I have to admit, I am at a loss for words – something my family would be happy about, but something that’s not great in this situation. This is a “pinch me” situation for me.

I first heard of Scott Bourne on Leo Laporte’s MacBreak Weekly. He was a regular on the tech podcast, and as far as I knew that his main gig – a tech person. Periodically someone would mention his photography, but I was new to photography at the time and it just really never sunk in. Years later when I got into photography Scott had moved on from MBW and I stumbled upon a photo podcast of his. I remember thinking “is this the same Scott Bourne? It sounds like the Scott Bourne from MBW, but that Scott Bourne is also a world renowned photographer?”. Yeah, It was the same guy, and yeah, he is literally one of the best photographers on the planet. His bird photography is just amazing. Small world is right. From that moment I listened to every show Scott was on – Every. Show. He had a podcast with Rick Sammon, he started PhotoFocus, he worked with Skylum to greatly increase the footprint of Luminar in the photo world. I even won my first photo printer from Scott – a PIXMA Pro9000 Mark II – with a stack of Illford paper.

So again, I’m at a loss of words on how to accurately sum up what it mans to have Scott on my show, let alone to describe Scott Bourne’s photography life in a blog post. Let me start here…

Scott Bourne is an Olympus Visionary and professional wildlife photographer, and he’s an author and lecturer who specializes in birds. He’s been involved with photography for more than four decades and his work has appeared in more than 200 publications.

He is a pioneer in the digital photography and online space, and was named one of the 30 most influential photographers on the Web by Huffington Post.

In addition to being a trainer on lynda.com, Scott’s led workshops and seminars, taught for or spoken at conferences or events sponsored by Palm Beach Photographic Center, Cooperative Communicators of America, Apple, The National Association of Photoshop Professionals, CreativeLive.com, the National Association of Broadcasters, North American Music Merchants, MacWorld, Washington Professional Photographers Association, WPPI, PartnerCon, Imaging USA, Seattle Art Center, Marketing Essentials International, The Consumer Electronics Show, Photo Plus Expo, Festival of the Cranes, Florida’s Birding & Photo Festival and Olympic Mountain School of Photography.

Are you starting to get the idea? Scott Bourne knows more about photography than I will ever know, and he is going to be on Behind the Shot. (Steve does a happy dance here that hopefully no one can see)

Scott was one of the first photographers ever to receive the designation Apple Certified Professional Trainer (T3) for Apple’s Aperture. He also previously held the designation Certified Adobe Photoshop Instructor and Professional Photographers of America’s Certified Professional Photographer designation.

Scott was recently awarded the designation Signed Master with the Studio Of Masters in China.

Along with his namesake website scottbourne.com, Scott owns EaglePhotographs.com. If you want to lose a good part of your day looking at amazing photos go check those sites out.

As I mentioned before, my introduction to Scott was through the lens of podcasting, and I am happy to say Scott is still at it. Scott is the publisher of PictureMethods.com, a photography education website that has a ton of great content, and along with the site he has launched the Picture Methods podcast which you can check out here. I was honored to be one of his early guests on that show in fact, and you can listen to that here.

Join wildlife photographer and educator Scott Bourne and me as we take a deep dive into his bird photography by taking a close look how he captured a once-in-a-lifetime Cardinal image, on this episode of Behind the Shot.

Personal: scottbourne.com

Picture Methods Website