With regards to my editing process, I really just focus on, you know, once I've selected an image that I feel like is, is worthy, is is bringing back the natural vibrance and emotion to those images through very, very complex and not organized. When I say complex, I just mean that it's like very intuitive, right, but like localized edits, I use gradients and brushes More than anything. Oftentimes I can even edit an image entirely using solely gradients and brushes and never touching the general features on an image, and I almost always will, because at the end of the day, when you're wrapping it all together, I find that it's helpful for me to get back and, you know, put some finishing touches in the general. You know edit panel, but you know darkening backgrounds and foregrounds and creating subject separation by using, you know, effects like clarity and D haze. Or you know having different contrast levels throughout an image depending on where you're editing, or even different Temperatures right, using, say, a cooler backdrop when you have a warmer subject or vice versa. Finding creative ways to make things pop and Thinking about where your eye isn't naturally drawn to and removing distractions. I think is is kind of the bulk of my workflow and and finding a way to do it in a way that that feels real and natural and puts you in that place where you can. You can see that scene as if you were there yourself. And that takes time and that takes a lot of messing around and a lot of finding out. You know a lot of really, really poor edits. I would love to you know. One of these days I should just post a bunch of my old, crappy edits, just so that they don't all end up good.
Arthur:A Lot of experimentation and A lot of trusting my gut, right, sometimes I edit an image. It takes me five minutes and it's done and I just know I'm like, boom, that's it, there's nothing else I need to do. Sometimes I edit it, I'll work on it for ten minutes. I Don't really feel myself getting anywhere, I'll put it down and I'll come back to it a week later. Sometimes I won't touch a photo and or even come close to editing it until years later. Sometimes it takes friends of mine Sitting next to me as I saw it through photos being like well, that's a really cool photo, you should edit that to, for me to realize like, oh crap, I hadn't noticed this photo and I hadn't seen it the way you see it. That's really cool.
Arthur:So that's kind of my workflow when it comes to editing really a lot of experimentation, a lot of localized edits that are really focused around creating Separation from my subject in the backdrop or in the in the case of, you know, images or you have wildlife in landscapes kind of marrying the two in a way that, you know, brings attention to the subject mainly, but also, you know, keeps the backdrop in a place where it's still interesting and provide and add something to the image. That's kind of what my workflows centered around. But I think the key word here is intuitive and. And yeah, intuitive and, and you know, spontaneous, so to say, just like how I choose my photos. I let my gut do the talking.
Arthur:So when I edit I kind of do the same thing. I'll sort of gaze at an image while I'm making edits, rather than looking very specifically at specific points, and I'll kind of just try and get the big picture and I'll I'll zoom out and make the photo really small so I can barely see it and all I can see is just like colors blurring together. I'll zoom it way in to look at the detail and I'll Saturated all the way, to then Let myself feel when the saturation feels right, right, or remove all the color and slowly bring it back so that I can just feel it out. You know, do really drastic things to my image to sort of Distract myself, in a way, from from what I was originally doing and let, like, the real natural feel of an image come back to Wait yeah, it's.
Court:It's funny to say that I do almost the exact same thing in terms of those sliders. Like, if I'm not sure, if I need to adjust the slider, I'll say let's see what it's like, you know, to go to a hundred or to negative a hundred or whatever the scale might be Obviously, exposure, you kind of know what you're gonna get. But when you start messing around with things like the blacks or the contrast, or even even like the, the, the sort of meta Changes, like the de haze and the clarity it's, it gives you a real appreciation and I will often Use that say, ooh, this made the background look really good. It ruins a subject, but man, the background looks really cool when I just put a little touch of de haze on or whatever. A lot of de haze, let's say. And so how, how great is that new quick selection tool of like I?
Arthur:mean everything they've, everything that's on Lightroom in the last, in the last couple of years, is insane the subject selection, backdrop, the sky, the I mean they even have Lens blur now.
Arthur:Yeah, early access, but I've really enjoyed using that in the last couple of weeks. Same with like point color. You can edit colors so specifically now it's so intuitively. I mean, everything they're adding is amazing, of course, the de noise capabilities across the board, whether it's Lightroom or you know topaz I are using to de noise your photos or through the roof, so you can really do so much with images nowadays and so many of my images or images that you know before we had access to these tools, you know, would have been good images, but not like images that are as good as what I turned them into. And and really just having that raw file and all these crazy awesome features allows us to do so much, and that's what makes it so unique again, for for you to be taking photos of A subject, even when your shoulder to shoulder with someone else. You're gonna end up with totally different results, which is just just an awesome feeling.
Court:Yeah, what I love is it allows you indeed to Be at the right place the right time, whether it is the unique lighting, whether it is the unique behavior, and you know that like, even if you kind of botched the settings a little bit, like it's gonna be a great. You can turn it in, you can really make lemonade, which is, I think, probably the most powerful way I use, you know, photoshop, I use Adobe camera raw, not quite Lightroom, but it's just the same thing. Um is, yeah, it's like okay, I did the work. I nailed that that moment with a polar bear is sparring with both, you know, both bears looking directly into each other's eyes, kind of thing. Yeah, that's great. So with with um, with your workflow, is there? Is there any specific slider feature that you feel is like holy cow?
Court:I discovered something really special here that I think does set things aside, and what I what I Mean by that is like some obviously we all know how to use Exposure and contrast and like you just kind of dink around and mess with that.
Court:But is there anything in there like you go into the full Photoshop and you use one of these Crazy like Gaussian blurs or iris, but you know, like that sort of stuff and I'll tell you what. One of my things that I found over the years this is an example, is as obscure as it is is decreasing the blue luminance. Um, very much mirrors the effect of a polarizer and like that's one of those things that like when I'm teaching classes, they're on a trip and people ask me about polarizer or just ask me about unique editing things. Like you know, one thing I found which is really interesting is decreasing blue luminance is very much like a polarizer for skies and it's like holy cow, never have tinkered with that because it's so deep in the depths of like your color mixer and you know how often do you need to really adjust luminance, but anything like that.
Arthur:You know, I guess yes and no. The reason why I say no is because I edit every single photo very differently. I shouldn't say differently. I have similar approaches with every photo. But every photo I edit I start from scratch. I don't use presets, I don't use anything. Every photo is entirely edited from scratch, and in some cases where I might drop clarity for example to soften my background a bit which is different now with the lens blur effect, because you can get really, really crazy with it, but in some photos I might actually raise clarity, I find.
Arthur:To go back to the yes is that I use a lot. I use clarity and de-haze a lot to soften images, to create artificial light sources in my images, paired with stuff like exposure rights, so I might use a radial gradient coming out of a corner to make it look like a beam of light coming down onto the subject, kind of finding hacks like that to add, to make changes to an image. That will add an element of depth to it. I think is the biggest thing I've done. A lot of the times it's localized edits on the background, localized edits on the animal. I think to me that it's really a combination of all those things. There is one thing, though, that I discovered that I really love. That has allowed me to bring colors back into the way I actually saw them and kind of make the contrast and the tones between the colors a little bit more aligned with the moment, which doesn't require individual edits like on the color mixer, where you're choosing your blues, for example, or your greens or whatever it is, and making specific edits to the luminance and saturation of those.
Arthur:But at the very, very bottom, if you're on Lightroom Classic, at the very very bottom, there is a calibration panel. So you have all your color mixer tone curve, detail, lens corrections, lens blur effects, calibration and it's way at the bottom. It's the last thing, and you have three colors that you can calibrate red, green and blue and I don't know how to exactly explain what it does, but essentially it sort of counterbalances opposite colors. So, like blues and oranges, you'll edit them and they'll get like either more purple and more green or like more teal and more. You know they're bringing them further apart from one another or closer to one another strictly with regards to the shades of the colors. That calibration panel has been super, super useful in me applying final touches to bring colors really to a place where I feel like they're not only aesthetic and visually pleasing but also just kind of match the moment a little bit better.
Arthur:Sometimes I find, especially when you're shooting in dimly lit environments which happens a lot in wildlife photography because you're shooting early and late. Overcast days are great, so sometimes your colors can go a little flat, depending on the color, the lighting conditions, and it's been one of those things that's really helped me bring color back into my images or bring them out a little more in a way that feels natural.
Court:So if you have a.
Arthur:Mestron, with your color calibration panel way on the bottom. That is something that's been very useful for me, that I use on almost every single image nowadays.
Court:Cool, that's a gem. That's exactly what I was looking for, because I think we all have some interesting little hack that's not real commonplace, that probably designed for something else that we've tinkered enough with, and that's exactly it. So nice. I'll have to try that out on this batch of photos and editing. This is great.
Arthur:That's really cool, I really love it, and it might just make your yellows a little more orange and your blues a little bit more teal, and maybe just four or five notches on the slider and those minor saturation adjustment and you're like, oh wow, that looks really nice.
Court:I'm looking forward to trying that out.
Court:Nice thanks, well, cool. So what I think of your photographs obviously I referenced the Moose earlier and I see a lot of Jackson Wadlife boxes, but I do think of you primarily as a bear photographer at least the majority of your photos and you're a bear guide as well, so I'd love to hear a little bit about that. I know you've been doing a lot of guiding this year for bears up in Alaska but yeah, just kind of want to hear a little bit about your journey there, what you're doing with bear photography, and also kind of telling the audience like, what are your thoughts on? Like if you were to be talking to a friend, like how to get the best bear photos, like the when, the where, the technique, the gear, sort of in this succinct way, we could probably have like eight hours of instruction on this. But just kind of like, what's your thought? Having done a lot of bear guiding, let's hear about that first. But then also, what I've learned is, if you want to just nail the experience, nail the shots, here's what I recommend, yeah.
Arthur:So bears have definitely become a huge focus of mine.
Arthur:When I describe myself as a wildlife photographer, I generally describe myself as a high latitude megafauna photographer.
Arthur:That being said, the most charismatic animals at high latitudes that fall into the megafauna category are probably bears for a lot of people, and I've always personally related to bears very, very deeply. I've been fortunate enough to now lead bear trips in several regions across the world within Alaska, from Katmai to Lake Clark to Southeast Alaska into Yellowstone, which, of course, is very different than bear viewing in Alaska. So I've been fortunate enough to have a lot of really diverse experiences with really different bears, which are all influenced by their own environmental factors food availability, human presence, bear population stuff like that everything that affects their what we call overt reaction distance, which has made being around them just that much more fascinating because I feel like I'm always discovering new individuals and observing new behavior and it's kind of like an endless resource of just amazing viewing right, because you always see something new and you always learn something new around bears, which has made them such a beloved animal of mine to spend time around.
Arthur:So this last summer I was in Lake Clark National Park working at Silver Sammon Creek Lodge, small family owned lodge in Lake Clark really really awesome bears and really really awesome bear photography opportunities. The year before I was, or a few years before, I was out in Alaska and Southeast leading bear trips that were flyout trips to Admiralty and Chichagov Islands. Again, very different bears. You're talking about a different subpopulation. They have different habits year round. They have different comfort levels, completely different level of habituation, which makes them different and interesting to photograph. And I think that when photographing bears, that's sort of what I focus on right. It's telling the story of what it feels like for me to be around these specific bears, based on where I am. So if I'm in Southeast Alaska, where bears might take a lot longer to warm up to your presence and to show it themselves or walk near you a lot of the times, the photos I'm capturing there tell more the story of sort of mysterious bears emerging from dense forests, as they have down there in the Tongass. So the photos might be more landscape-ish, right, you might have a smaller bear in frame. You might have just a completely different set of emotions from those photos you're capturing. Rather than fighting the conditions and the conditions that you're given and the encounters that you're given and trying to zoom in all the way and get real close, which is everyone's first instinct, is to zoom in as far in as you possibly can. It is, isn't it? It is awesome to just zoom in and see details on an animal, but in some cases it's counterintuitive to the photo you're creating Versus bears in Lee Clark or in Katmai, which might have a far higher comfort level, where maybe you're capturing very, very intimate, full frame-filling images where you're focused on the intensity of the closeness to the animal that you experienced, or very, very specific behavior like I don't know two cobs acting cute. So really just leaning into the conditions that you're given and you said this earlier, but I think it's for a basic saying. It's a very true one making lemonades out of lemons. You're not always gonna be given encounters that are incredible and flawless.
Arthur:A lot of the time it comes back to telling the story in a way that is true to your experience out there and also true to what you're given that day and making creating the best image out of the conditions and the certain environment you're in. So that's, and to me that all relates back to bears In other ways. I think when I've spent time with another animal, I spent a lot of time with his moose. Right, that still rings true across all species, but I have this personal connection to bears and that really has allowed me to see them so differently as individuals, whereas I can take a photo of the same bear multiple days and get completely different images. Moose, for example, which I love dearly, but you go to the same place to photograph a moose and there's only so much that you can work with with moose, whereas bears give you so many opportunities to create unique images based on their behaviors.
Arthur:So, when it comes to bear photography, I think, focus on the behavior, focus on the bears that you're watching and sort of capturing them in a way that is truthful and tells a story to those bears. I mean, it goes without saying. I think everybody listening to this would probably agree treat all the animals you're around with respect, first and foremost, and a photo is never worth compromising in animals' well-being or peace of mind. No matter how minute of an inconvenience you might be bringing to their day, it's never worth it. So that's kind of my best advice, you know, when it comes to bears is just focus on the individuality of these animals and trying to capture stories through their behaviors without forcing them and kind of just like letting yourself slow down. I think something we also do as photographers is we have two things. We have the tendency to get really excited and take a lot of photos without thinking about what we're taking photos about. So first advice to that point is slow down and put your camera down, watch what's happening, because only by watching what's happening will you be able to notice these behavioral displays and maybe anticipate behavior right, if you're looking.
Arthur:This happened to me and I'm just gonna use it because it was a failed photo for me. That would have been a great one, but we were down in Katmai photographing some brown bears and it was a beautiful sunrise and there's this gravel spit at this river mouth where this bear was walking out and it's backlit with fog lighting up in the sunrise. I mean, just like picture, perfect photo conditions. Like you just roll up and you're like this is something out of a damn movie, like it is so unbelievably perfect and beautiful, and naturally my excitement got to me and I just started zooming in and taking photos of this bear. And I did get great photos, but what I missed is a bald eagle that was at the very end of the spit and, out of nowhere, this bear that I was fully zoomed in on and start to running towards the bald eagle playfully curiously. And the bald eagle takes off and a friend of mine actually got this photo. But you have the silhouette of a brown bear running with a bald eagle flying towards it and it's just like gorgeous explosive sunrise backlight behind it. And of course, I didn't get it because I was zoomed into the bear and had I put my camera down, even for two seconds, right, I would have gotten maybe like 20 less photos of the same ones that I had been taken, but I would have noticed, hey, there's an eagle at the end of the spit and if this bear decides to interact with this eagle, that's the moment you really want, right.
Arthur:So, again, with bears focusing on behavior, slowing down, putting your camera down and not fighting the conditions that you're given, especially with large carnivores. Oftentimes they dictate the encounters, and so I think leaning into what you're given rather than fighting it and that also goes from an editing standpoint is always beneficial. And I say editing because sometimes you get to a photo and you're like, oh man, it's just like a little dark and like, well, if it's a little dark, lean into it, make it darker and bring attention to the highlights. Or if it's too bright, maybe focus on maybe there's an interesting element in the shadows or something. So, always leaning into what you're given and making lemonade out of lemons, I think is a good approach.
Court:Heck, yeah, yeah, you saying that about the darkening. It makes me kind of remember back to some of my favorite photos of yours. Is, I think, some of your best or my favorite, whether it's what you feel is your best or others, who knows. But I am always curious. I think even lighting it's not even lighting, it's not an even exposure, it's very, very dark with this beautiful bright spot or the opposite. And I feel that that is a super valuable lesson for photographers these days that wish to differentiate themselves, wish to do something different, is thinking away from even like well, I don't wanna say even lighting, that's a different thing, but even exposure, like that zero level exposure, that 18% gray across the screen, you know forcefully taking really dark photos. I do this all the time when I'm like guiding in places like Borneo it's a dim rain forest, Like don't even walk out your door with an even exposure, you know, go negative right off the bat, like make it dark. It's a dim forest, yeah, it's gonna be quote unquote, underexposed, but it captures the vibe, so that's great.
Court:Another thing you said I've heard this from so many great photographers and I'll admit it's something that I actually have a really hard time with is indeed just watching the scene for a little bit and like not just having your camera and shooting away and like, I'll be honest, I do not take that advice. I'm bad at it and I wish I was better, but another person you know you here showcasing the merits of that and it's. I think it's a super valuable thing, because the very best photographers say the same thing. It's like always let the scene unfold, watch it, have that wider view and see what's going on, cause that's when the really special shots happen. So yeah, I just wanted to underline.
Arthur:You will miss. You know, I think it's natural for us to not want to do that because we're so tempted to just capture every shot we can, which I mean undoubtedly you're missing shots by not shooting all the time. But then are you gonna be more upset that you missed a couple of good shots, or more upset that you missed the absolute shot that you wanted? And you know, every so many shots have come about where, like I, have great shots, the first, however many minutes or hours of an encounter, but it culminates into this moment where you know you're settled in and you're focused and you're aware of what's happening and you're in tune with the animals behavior and you're like, suddenly you're like, oh, like, this is what I want. And when that spark comes into your mind, there's no question about it, and I think something that you said with regards to like the dim forest just rings true and made me think of this thing.
Arthur:Back to editing when I take images I think this is just something I wanted to tag on when I'm shooting in the field, I'm always thinking well as I take the photo about how I'm gonna edit the photo. So I don't take the photo just for the sake of taking the photo. Sometimes you do because you have to think quickly, right, and you just react to take the photo, boom, I don't care. There was like a half second. This bird flew across my frame, at least I got it.
Arthur:But when you have the time, really think about what am I gonna do to this photo in post, how am I gonna edit this photo, and that can totally change the way you capture an image. I've gone from an even exposure to drastically under exposing a shot just because of that, or over exposing a shot as well, which is another. Sometimes I willingly blow out the majority of my image, knowing that I can salvage the parts that I need. Right, and I think it's always striking that balance between what can I salvage in post and what is editable data, so to say, which, as long as you're not clipping on either ends, is always to some extent editable. But really just thinking about the end product while you're in the moment has been a really, really beneficial practice for me to incorporate into my creative flow.
Court:Super good advice. I love that. I love that shoot to edit.
Arthur:Yeah, that's what we're doing, right.
Court:Yeah, absolutely. Well, as we round out this discussion, it's a shameless plug time. Where can people find you? Where is Arthur Leffo? How Absolutely.
Arthur:So I'm on Instagram that's my most active platform under Arthur Leffo Just my name. My website's arthurleffocom. I've got a print shop that I'm constantly updating up there, and then I also have through my personal Instagram and website. You should have access to my company Instagram and website, which is Think Wild Expeditions. We're hosting small, really really intimate, generally two to one guide to guest ratio or guest to guide ratio wildlife photography, experiences and expeditions around the world. Of course started in Yellowstone because I was an easy first thing, but we're entering our second year in business and have a trip to Churchill into Southeast Alaska lined up and some really exciting things on the horizon for 2025. That includes coastal wolves and other exciting projects. So lots to come from myself and from my business partner, brook and I on the Think Wild kind of things. So, yeah, it'd be awesome to have you guys along on the journey.
Court:I love that name. Think Wild, this is great stuff. Well, be sure to put all those references in the show notes. And gosh, Arthur, it's been great to connect. It's been too long, I feel. Even though we haven't like talked much more about river messages and short blips here and there over the years, it's like I follow you along so closely, I'm like I know exactly where you're at and what you're doing. So it doesn't feel like it's been all that long, but nevertheless super good to connect and thanks for joining me today.
Arthur:Yeah, totally.
Court:Awesome Guys. That was a lot of fun. I seriously learned so much and I hope you did as well as always. We would love to hear comments, ideas, suggestions from you. Email me at wildphotographerpodcast at gmailcom. Wildphotographerpodcast at gmailcom. I wanna hear ideas for episodes, questions you might have, whether it's for one of our snapshots, shorter episodes, interview subjects, you name it. Love to hear from you. I hope you learned a lot today and enjoyed the podcast. Thanks so much for joining. See you next time.