The Wild Photographer

Pro Safari Photographer Rich de Gouveia: Low-light Techniques, Best Lenses, "Making" Photographs to Represent Something, and Much More

• Court Whelan • Episode 74

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In this episode, Court sits down with pro safari photographer and guide, Richard de Gouveia, to get practical about what actually improves your wildlife and landscape images on the ground, from low-light decisions to vehicle positioning and daily image review. 

A lot is covered in this episode with so many wonderful takeaways, including best-practices when planning an African photo safari, conservation photography, the best gear, thoughts on improving your odds in photo contests and his advice for sharing photos, particularly on social media (he's got an impressive following).

The thread that ties it all together is intention: making photographs that represent something, not just collecting wildlife sightings.

Key Takeaways:

  1. Start with the end in mind - Plan safaris around what you want to photograph, not just where you want to go—build the itinerary backward from your goals. 
  2. A great guide is your secret weapon - The best results come from guides who understand both wildlife behavior and photography.
  3. Stay longer, shoot better - Proper duration allows for better light, behavior, and storytelling opportunities. 
  4. Low light is the biggest technical challenge - The best moments happen at dawn/dusk—so mastering shooting technique is critical. 
  5. Gear matters—but only at the margins - You don’t need top-tier gear, but you do need gear that can handle motion + low light.
  6. Big primes = power + constraints - They deliver incredible image quality and subject isolation—but require mindset shifts.
  7. Background is everything - Great wildlife photos aren’t just about the subject—it's equally about what’s behind it.
  8. Think in sequences, not single shots - As an animal approaches: shoot wide → mid → tight. This builds a complete visual story instead of a one-off frame. 
  9. Review your photos daily (non-negotiable) - Why waiting until you get home is too late.
  10. Photography is about representation, not just aesthetics - How to get your best images to mean something.


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Welcome And Guest Setup

SPEAKER_00

Hey friends, this is Court Whalen, and welcome back to The Wild Photographer. Today's guest is someone who lives and breathes safari photography, and really the deeper purpose behind why we make images in the first place. This is Richard de Guveya. Rich is an African safari photography guide, an educator, and a very conservation-minded storyteller who has spent years helping photographers not just take better wildlife photos, but truly make photographs with intention. He brings this really rare mix of technical expertise, fieldcraft, guiding instincts, and deep natural history knowledge that can completely change the way you experience a safari. In this conversation, Rich and I dig into some really enlightening topics. We talk about the practical realities and advantages of shooting with big prime lenses, something that I'm very, very interested in and something that he has a lot of experience with, how to work within their constraints and why that limitation can actually sharpen your eye and improve your storytelling. We also get into the difference between simply capturing wildlife images and making photographs that actually represent something. This is one of the big takeaways for myself in this is this topic of this concept of photos that represent something. Photos need to represent something. These are images with narrative mood and meaning behind them. We also explore the powerful intersection of photography and conservation, including how travel and wildlife encounters can create very real value for protecting wild places, something that I've personally made my life's work. And this is something that Rich is very involved in as well. And beyond wildlife, we branch into landscape photography, cultural and travel photography too, how to photograph people and cultures respectfully, how to find story and gesture in the environment, how to use gear thoughtfully to separate a subject from the beautiful chaos around them. Of course, we also go deep on gear and camera bodies, lens choices, a lot about low light challenges, especially for wildlife photography, Rich's editing workflow, his safari planning strategy, and a whole lot more. This one is packed with insight for anyone dreaming about an African photo safari, and really anybody interested in wildlife photography in general, anyone curious about conservation photography, and anyone who wants to have more intention behind the camera. Before we dive into the conversation, I want to give a quick thanks to the sponsors of the show. First up, I'd like to thank Bay Photo. As a friend, I want to advocate for printing your work. It's such an important thing to do. Whether you're a seasoned pro and haven't printed off in a while, or if you're a budding new photographer that hasn't yet printed much or anything at all, Bay Photo is a great, great choice. It's who I use personally. Printing your photos helps you grow. And frankly, it inspires me so much each time I see my photos in a tangible way, something other than just digital. Bay Photo has been at this for now 50 years, which is a great anniversary, very amazing anniversary for them. And it's pretty wild when you think about how much photography has changed in 50 years and they're still at it. They're just consistently nailing the art of print the whole way through. Whether you're shooting for yourself or for clients, uh turning your images into physical pieces is really one of the fastest ways to level up both your craft and potentially your business. One of the many things I love about Bay Photo is how easy they make it. Their online ordering system is super clean, built specifically for photographers, and even lets you preview your work on a wall before you order. So no guesswork. Plus, their product lineup is huge. It's metal prints, acrylics, canvas, frame prints, and really a litany of pro photo papers to choose from. They've got it all. They've got quick turnaround as well, which is very important for me. They also do white label shipping straight to your clients if that's the way that you're going with this. And even optional color correction from real humans who know what they're doing with color in photos. That's that's a really big added value. And right now you can get 25% off any wall order display with the code TWP25. So again, 25% off, use the code TWP25. Just head on over to bayphoto.com/slash the wild photographer and start turning your photos into something tangible. I'd also like to think MPB and talk about something that every photographer is going to bump into sooner or later. It happens to me all the time. In fact, uh, I often think of that moment that I eye my next piece of gear. It's something that I truly enjoy. Um, for you, it may be because your style is evolving, or maybe you've just got your eye on something new and potentially specialized for an upcoming trip, a very purpose-built lens, or you want to try out a full-frame camera. Whatever it is, the upgrade cycle is a very real thing in photography, and that's exactly where MPB comes in. MPB is hands down one of the easiest ways I've found to buy, sell, or trade camera gear without the usual and potential hassle. The big thing for me, it's it's trust. You're not rolling the dice on some random listing in an online marketplace. Every item is carefully inspected, tested, and photographed individually for their website. So what you see, what you might be buying from them, is exactly what shows up at the door. Uh, plus, there's a warranty and very easy returns should something just not be working out. On the flip side, if you've got gear sitting around on the shelf collecting dust, maybe it's a lens that you invested in that you thought would be a game changer and it's just not panning out that way, MPB makes selling ridiculously simple. You get a quote fast, like really fast, almost instantaneously. You ship it off with free insured shipping orchestrated by MPB. And once they check it out, you get paid directly, right to your bank. No back and forth, no awkward meetups, no guesswork. So whether you're upgrading your kit or just want to simplify what you carry around, or just turning old gear into funds for your next photo adventure, MPB is absolutely worth checking out. Buy, sell, or trade and keep on doing what you love out there. All right, here we go. Let's get into it with Rich. Here is my conversation with Richard DeGuvea. Rich, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Court.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks again for having me. It's as always an excitement to chat to you and to obviously get into a little bit of the photographic nitty-gritty.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yeah. Well, that's that's our favorite, right? Um, well, fantastic. Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna launch into it, and I want to talk about um, of course, African safaris. That's your specialty, and that's something that I do often. I know a lot of listeners might be dreaming of or might be in that world already and planning and thinking about their next adventure. So, you know, as an expert in African safari photography and even the planning aspect, for someone that's interested in their first or maybe even second or third African safari, African photo safari, what advice would you have for the thinking and the planning when it comes to maximizing photo opportunities in Africa?

SPEAKER_01

I I think the planning, I always go by the six Ps. Proper prior planning prevents poor performance. That that planning process is so important. So there's so many places where you can look at an itinerary and build out, okay, cool, that seems like a nice flow, what we're doing, but how I like to do it is to actually start at the with the end in mind and figure out what people want to photograph and how we're gonna go about that. So a small example is we've just come back from Namibia. Um, I'd been on a previous safari with these people, and they wanted to do something that was culturally adaptive, so the Himba people were part of it, and to do something that was very photographically oriented around uh landscapes. So when I go and I plan this out with the guests, I feel out what those people want in order to figure out the next steps, and then we plan the lodges along according to those things. And then the next part is how comfortable someone is actually in that environment. So if you're going into an environment you've never seen a lion before, I would say that making sure that you have a photographic guide, um, either like yourself or myself, that goes with the people that understand the animal behavior, because really we're playing a chess game. We're busy sitting going, cool, you might be able to take amazing photos of things. But if you don't know when or what to expect, that is gonna change everything in terms of that photography. It's gonna change the the way you set up. Are we gonna do long exposures and get some uh some nice pan shots? Is this a moment where they might hunt? Okay, wait for this moment. But that sort of information is priceless. Now you can get that by either having a private guide coming along with you or ensuring that you get a photographically minded guide in the lodges. But I would suggest that having that amount of knowledge with you, it's gonna change everything. And most of the time, you're then also looking at what images you would like to take. So I like scouring through places and seeing images and how to take things. And I was very lucky that last year we were in Namibia, and one of the guests that came with me on the trip won the Sony Sony Wildlife Landscape Photographer of the Year award with one of the photos he took on the trip with us. And having him there, and he's very landscape-oriented, changed my perspective on how I was photographing things, how I was editing things, all through that process. And that's what I love about this job is sometimes you actually the student. I had a client with me that was my teacher.

Ideal Camp Stays And Trip Length

SPEAKER_00

Talk to me about duration. Are there do you have any golden rules for like how many nights you'd spend at each camp? You know, when people are like looking at itineraries or planning their own, or whether it's custom or something already out there, do you have a golden rule for the minimum number of nights you'd spend at a given area to really dive deep enough from a photographic standpoint? And then also, kind of as a second question to that duration of the trip. You know, obviously there are different strokes for different folks. People might want to do a quick seven-day safari because they only have that time or that budget or that interest. People might want to do a 21-day, but is are there some golden rules between those two?

SPEAKER_01

So to start off with the lodges, I think that's such a quality question because for me, three nights is almost minimum. One from a point that I don't feel or the clients don't feel like they're living out of their bag. They feel like they can unpack, they can get comfortable, we can be part of it, we can do stuff, and you have enough time to explore the area. Four nights is my my happy point. Because then you really yeah, it's that exactly that the sweet spot. You have the time, you're not rushed, you get the opportunity to look at things from multiple angles, and you're never chasing. And then I I build in the thought process because I mean safari, uh, people typically go, okay, I want to see the big five. But there may be an area where you go, this spot is a good spot for rhino. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna spend three days going after rhino. We're gonna go look for them. I don't even care if we see a line, that's cool, if it's in a great light or whatever, we'll go for that. But the next camp will be built around that experience, and that's how I plan things out isn't to not go and hit reset every time you get to a new lodge. And that's where the guide coming with you has this ability to speak to the local guides to say, XNA, that one, because we've already spent lots of time on Rhino. We want to focus on this here. So build everything around that. So that's pretty much where it comes to um with the with the length of stay.

SPEAKER_00

What was the second question again, Court? Just like your thoughts on duration of the trip. Is there a minimum or is it truly just pretty flexible based on interests? Or but what if someone's again going on their first time to Africa, or maybe it's their first photocentric trip to Africa, is there kind of a minimum or again a gold standard on your point from the perspective of like duration of the whole trip?

SPEAKER_01

So I would never go much less than about 10 days, specifically because of timing. So when we worked in when I worked in the lodges, it was an amazing experience where people came in, they ticked their bucket list in two or three nights, and that was their safari experience. Now we've got this world where we're able to go and spend 10, 12, 14, 21 nights. And I've even I even know of clients that have done 60 nights consecutive on Safari. That's a budget. It takes a it takes budget, but it also takes time and understanding in those things. For me, sort of two weeks to 18 days is a good amount of time. You want to do at least three different camps, minimum two. You can get away with a 10-day safari and you do five nights, five nights, or four nights, four nights, and then maybe two nights in Cape Town or somewhere where you can sort of because you want to get the cobwebs out. And I think when whenever I speak to two guests and clients, Africa is far away. It's long flights and changing time zones, and you want that moment where you can sit down, clear the cobwebs, get the flights out of your head, and then move into it. If you rush through that, you may miss a whole bunch of the experience along the way.

Low Light Challenges And Gear Choices

SPEAKER_00

I want to come back to something you were talking about before, before my next question, which is the desire or the importance, the benefit of having a photo guide that's also a naturalist guide, like the two in tandem, the, you know, in in in one person. I think that's a an under acknowledged or underappreciated, not skill set, but like attribute or benefit to the trip is you have someone that not only can anticipate wildlife behavior, but also someone that is looking at it through literally the lens of photography. And when you have those two things together with the person who's calling the shots, angling the vehicle, going to the certain places at the certain times, it is really a huge, huge thing in your favor as a guest photographer because you're gonna get more shots, you're gonna get more behaviors, you're gonna get more unique behaviors. So, yeah, I think that's that's a good point to underline there is having uh a photographer guide that is also the biologist, slash naturalist, slash you know, expedition leader, I think is a really, really important point. So yeah, thanks for thanks for bringing that up. Um what are the biggest challenges with photography on African safaris? And this can go in any direction you want, but I'm thinking like techniques, or maybe it's just the environment, or maybe it's the unfamiliarity, maybe it's the the expectations. But yeah, what would you determine, or would you say are the biggest challenges with photography on safari? Low light. Yes.

SPEAKER_01

Low light. I think the the most amazing things are always happening, sort of that dusk and dawn period or into the night. And uh there's quite a few techniques that need to be mastered and thought of. So uh in February I was up in Lykepia photographing the black leopard, and she's a different beast because she's this completely black individual. So your camera and the focus become it doesn't matter what camera you're doing, you you're still fighting with the camera to try and get the right focus, especially when you're at that dusk and dawn sort of period with her. So I I think low light is a is a a really challenging part pushing people and getting people to push higher ISOs and even ensuring that people have the correct gear because it's not a normal why it's not a normal photographic session. If you're gonna go and spend$10,000,$20,000 on a on a trip, you want to make sure that you have the camera. And that doesn't mean I'm not saying okay, go out and go buy a new camera, because I don't think that that's a reasonable expectation. But there are certain trips that require certain lenses, certain bodies, certain oomph that your camera may not be capable of doing, and your camera will be fine the whole way through until you reach that tough point. And I'm an advocate for renting, but finding the right gear and going, okay, cool, maybe I can handle a 2.8 lens, or maybe I need an upgrade in a body so that I've got a little bit more focus because in Africa things move. You know, with wildlife, things move. We're photographing them in low light. So you want to be able to push ISO to 3200 at least, 6400 without having to go into Lightroom or Topaz or one of those editing softwares. You want to get it right as close to right as possible in camera. And when we're fighting with that, the other part of it is people don't like getting up at 4:30 a.m. to leave at 5 a.m. Normal safari, even getting your guide, your local guide that's in the lodge, who is set to the time of we leave at 6, we come back at 9 or 10, depending on what the lodge is. But to get their mind shift to say, let's leave early, is often a very difficult thing. And I come back to that guide and the having the guide along with you and what you were saying with this naturalist side of things is understanding behavior before you need it. And being able to talk to a local guide where the guest might feel a little worried about it or hit a wall with that local guide. I can pull somebody aside and say, listen, this is our plan of action. I'll make sure you get enough time at home. And we look after you. So come, let's come to the party, let's go out early, let's go do something cool. And then they get excited, and guests get excited, and everyone goes out, and then we come back and sleep when you get back. And then look at photos. Because I think also on the process of it is I see a lot of photographers coming, they take a lot of images while they're there, and they never look at them, they never bring a laptop, they stick them on a hard drive, and then they look at them when they get home. That is too late to realize you made a mistake or that a camera setting was wrong or something like that. I advocate that every day you do an image review to make sure that you are getting what you need. You can edit a bit and understand that process so it moves things along.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I will second and third that notion of low light being one of the big challenges, not only because low light just is inherently a challenge, but that it's very commonplace on African safaris. And to put the cherry on top, that's when you're gonna potentially get your best photos. You know, so it's not to be ignored, it's not to be taken lightly. So my my takeaway from that is we're we're looking at full frame camera bodies and big prime lenses. Is that what you're sort of thinking? Is that your go-to?

SPEAKER_01

You can get away with with non-prime lenses, but it becomes difficult. If you're not shooting at 2.8 or F4, your light becomes very difficult. And that first twilight zone, when you find a leopard and you've got it and it's moving before it gets hot, it's moving. So you're gonna be shooting at four hundredth of a second, two hundredth of a second, hundredth of a second if you're in an F56 situation. So having a faster lens, even if it's shorter, because we've got so many megapixels now, having a 70 to 200 2.8 gives you the extra light and you can work the system. But that low light is a big thing.

Big Prime Lenses And Constraints

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I find myself putting my 70 to 200 on in those times often. And you know, we can always zoom in, we can always crop in, we can't crop out. Um, and I love primes, I love the idea of them. I love I love the concept of shooting at a you know a 400, 2.8, or a 600 F4. Um, but yeah, sometimes going wider is is a-okay, especially if it comes down to size and weight and budget. I will mention and a shameless plug here is that great, great partners of the podcast, lensrentals.com. If uh if you're in the US, I think they might do other countries as well. But in the US, you know, they're they're a great place to rent lenses, and I do it for almost every single trip. And and as a listener, uh, if you if you want to get 15% off, you can use Wild Photo 15 and get 15% off that order, which is a really great thing. And it makes a big difference when you're renting those big primes. Now that we've broached the topic of the big primes, I do have some questions because I know you're a big prime guy. I want to become a big prime guy, but I haven't quite taken the leap other than you know, a couple rentals here and there. But I want to get your expert opinion on some of these management tactics around big primes. And for those that aren't familiar, big prime just means it's a fixed focal length, and they usually get a really, really big maximum aperture, like a 300, 2.8, 400, 2.8, 600 F4, things that you couldn't get on the Zooms, like the 100 to 400s, the 200 to 600s. So they're they're immensely valuable for low light. They're extraordinarily good for background separation to create that tax sharp subject with a nice blurred background and foreground. It really minimizes distractions, but it comes at a cost. You know, they are expensive lenses. Um They are big, they're heavy, they're not as portable by a long shot. And you're you're kind of stuck at that focal length. So if you know if you have too much telephoto, that can be a problem. Um, if you don't have enough, that can also be a problem too. So there's a lot of management and working that you have to do. And I imagine a lot of it happens between the ears for you, like thinking like a big prime lens. And you know, when you have this shot, of course you'd love to zoom in and zoom out, but you've made that sacrifice to get truly a better lens. And I'm wondering, my my question is, you know, what do you do in those instances when you have too much telephoto for the shot? Do you religiously bring a second lens and second body with you, or do you switch lenses, or do you simply reenvision the shot to make it work with that lens? Is it kind of like the whole adage of constraint is a mother of creativity? How do you manage that inflexibility with primes?

SPEAKER_01

So to go back to the first time that I got a prime lens, hallelujah moment, broke the bank because they are horribly expensive. Um, but I was in a position that Sony was doing things for me and we moved needles and it wasn't as expensive. But so it was easier to digest. But that first time I went out and started shooting with that 400 2.8 was very difficult. The concept of it was very difficult. First of all, because throughout my guiding days, and when you go to places like the Sabi Sands, all of our wildlife guides want to put us next to wildlife. So you have the first barrier, it's not the lens, it's the guide. Because you need to explain to him, and he needs to have an understanding that we don't need to be five meters away from the animal, as thrilling as that is. We actually need the animal to be 30 meters away so that we have this ability to shoot better. So it's the coaching of that. Secondly, then you have this fact that you can't zoom. And this can't zoom messes with your brain because suddenly the thing's walking towards you, you got it, you got it, you got it. So, yeah, if I give a wildly different example, a lion's walking down across an open plane towards you. It's far away, you're shooting landscape, you've got him off to the side, and you've got this beautiful background bokeh, and it's beautiful. Then it gets closer and closer and closer, so you switch to portrait so that you get the full body walking straight towards you. So that's my initial is capture in scene. Then as he's coming directly towards you, you capture in portrait so that you get feet to head and fill the frame up. As he gets closer, you just do face. So you're constantly cropping in your mind. And then I always have a 70 to 200 on a second body. So I will always have both cameras there because the situation changes rapidly. And I think with the advent of or the inclusion of social media and how things are growing and how things are getting very video centric, I tend to jump to the wider lens for video stuff. And then animal lens situation, which I love because the one thing about going on safari in Africa that is different to shooting a lion in a zoo, is the fact that you're in nature and you can put that animal in its space. So you need to be wider, you need to be in a position that you can get great stuff. Um, even shooting when I say going to the gorillas and using a 135, 1.8 prime. Now, again, it's how close are you? You don't want the things on top of you, which in a conservation sense is a wonderful thing because it keeps us further away from the animals. We don't, we're not impacting their daily life. We can watch from a bit of a distance, you know, you you're not trying to give anyone the thrill or give the animal the scare. But once you start working with that shallow uh depth of field and that deep bokeh, you can really pop things out, you can get features, you can start telling stories. And the stories for me are uh is nine-tenths of photography, and that goes back to the naturalist guide teaching you something while you're on on safari because it's not just about the photo, because the photo needs to represent something, the photo has to tell a story, and if the guide is teaching you about what that animal's doing and why they're doing it, you have a better ability to tell a story than just I saw a lion in Africa. You see, I saw a lion that was interacting with a lioness because there was mating friction. This there's more to a story. So I do not believe they're separated. And any photographers that have come in or guides that I know that have come in from the outside, that has been their biggest difficulty is stepping up to the understanding point, understanding what their wildlife is doing and why they're doing it, which gives us the next point of what they're gonna do next. So that prime lens works beautifully, but it does come with those constraints. And then I love a 400, 2.8 because I can stick a 1.4 converter on it, and effectively I have the 560f4. So it's like a 600 F4. With their teleconverters have changed so much from when I started doing photography that I have two lenses in the bag without having to carry two prime lenses in each hand, which would weigh me down. Already my camera gear is too ex too too heavy, and every time I get to an airport, I have to pretend like I'm He-Man and my bag weighs nothing, otherwise, we get in trouble.

Getting Prime Results From Zooms

SPEAKER_00

You said some really great things. What one thing I just made note of is that you may have just cracked the nut on storytelling for me in the audience in such a simple, beautiful way. You said the photo needs to represent something. I think that's so powerful when we constantly try to think about storytelling in our photography. We we know it's important. It's not always easy to do it, but I think having that adage in your mind that this photo I'm about to shoot needs to represent something. The the choice of words there is fantastic. So I just want to triple underline that one. Uh, and then another point that I just sort of wanted to add on to the benefits as you were talking about the distance to wildlife is something that comes to mind for me is if if you are photographing a bit further away, that also lowers your angle of view. So you actually are shooting more parallel to the ground, which is huge for wildlife safari. I mean, the uh the ideal thing for most wildlife portraiture and even wildlife and landscape shots is to be parallel to the eyes, more or less. We can't always do that, right? Because we got to be in a safari vehicle. Like that's safe, that's responsible, that's a sustainable option. But if you are, you know, 30 feet away versus 10 feet away, the angle that your camera, as you're photographing to that lion sitting on the ground, it becomes more acute. Like you're actually getting more background in the shot, you're getting more distance, that helps with the background separation. So yeah, I love that. And of course, the the final thing, which is one of the first things you said is going through your mind and saying, okay, landscape-oriented shot, you know, um, horizontal shot as it approaches, switch to portrait, vertical shots, and then go for full frame face shot. I think that's so great because we oftentimes go out of order in those things if we even do all three in general. So I think using that as a solution to figure out how do I manage this prime with that three-step and probably more step process, but a simple three-step process is just brilliant. So yeah, fantastic stuff there. Um, staying kind of on the topic of primes, um, a lot of people won't bring primes. It's it's too big, it's too heavy, or it's too expensive, or they're just this is their one trip and they don't want to have a learning curve. We know that big primes are, of course, desirable on Safari, but what advice might you have for folks that are either hesitant to rent one or or just simply can't manage it? Are there ways to maximize your Zoom telephoto to give kind of a prime look or a prime feel or even the efficacy of a prime? Like what would you do to think about that background separation? What would you do to manage that low light? Just all the things you can think of, turning your Zoom telephoto, you know, let's say your classic 100 to 500 or 100 to 400, the 200 to 600 from Sony. How do you give that prime look, that pro look?

SPEAKER_01

So again, this is all about time. Time with the animal. It's not rushing in and going, oh, I've got 20 shots of this. Let's move on and get to the next checklist. And this is where that duration of safari that we were referring to earlier means we have time. So maybe we got to a lion pride and they're all flat and sleeping. And that's what lions do. They sleep for 20 hours a day. So we have to come back at a time when they're moving, when they might be doing something that will allow us to get that image to represent something more, to really tell a story. But then our vehicle positioning is a hundred percent everything else, because you don't need a prime lens to have a shallow depth of field. 5.6 can work perfectly. It depends what's behind it and how close behind it that thing is. So having somebody to say to the driver, to the guide, the local guide, who is very knowledgeable on his area and that space, say what is coming up? Where are they moving to? Like if I go back to Saabi Sabi, I know the reserve like the back of my hand. If an animal's walking in a direction, I may leave that animal and say, listen, I'm going to the waterhole that it's walking to, because I know that there's a water hole there. And I know that that point is a downhill point, and they probably will walk towards us so we can get lower. We can clear background so there's no background, or the background's really far away, which gives us that shallow depth of field, nice poker to be able to pull out that subject and make it really pop. All of that is what I'm discussing with the local guide, because I might not know the space as well, or I don't know the space as well as he does or she does. They can then put us in that position and we're constant. That's again that chess game of moving forward, moving out of the way where vehicles are basically going in and around, trying to get this epic feel where people are going, oh my God, I had a lion walk right by me. That doesn't really make a difference to a photograph. It does make a difference if it's further away, because again, we get that lower angle, and further away increases or decreases that depth of field and increases the poker and cleaning the background. So I'm not just looking at the animal, I'm looking at what's behind the animal. We're always having to take that next look of background, what's behind it. And that's often something that we lose because we're so focused on that creature. So on this last trip I was on, I was telling the guests, whenever I'm taking a photo, I'm always running my eye around the perimeter of the photo too. Because I want to see what the edge is, what's cutting in, what's coming in. Because there's so much story that's told around the edges that can pull away from the subject.

Sharing Work Without Chasing Algorithms

SPEAKER_00

I love that. The background is so important. And people are probably so tired of hearing me say this, but it's, I mean, you've just reconfirmed is the background is I don't want to say it's everything, because of course your subject is very important, but knowing what's going on behind it. So I love that, you know, you're you're looking at the background just as much as the main subject itself. And yeah, just to underline that point as well, when you can get those low photos, when you can put the horizon in the background, that's the most distant background you can possibly imagine. So you're going to get that creamy blur that we all really hope for and wish for in our in our portrait photography of wildlife. Um, yeah, excellent, excellent stuff. I want to switch gears here and talk a little bit about showcasing work. You you are a maestro at showing your work and you are very effective and very followed on social media. And, you know, I kind of just want to get your thoughts on the ideas around either selecting your photos for social or you know, online websites and all that, kind of wrapping in this idea, this common adage we have in photography of really only showing your best work, or if that really even applies in this world where consistency and volume of sharing work is equally important. So I'm wondering if you have any advice or considerations to make in the kind of pre-during or post-shooting to maximize presence and impact on the internet, social media or otherwise. All right, let's hit pause for a second because I want to share something that's made a real difference in how I run my photography business. And that's my website through art storefronts. If you're anything like me, you love the creative side, the capturing the images, the making the images, being out in the field. But when it comes actually to selling your work, that's where things can get a little bit confusing, a little tricky, and honestly, sometimes a bit draining. What I've found with art storefronts is that it's way more than just a website. It's way more than just a place to host your photos beautifully, by the way. But it is truly an entire ecosystem built specifically for photographers, by photographers who want to turn their work into income without feeling like they need an advanced marketing degree. The platform handles a lot of the heavy lifting with a lot of great back-end support from real people, like real people helping you upload images, curating your files, renaming the files, keywording, all that great stuff. There are a lot of built-in sales tools and marketing features to help you stay consistent, you know, posting your work, sharing your work, getting your work out there without you having to constantly think about it. You're essentially outsourcing that, which I love in today's busy world. And here's something pretty awesome for listeners of the Wild Photographer. If you mention this podcast and this ad, Art Storefronts will set up and optimize your website for you completely free. That's an$1,800 setup fee gone. So head on over to Artstorefronts.com, take a look, and make sure you mention the Wild Photographer to get that full setup included. All right, and now back to the show.

SPEAKER_01

The biggest threat to photography now is shooting for algorithms. Hmm. Because we all want to be seen. It's it's a natural human desire to have someone affirm that you're doing a good job. And we're often shooting for that purpose. And I don't believe wildlife photography is that for me. I think in the greater scheme of it, it's all about the representation. I keep coming back to this representation, but how are you representing and what are you representing? What is the story you're telling? And when we're doing it in a social media format, uh what do you want the person that's viewing it to feel? For me, I want people to attach to Africa. I want people to see the incredible experience that is Africa, and it's not just about a lion. And there are moments where lions are walking by you, and it's clickbait. I'm not gonna beat around the push, but I reached big followings because of viral videos where people very much had split decisions on things. So the things that had the most negative commentary generally flowed the hardest. And that that made me go where am I where am I putting my energy here? Is that really what I want? And I'm trying to, in my mind, figure out where the next step is in this evolution of it. So I have a great following, that's great. But you really just want to attach to people. It doesn't matter if you've got 200,000, 500,000, a million followers. If you can have a little community that you can talk to, that you can interact with, that you can maybe really have an influence on. The community that you've built here caught with this, with their ability to be able to listen to other photographers, to learn, to but that's real. It's not the thing of, oh my god, I got a million likes, because that's that effectively that runs its course. So we really want to try and find why we are shooting and what are we trying to get to. Some people want to win photo photo competitions. And that client that I spoke to you about that won, he he's now won five competitions in the last year. He's just been on fire at some of the biggest landscape photography stuff. And that's his thing. He loves it. He loves the creation of it, he loves the beauty of the photographs, and he wants to showcase that. He's and really good at it. And then you have other people that come along that all they're trying to do is gather memories for themselves. That changes how you do your photography. It changes what you share and why you share it. Others have a conservation drive. So for me, all of our trips that I put together personally, we have a conservation element involved. There has to be something conservation involved that people can feel like they leave a fingerprint, a positive fingerprint on the world that they've just entered. And not just leave with the photographs, but leave with a heart full, knowing that there's been more to it. So I think as my story goes, I'm trying to find what that next step is. And it might be to do with photos, but it may also just be my personal rendition of what I've experienced, the amazing gifts that I've been given through almost 17 years of doing this.

SPEAKER_00

I want to talk about that intersection of conservation photography a little bit more. But one question came up as you were talking about your previous guest with the photo contests. So I have not personally dabbled into photo contests very much, if if at all. I'm wondering, have you done any of those, gotten into them at all? And just probably most importantly, perhaps for the audience, have you noticed any, I don't want to say tricks and tips, because the point is that they're really not tricks, it's just solid, great photos, but have you noticed any commonalities of those photos that really rank in the upper echelon of photo contests? Is it is it truly just boiling down to capturing something rare and unseen, or is it the moment? Any insight on that?

SPEAKER_01

I think when it comes to wildlife photography, it seems to me that a lot of the images have taken a lot of thought and they take that thought process. The judges take that thought process into account. So the latest winner of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Vim, he I know him personally, he's been trying to get that shot for 10 years. He knew he's been guiding trips through this commons corp for years and years. And what is the shot? Can you describe it? It's a brown hyena in front of an abandoned building at night, and he set up a camera trap. So he's now taken his wildlife knowledge. He's gone and he sees where the hyenas, the tracks, every time he goes there, the tracks come past a certain point, and then animals are creatures of a habit that keep going past and doing things. So he set up a camera trap, waiting for the light to be right, and it's this eerie, misty, brown hyena right in front of the camera with this eerie building in the background, also lit up in this beautiful warm hue at night because that's when they move. And it's that thought process. If you look at all most of the ones that have happened recently, it's someone that has taken the time to really make the photograph. And and I know you've covered this a lot in your podcast, but it's not about taking photographs, it's about making photographs. So every time you're looking through that eyepiece, that story, that representation, that push has to be clean. It has to be, it has to have the strongest narrative to it. And I think the rarer the the moment and the more effort they put into it is what seems to be getting a lot of the representation and and winnings on that point. From entering on my side, I've entered some stuff, I've reached final points. And I've never really cracked a nut. But I also am hesitant to do so because as a photographic guide, my job is not to get awards. My job is to get guests to get awards. So I want to put them, I'll take the photos. Like I I love a good photo, but I would rather them have the opportunity as a playing customer to be able to get that recognition. And for me, that's a bigger feather. In my cap to be able to say, I was there, they saw it better than me, off they go. Stage is yours.

Conservation Value Of Safari Travel

SPEAKER_00

That's a really cool mentality, very generous mentality of you. I'm reading between the lines on all that, and I feel like a couple of takeaways is, you know, to do well in those contests, intentionality, um, a lot of volume of photos, and then a differentiator doing something different than other people. You know, who would have ever thought a brown hyena in front of a building would be that winning shot? Um, I'm picturing it right now, and it's a stunning, stunning image. Um, so yeah, doing something different with a lot of planning and intentionality. Love it. Um, so I do want to come to this conservation photography point. How do you navigate or how do you envision this intersection of the photography we do and conservation at large?

SPEAKER_01

So I think there's a couple of moments that really come to mind. Something that I've been doing a lot of at the moment is rhino darting at Murataba in South Africa. And what we're doing is the clients are effectively paying to dart a rhino and have a collar put on its leg. And this is used for conservation to monitor the rhinos to make sure that they're healthy, that there's no poaching incidences, and they haven't had a poaching incidence in years, all while the guests have a moment. And for me, it's that insert intersection of people and animals. And right now, the strongest form of conservation, in my opinion, and it's a it's a humble one, there may be many people that believe differently, uh, is actually people being on safari. Because just by being in that space means their value, the value of those animals is greater than the need to remove them or shoot them, or replace the ground with uh maize or crops or monoculture of any sort, that intersection is huge. So I try and tell those stories of guests with animals or moments that come along with that and that experience. There are negative ways that it can be portrayed. Uh, and recently when I was uh with Nathab on a tiger safari, we had lots of vehicles. It is the nature of what India is, it is not going to change. Anyone just taking a photo of the tiger and hiding the vehicles is giving anyone else a false feeling as to what that conservation is. And for us, we have to, I have to include it. And I had a vehicle, two vehicles behind us with a tiger walking in front, people almost spilling out of the vehicle because it was so full. It's chaos. It's but that is the feeling that you get there. And there's a thrill to it, too. We're not going to change it. We can't reverse the 1.1 billion people that are in India. That's not going to happen. So we have to see it for what it is. We have to share it for what it is. And we also have to maybe use it as a form of education that people may behave better when they're in those situations.

Editing Workflow From Capture To Export

SPEAKER_00

Beautifully said. And I, for the record, could not agree more on the value of conservation travel. As you know, and as a lot of folks in the audience know, that's been my life's work for 20 plus years. And I do view it as one of the most powerful ways to save the natural world. So kudos to you for uh living that, breathing that, identifying that. It's just great stuff. Going to switch gears a little bit, and I wanna pick your brain about after the photo, about the the editing, the processing. Can you walk me through the steps and maybe even like devices or hardware you use kind of after the photo is captured? Um, how do you how do you bring it to that next final level?

SPEAKER_01

So I'm gonna I'm gonna take it even further back to before you take the photo. Great. Because I think editing starts when you're taking the photo. And the advent of this wonderful thing called mirrorless, which in the beginning of its release was knocked down to never going to take off, has changed our way of taking photographs because we have an immediate view of what the image looks like while in the viewfinder without having to review on a back screen. We also can put a histogram in our viewfinder, which we can see if we're clipping anything. And when we were talking about this low light situation, oftentimes when we're taking wider shots, we have this incredible dynamic range that we're trying to capture, and there is no possible representation out of camera straight after the click that can ever meet what our eye does. And the only way we can represent that is through editing afterwards. So we need to find that balance. So I think the editing starts when if we understand how we're going to edit, we can change the way we shoot a shot. So I may drop my eye so slightly in order to say, okay, cool, I need more dynamic range. So I have as much information as I can that when I'm editing this, I can pull things out. I need to know that I'm not clipping on either side. So I have maximum information to work with. And then from that point, it goes into the computer. Now, for me, I shoot a lot. I on a typical safari, so I did 14 days in Kenya, we did three camps, and I took 19,000 photographs. Wow. And that's a sweat point because now people are going, but how are you going to edit 19,000 photographs? And the the answer is, is it funnel? For me, the editing starts in not looking at how many images I don't want. I only look for images I do want. And I use Adobe Lightroom, has been my go-to software for years and years. There's a lot of other options. I just love the way it works, the library option, and also for my workflow. And I use a pick function where I will flag the ones I want. And I will quite literally move through images at an image a second. And if I like it, I flag it with a with a shortcut P and I just keep moving. If I have any doubt or thought that I might like it, I go through. Let's say we've got a leopard and a sequence, and his head's like this, I'll take one of those. Head like this, take one of those. Yawn, take a few of those. And what that does is it cuts your your funnel down, and almost always I will remove 90% of the images. So I would have picked 10%. And then I will do more, I'm more of a documentary photographer in terms of how I edit. So I want it to look like what I felt and what I saw, not be too creative and create crazy colors. Sometimes we may push and pull an image to that end, but I don't edit an image much more than about 30 seconds. And once I've done those basic get the light right, mask the subject, bring out a bit of texture and clarity in the subject, and maybe a little bit of whites to pop it out. And I may use a radial gradient to create a vignette, very soft vignette that cannot be seen by anyone to just pull the person in there. And if there's noise, either denoise function in Lightroom or using Topaz. Beyond that, there is very little else I will do to an image. And then there are those images that you take that aren't going to be award-winning images. And you may have missed the focus slightly where I might go into Topaz Photo AI and let that come out and sharpen little pieces so that I have the image because it's still a useful image. And that's the way I will work through things. And then once I've edited all of those images, I will delete every single other one that I didn't edit. Because I don't need, I'm not going to look through them. I have terabytes and terabytes and terabytes of images. I I can't afford to look at that, and no one's going to look at 19,000 images.

SPEAKER_00

And you're left with about 10% of the originals.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And by the time I've starred and edited, because you'll go 10%, then you will start editing and you'll get, okay, this one's working, that one's not. You will I will star the images to five stars and that'll pull it down to about 5% at the end.

SPEAKER_00

When we're thinking of D noise, how do you determine whether you use the D-Noise built into Lightroom or Topaz? And I'll be honest, like I struggle with that because I do have Topaz, um, but I end up just using the software that's in the program itself. I use Adobe Camera RAW, which is basically Lightroom. Do you ever do you find that if there's really heavy noise, you might use Topaz, or do you have the Topaz plugin built into Lightroom? How do you decide between one or the other?

SPEAKER_01

So in that case, that we have a noisy image. So we've shot something at 6,400i. So it's quite noisy and we want to bring back some of that detail. I will do both. I will create one that I'll send it to Topaz and one that'll do in Lightroom, and I will compare them. Because sometimes the software may work better on one side than another. And it all depends on also the impact of the image. Like what where am I going to actually use this? So I took a spectacular star photo when we were in um in Lyke. It was really beautiful. And I can see myself printing that. I can see myself selling that as a print. It really was like blow my brain up. And again, learning from clients who'd done Astra with other people, and you're taking these little tidbits and starting to build stuff, it's really amazing. That I need to make sure the noise is okay. If it was a, let's say we found lines at night and it was a bit noisy, I have thousands of lion photos, really nice ones. I may just want it for a social media post. I actually don't care how well it does or doesn't do. As long as it's a good enough representation, we move on. And that's the point is what is the process? What is the purpose of the image? If it's going to be in a magazine, you may want to sit and take some time with it then. If it's going to be a Facebook post, uh if somebody's going to go zoom in on that photo, I really am not too worried because it's more the message than the photo.

SPEAKER_00

It's funny the examples you just mentioned of having the thousands of lion shots versus the one really great star shot that you think you might sell or print. And I find the same thing with myself. And maybe there's something to it that, you know, we wildlife photographers, and I don't want to boil it down into everyone or even speak for yourself, but I find that after a shoot, some of my favorite shots end up being the landscape shots, ironically. Um, you know, it ends up being maybe a wildlife in landscape, but it's the wide shots. And it's funny because I kind of obsess a lot about thinking about the next telephoto lens, the next Zoom lens, whatever. And oftentimes a shot that gets me to stop myself and my tracks and print it off. It's that, you know, that ultra wide. It's that weird one-off X factor shot. And I just wanted to comment on that. I find that so yeah, you're like me in that way. Very interesting. Um, but nevertheless, the lion shots are important too. They they do help the overall cause. Okay. So in in editing, yeah, you kind of went over it. It's it's the exposure, it's the whites, you're using some radial masks, some subject masking. Any any other sliders that you're drawn to? I think you mentioned exposure, whites, some clarity, um a little bit of sharpening here and there.

SPEAKER_01

So the the sharpening is all yeah, the in the texture and clarity part of it, I'll I'll I always push those. And I will utilize those, but never much more than about 20%. Because anything more than that gives it that artificial sharpened look. So it's very much based on the image. Another thing that I like using, especially for skies, is dehaze. So I'll mask, mask the sky and then ramp dehaze up maybe 5 or 10%, and that really gives a nice contrast to the sky and brings it, pops it out. Also, when we're doing star photography on the Milky Way itself, just blows everything up really beautifully. And then the tone curve in landscapes. So when we're working with contrast, being able to create that S tone curve within that thing and watching your image, it is my way of saturating an image with color without actually pulling the saturation button because it becomes oversaturating becomes a big problem because again, it makes things look artificial. So a little pull on the darks and a little lift in the lights and creating my own contrast. I never touch a contrast slider. Not ever, because that is automatically going, I'm gonna darken blacks and lift the whites in my way, in its own, in the computer's way. I would rather be in control of that by moving the tongue curve.

SPEAKER_00

Interesting. Interesting. So not touching the contrast slider. Yeah, it's a great point because it is. It's it's the global edit of global edit. You're you're just going to whatever tails at the extremes and touching those when the S curve actually gives you so much more nuanced detail and accuracy. Yeah, great, great advice there. And I'll second your idea of dehaze. Yeah, that is a that's a fun one. You you you have a landscape that's got some interesting color and texture and you don't know what to do with it, slap on a little bit of dehaze and it it turns it into magic. It's easy to abuse it, but if you are sensible about it, it can do some stunning things.

SPEAKER_01

So I in in that sensibility that you're talking about, I think there's there's a point where you're if you're pushing and pulling contrast or color in any way like that, to remember that you can get stuck looking at the screen and it looks fine. Oftentimes it's best to walk away, could make yourself a cup of tea, and come back and look at it again and say, okay, that's cool. But a lot of the time you come back and go, there's a problem there that looks a little not what I saw because we get so wrapped up into it. And then I think the other part when we're talking about color and renedition is having a screen calibrator. If you're not calibrating your screen, you are not going to get the right light into what you're doing. And it takes five minutes to do. And the screen calibrators are cheap, but we don't know how bright when the area that we're working that screen needs to be. And oftentimes we put our screen to full brightness and we go take the photo and we edit it, and it looks amazing, and we send it off to a printer, and we come back and we're like, that doesn't look like what your printer's broken, but it's not. It's got to do with our computer screen and how we are viewing that and editing based on light. So I think the strongest edits, especially when printing or making books, is to make sure that your screen is calibrated so that what comes out when you're printing it is exactly what you saw on the screen.

SPEAKER_00

Do you have any calibration tools or brands or products that you like over the years that you recommend?

SPEAKER_01

I use a spider data color. Ah, there it is.

SPEAKER_00

Yep.

SPEAKER_01

And the ColorMonkey works really well. It's a great, uh, a great and useful tool. They normally go for around$100, but it's it's worth the worth the input. You know, if you're gonna spend$100 a year or$120 a year to have Lightroom, why wouldn't you spend a hundred bucks to make sure that you go? And then I set, I'd recalibrate my screen every month. Because it moves that much in that short a period of time. Wow.

unknown

Yeah.

Learning Photography Through Apprenticeship

SPEAKER_00

That's fascinating. Okay. Well, you sold me on it. Um I'll be sure to put those products in the show notes so you guys can check them out as well. That's fascinating. Zooming out here, how how have you learned photography over time? Are there any practices or uh like methodologies or resources that you'd like to share or can turn people on to? Or is it just practice, practice, practice, good old mastery?

SPEAKER_01

No, I think mastery comes from being an apprentice. You you have to learn from others that have come before. And the world is full of this resource at the moment. There's so many people sharing their stories, have courses running, things like that. Find people you like, go do their courses. I was into creative live.com for a long time, and I I purchased a lot of their courses and utilized them. Unfortunately, they have since gone out of business, which would be, I would say, go do it, but they're out. Um at the R, and I think it is because there are so many resources out there that people can plug into that are cheaper and easier. But when doing it, if I'm doing Lightroom, for example, even when I'm doing it with clients out in the field and we're working through it, I will recommend a Lightroom course to them. I will find one that covers all of those bases, but that goes from point one to point Z. So A to Z in chronological order, how it works, because we end up going onto something like YouTube or any of these platforms, trying to get these little tidbits as we're going along, and you're missing so much of why, why you're doing it. Why is it built this way? Because an engineer has built it in a specific route so that it moves you from one point to the next point to the next point to the next point to the next point. So find a course that covers everything. A wildlife photography course that starts with what gear you have, how to set up the gear, what you're taking on safari, and moving through each of those facts so that when you get to the end, you have a complete picture. You can choose what you want to take out of that and what you don't, but you have the full picture.

unknown

Hmm.

Respectful Travel Portraits And Culture

SPEAKER_00

I want to move on to gear, but before I do that, I have I have one final question kind of in the non-gear related. It might turn into gear related, who knows? A little bit of a selfish one, but I thought this would be kind of fun. So I'm headed to uh Turkey on a photo assignment in the next week or two. And you're living in Europe now, and I, again, headed to Turkey in about a week. Do you have any tips for capturing culture, storytelling, and travel photography in that neck of the woods?

SPEAKER_01

So that neck of the woods, no, but I think people photography is a universal thing. Uh I've just come back from shooting the Himba in Namibia. Um, in a couple of months' time, I'll be in Madagascar, and while Lima's of the Mo, the big focus of the trip, the people are so beautiful, and being able to capture that and capture the contrast and light that happens in those spaces, Turkey is one of those places full of culture, history, color, beauty, just very different to what we experience in our everyday when we're looking around. For me, when we're doing people photography, we're always looking at the again the stories, but telling natural stories, not people posing for cameras, capturing moments that are candid and beautiful as they do their every life stuff, everyday life stuff. If I'm thinking like the Himba, I want to see them rubbing the rock on the okra, so I'll be focusing in on hands so that I can get the wear and tear of what their bodies go through each day at the necklaces and the intricate beauty that is so different to ours. If I'm thinking Turkey, I'm thinking markets and chaos because it's noisy, there's haze and smoke going on around there. And when we're talking that gear has to come into the thought process, because you will never have a natural face if you're sitting with a 14mm lens, because the camera's going to be on their nose and they will feel uncomfortable. So having a longer lens works really well. And again, I'm a call me a bokus slut. I just like really small depth of field. I want somebody to pop out, and I want that opportunity to choose that over a depth of field because I can create the depth of field easily by increasing the aperture. Being able to separate them from the chaos and separate their moment and the look, flowers, fruit, things like that that add colour and often hand gestures or somebody smoking. I don't know what it is about somebody smoking, but the smoke or Is create something cool. So I think long lenses 70 to 200 works really nicely just because it has a little bit of extra reach, and then we can crop in a little bit more if we need to. But 100, 400 may just be a bit too much or 100-500 maybe too much lens to walk around in a bizarre situation. And then again, back to prime lenses, like a 135, 1.8, it is the ultimate portrait lens. And then when people are amenable, I think taking candid shots when people don't know is fine. But if they see you and they lock eyes with you, the most respectful and most important thing is to ask. You all you have to do is use your eyes and say, is it okay? They may not understand your language, but they will understand what you're asking them. It is just kind. It is just you're in their space. They don't want to feel like they are the zoo. They want to feel meaningful. So oftentimes, if somebody says yes, I will take the camera, take the photo and show them the photo, it brings them a sense that they're actually part of the process and it wasn't just for you. It was also for them. And then as an extra, is if I have the time or the weight of capacity is to take a Polaroid camera with me, especially for kids. And shoot a candid shot of them and give that to them as a gift that they can have that too.

Current Camera Kit And Astrophotography

SPEAKER_00

Oh, that's that's super cool. Yeah, thanks for sharing. You got me jazzed about this. I'm I'm even more stoked now. So thanks for that. Okay, so indeed, switching to the gear part of the talk. What are you uh what are you shooting on these days? What's your go-to kit?

SPEAKER_01

So currently I have two bodies, uh, A1, Sony A1, um, the first first iteration. I'm sitting on the fence whether I jump to the second iteration or not, uh just because it has a pre-capture.

SPEAKER_00

It's a big deal.

SPEAKER_01

It is, especially when like birds in flight or action's about to happen. But the big thing that clicks into my brain is actually lightning photography. Because you don't ever need a lightning sensor again. You just push the button after the lightning's gone. You just hold hold your hold your focus, and then when it goes, you go click, thank you. I've got the lightning shot now. Move on. Um, and I love lightning. There's something about storms and and especially in Africa, it's quite crazy and beautiful. So my A1 is my go-to camera, and I have the 400-2.8, which follows me around on 99% of my safaris. If I'm going to the gorillas, it doesn't come with. I'll take the 100-400 with me for the wildlife because my focus is gorillas, and then 70 to 200 is my primary lens. Um, my A7R5 is my second, Sony A7R5 is my second body, and that I pair with the 70 to 200. So those two bodies sit on a safari with me next to me all the time. The wide angle lens is either 1635, which gives me a little movement, but I recently just got the 14mm 1.8 Sony lens. And I love astrophotography because part of being out of the wild is being away from lights, being in nature, and watching that Milky Way feel like it's gonna fall on your head. And there is no better place to shoot star photos than Sosus Flay, which we've just been to. The light, you just actually cannot even describe how beautiful those night skies are. So that's a big part of what I'm taking. And if the landscape leans towards that, then I will take the time and switch the lens because landscapes don't run away from you. There are also then those wildlife interactions, like we're darting a rhino. I love a wide angle for that, it makes things look bigger and distorted and gives people an uneasy feeling. So whatever lens you're choosing will give the viewer a different response and feeling to that photograph. Just like if we're shooting from high down onto an animal versus eye level, it changes the feeling of the person watching it. So that's my basic kit. And then I like to bring my DJI Osmo 360 with me. And that is now my new little filming buddy because I can put it out anywhere and it's capturing everything around me, and I can choose later. So when we do have those line walkbys, which we're not trying to scare people with, but it's a great way of representing that and showing those things or having a commentary with stuff.

SPEAKER_00

Talk to me about camera bags and protection of your devices. So you you obviously have the big prime, but you're probably, you know, it's probably a full camera bag. What do you what do you use and maybe what's your mentality? Are you kind of rough on your gear? Are you very protective? Are there any tricks and tips, um, brands, etc.?

SPEAKER_01

So I'm a peak design groupie. It is it's a it's a downfall. These guys over-engineer everything, and I love it. They absolutely love it. I have four peak design bags. I have my uh my electronics bag is peak design. I have my camera bag, I have all of the packing cubes, everything's peak design. Peak design straps. So I love straps, and you need a good quality strap, that works wonderfully. And they've just thought of everything. So the new outdoor line that they've bought, so that's my new the bag that's being used the most at the moment. And I'm also contemplating because of the weight of my bag, weighs about 45 pounds when I'm moving through airports. It's a lot in your body moving through and carrying through stuff. They've got a very cool roly bag that fits in the camera cubes and everything, and it is amazing. Got a bit of expense to it, but again, as a shout-out to them, I had a bag, one of the zips broke. I was ready to fight. I was in San Francisco, I went to the shop, I was like, this bag broke, best duke on the warranty, and I was I I was ready. I was ready for this moment. And I walked in and I said, the zip broke. He's like, that sucks. What color would you like? There wasn't even, it was just straight swap. They give me a brand new bag, off you go, have a wonderful day. That is good customer service. Yeah, and that's that's what I what I use. I have the two tripods of theirs, which are amazing. The the travel tripod is super light, and the bigger tripods are great for filming and a little bit more sturdy for some of the star stuff.

The Most Useful Non-Camera Gear

SPEAKER_00

Cool. Yeah, I'll I'll give a shout out to them too. I have their carbon fiber travel tripod, just incredible. Yeah, peak design, bags, accessories, camera straps. I mean, they're known for the captured clip, which I use religiously, and and those patented little uh tabs that you can quick release straps and all that. They're yeah, they're they're 11 out of 10 amazing as a company. Um, so so final question here. This is a little bit of a thinker, is what is a piece of gear that is surprisingly helpful for your photography, but isn't directly camera related? Very open-ended question here. And feel free to take a moment to pause.

SPEAKER_01

I would say the type of vehicle you're moving around in.

SPEAKER_00

Hmm. What's your pick?

Where To Follow And Closing

SPEAKER_01

Each, I mean, they're all most lodges are using land cruises, but they have different roof-on, roof off, uh, different consoles. So having space in a vehicle that I have space for my two cameras that can feel comfortable and not bounce around in. And having the guide, the local guide, understanding animals and positioning is so not camera related, but so photographically related that it can change. Because if I'm having to say to the guy, no, forward, back, back, forward, poor, because many people don't have the sense of dimension of the vehicle and they park sideways. It's my absolute worst on a safari is a sideways park, because the vehicle is six meters long, and each person then has a different vantage point. Where if they just pointed the nose, one edge of the nose across to that point, each and every single person, you've now moved the vehicle and made it one and a half meters wide, and everyone doesn't have anything in front of them. So vehicle and vehicle positioning is everything.

SPEAKER_00

Well, Rich, this has been absolutely fantastic. I knew it would be a great conversation. It's obviously great to catch up. Um, but this, yeah, surpassed expectations. Uh, took lots of notes. Really excited to get this episode out there. Final, final question: where can people find you? Where do they follow Rich?

SPEAKER_01

So social media is obviously the easiest way. It's where things are going up. So, Richard DeGoveya, if you type it, type that in, uh I'm sure Court will put up something where my surname is spelled because it's it's it's been bastardized over the years, being called many different things. Um, and then I have a company which we run called ARCEarth. ARC standing for authentic responsible connection. We're all about sending people into great spaces with quality guides and making sure that people get the right experience out there.

SPEAKER_00

Fantastic, Rich. And I'll be sure to put all that in the show notes. Rich, once again, great to connect. Thanks so much. Thanks, Court. Much appreciated. Thanks for having me.

Head Shot

Court Whelan

Host