My guest Ben Knoot joins me to discuss his amazing travel schedule, working with OM systems gear to capture the wildlife photos he does, and his new venture starting his own wildlife photography tour company Experience Nature Tours.

Instagram: @benknoot

Website: Experience Nature Tours

Brad shares about photographing waterfowl in the rough surf and playing with slower shutter speeds for unique effects. Brad also shares about a side-project he is working on attaching stuff near the front of his lens to create foreground bokeh. I share about my outing that morning using the underwater housing again and also doing some more normal bird photography with the 28-400mm lens that I'm loving! We wrap up the show talking about sharing photos on Instagram with a carousel or small collection of photos and how that is perceived when viewed.

Brad shares about some ideas and plans to photograph Purple Sandpipers along the rugged coast of Newfoundland. I share about an outing photographing Florida Scrub Jays, then I photographed Night Herons in the dark at night, and I wrapped up my past week with my first outing using a dome port on the underwater housing and trying to photograph split-level shots of wading and shorebirds in Florida.

We wrap up the show answering a listener question from Nathan Watson who asked: I always enjoy your podcasts with Brad, and in a recent episode there was a bit of conversation about aches and pains and generally getting older. I could relate, but it also got me thinking about the inevitable end we all face in life, and what would happen with my photography. I thought it might make an interesting discussion topic for your podcast, not from a morbid perspective, but to encourage genuine thought about what our end of life wishes for our images would be given we put so much energy, passion and creativity into them. Over decades we accumulate galleries of many thousands of images. These images have value - sentimental value to our families, commercial value as art, or educational value that could support conservation causes. What would you and Brad want to happen to your image libraries? Do you want your family to have them, or would you prefer to leave them to a charitable conservation organization that could use them towards good causes?

My guest Steve Perry joins me to share about his trip to Theodore Roosevelt National Park where he photographed a Prairie Dog wide angle with auto capture on a Nikon camera. We also chat about always looking around for other options when shooting, specifically on workshops. We talked about his take on being creative with wildlife photography and wrap up talking about how much less attention his videos about field-craft and techniques get compared to videos about gear.

Website: www.backcountrygallery.com

Instagram: @backcountrygallery

Prairie Dog shot

Bison photo

Anhinga backlit

It's the 200th episode! A huge thanks to all of you listeners both new and old that have been listening to the show. This week Brad shares about his time photographing surfing ducks, and his time with friendly Cormorants. I share about my first time swimming with sharks in the Bahamas and then we wrap up the show talking about how our photography and approach to it has changed since 2019 when the first episode of this podcast came out!

Luca Lorenz - Tufted Duck ICM

Brad’s surfing duck

Brad’s closeup Cormorant

Brad shares about photographing some waterfowl and the Sparrow that was almost perfect until another person showed up. I share about my morning using the drone to photography and video wading birds in the marsh, as well as a recent visit to the beach in Hilton Head, and wrap up with an amazing 4 day trip to Jekyll Island in Georgia. We wrap up the show answering a listener question from Cody who asks: Hey Ray, I don’t stay up to date on all your podcasts but here’s a topic idea I had recently - have there been any times where you’ve said to yourself, “this idea did not work as well as I thought it would.”? What were some of the lessons learned, did you abandon the idea or push forward with it? It sounds like you like to plan out a lot of your shots, how often does it not work out the way you thought it would?

John Alessi joins me to discuss his recent outings making sparrows look beautiful in a meadow, the challenges of winter waterfowl with a local drought, and trying to push himself and at the same time find balance in his photography life.

Instagram: @photomaticjohn

Brad shares about his experience photographing waterfowl specifically through foreground bushes and trees, I share about all the gear I keep buying and testing as well as all the work that went into updating my Lightroom course. Then we both discuss the profile grid changes from Instagram this past week.

Brad’s Cormorant Photo