Seal Attack Survival: Wildlife Photographer's Passion

Richard Bernabe, world renowned professional wildlife photographer, shares his recent experience of being attacked by a seal during a photography workshop in Namibia. He discusses the circumstances leading up to the attack, the severity of the injuries, and the precautions taken to prevent infection.

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Show Notes:

00:00:00 Introduction and Seal Attack
00:08:36 Dangerous Encounters with Wildlife
00:23:21 Prioritizing Experience in Photography
00:28:38 Challenges of Social Media for Wildlife Photographers
00:34:18 The Transition from Film to Digital Photography
00:46:09 Understanding the Environment and Animal Behavior in Wildlife Photography
00:49:49 The Passion Behind Wildlife Photography
00:55:06 The Challenges and Rewards of a Career in Photography
01:00:20 Consistency and Adaptation in Photography
01:07:31 Favorite Photography Destinations and Exciting Upcoming Trips

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Where To Find Richard:

Richard's Podcast: https://beyondthelens.fm/
Portfolio: www.richardbernabe.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/bernabephoto
Twitter: https://x.com/bernabephoto

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Where To Find Sean:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-r-collins/
https://www.instagram.com/jukebooth/
https://www.jukebooth.com/

Transcript

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the seal had contact on me and I was mauled by a seal. Today on the podcast, have Richard Burnaby. He's a professional wildlife photographer and he travels all over the world to capture animals in their habitats. I found him on Twitter and he had this crazy image of his leg just bleeding. And I was like, I have to hit up this guy to find out what happened. And we talk about that on this podcast. So check it out. Richard, if you wanna jump in on the recent... first seal attack. That's kind how I found you on Twitter. I saw this picture of your leg and it was like the craziest shot of like your legs bleeding. As a photographer, I'm like, what the heck was he doing? Yeah, that just happened. maybe a week ago because I just got home and I was in Namibia and I'm leading a workshop with me and workshops and we were on an area called Cape cross seal reserve. which I've been going to 15 years pretty regularly. So I know the place very well. And it's a colony of 200 ,000 seals. like one of the largest first seal colonies in the world. in the recent years, when I get there, the boardwalk, there's a boardwalk, elevated boardwalk that kind of goes over top of the colony. And so you can see it out over the bluff and down on the beach and into the water. The waves are crashing. There's just seals everywhere. So you're elevated above them and you're, you you're separated from the seals. But in recent years it's kind of collapsed and then there's begun to be holes in there so that the seals are getting on the boardwalk. So every time I come, I've got to kind of check it out. I've got to shoo them away. This time there were there had to be a hundred of them on the boardwalk and it's just become disrepair. They've not fixed it. So I have all my students stay back and like you guys wait here. I'm going to shoe all these seals at the boardwalk and make it safe. And then when I'm say it's ready, come on, let's go. So I shoe them off. It's easy. They're very passive. They're, they're good natured. These seals are they're curious, but no problem. Clear everything off. And so then I bring my students on and we're like 10 minutes into it. And I noticed that the seals keep coming back on this through the holes coming on. So I would say, you know, stay here. I'm going to go take care of this. And I shoot the seals back off the boardwalk. And so at one point, I would say 15, 20 minutes into the session, I noticed that a seal had gotten in boardwalking and was coming after one of my students very aggressively with his mouth open and had kind of cornered her, because this is a narrow boardwalk, wasn't any place for her to go. And I instinctively kind of put myself between them. And this mouth was open, it was kind of lunging toward her, and I put myself between them. And I tried to get my foot up, not to kick it, but to at least kind of repel its advance. And just about that time, it just clamped onto the bottom part of my leg. And now these fur seals, just to give you a little example, I people thinking seal, these cute little things on the ice that people see, you know, National Geographic. Fur seals are big and the males can be up to six or 700 pounds. The usually average around four or 500 pounds. The females between two and 250. All the males are gone at this point. So this is an average size female. I'd say it's a 200 to 250 pounds. And it... it grabbed onto my hold onto my legs and it wouldn't let go and I had to pull my my leg out which just tore the skin deep in these you know teeth are you know half inch inch long and yeah I knew I was in trouble right away because I could see the blood and I knew that seals carry exotic bacterias some of them that are immune to our antibiotics and it can be very, very dangerous to the infection. So I knew I was in trouble. But to the credit of our outfitter, Ultimate Safaris, they immediately jumped into first aid mode and got me cleaned up and bandaged and we got everybody together and we started headed to a coastal town called Swakopmund to emergency room to get me checked out because like I said, this could be very dangerous. And this is on Saturday. So went to the emergency room and they got me cleaned up with just some nasty deep, some deep, wounds and bandaged me up and tetanus shot. I'm on a series of rabies shots. I'm on I think three out of five. And then a tetanus that I mentioned that yet. And then a series of antibiotics. And as of now, it looks like it's clean. It doesn't look like it's infected. So I just have to finish out the rabies shots and I think I'm in the clear, but just recently they found a lot of rabies in the seals, those Cape fur seals in South Africa, Namibia, which they believe came from the jackals, which there's a lot more interaction. The jackals come in and try to steal babies. So it was probably very, very low chance that I got rabies, but it's, you know, since rabies has a hundred percent fatality rate. I'm going through the shots. We were trying to figure that out when we saw your, your photo of getting a rabies shot. We were like, do seals carry rabies? Not, not normally, but in this particular population in Southwest Africa, there is a increasing prevalence of, of rabies. So doctor didn't want to take a chance. Yeah, no, I wouldn't take the chance either. It doesn't make sense. You know? Nope. So I think I dodged a bullet. because the last doctor I saw in Wintook before I left to come back here, back here to the States, said, you must have superhuman immunity because this doesn't happen. Like I said, there's bacteria that are completely immune to our antibiotics and you just got really lucky and acted quickly and got it cleaned up and got on antibiotics, I guess. And I think I'm okay. I think I'll survive. scary was that? Cause I know sometimes like when you see seals in the water or at least male seals, get, they'll attack a shark and they'll bite down and just rip, you know, shake their heads and rip them apart. Maybe it's a, it was a female seal. So it wasn't as scary, but probably still pretty scary. You know, it just happened so fast that I didn't have, I remember, you know, when the moment happened, I, I let out an audible like that makes no where that came from. But then this next thing was I hope you know, the skin didn't break. I hope it didn't, you know, because I had long pants on. I said maybe it just it didn't, you know, break the skin. And then I looked down and it was just like pants are shredded and there was blood pouring out. So I knew that wasn't the case. But I don't remember, you know, I remember it holding on to my leg and ripping my leg out of its mouth. But I don't remember what happened to me to the after that I don't know. the seal I guess retreated and went back down the hole and went back out of the off the boardwalk. But it just happened so quickly. It wasn't like a chance to be scared. was just, my god, this is happening. I hope it doesn't break the skin. I thought about all these other bites that I've heard of like baboons and other wild animals where they have these these very exotic bacteria in their saliva that can create really, really nasty infections. And that's what's going through my mind. at that point. And so yeah, I don't think there was a moment to be scared. If I didn't step in, my client, my student would have been bitten. Right, better you than them, I guess. So yeah, that's the way I saw it. So it was going to be one of us. And so I just kind of instinctively jumped in and tried to repel it. And I got the worst end of it. Is that something that ever happens on any of your other shoots or workshops? Like, no, I mean, it's I don't blame the seal. I don't know what the seal is thinking. The fact that it's acting aggressively could perhaps imply that maybe there was rabies. don't know because they normally don't. They're very good natured and maybe it felt, once he was on the boardwalk, it felt threatened in some way. don't know. So don't know what the seal is thinking. I don't blame the seal. I don't blame anyone other than the reserve, which is let this boardwalk and overlook come run down and let the seals on there. And I've got a video of when I first arrived, I took a video of me shooing all these seals off. There's a hundred. seems like there's a hundred and just kind of pushing them off the side so they would go off, not pushing them literally, but kind of corralling them down this boardwalk so they can make it safe for everybody to get on. probably in retrospect, maybe shouldn't even got on there. I don't know, but it's every year it seems to have gotten worse. But it happened and soon as it happened, I got everybody off and we just said, you know, forget that and probably won't come back until they repair. It's a, it's a really, it's a, it's an amazing natural spectacle to see that many seals in one place and photo opportunities are fantastic, but it must stay fixed it. I'm not bringing anyone on that boardwalk again. Yeah, that makes sense. They kind of like, took it over as their home or their home base. The Seals did that. Well, now this is My initial problem when I first got there was this is disgusting because Seals, there's Seal poo and Seal urine that mixed with all the mist that was in the air just make this toxic soup and it was slippery. And I remember telling everybody as they got onto the boardwalk, just tread lightly, hold onto the handrails, don't slip and fall. That was my first inclination as far as any type of hazard. didn't know that we would get to a point where we had a bite. Yeah. And on any of the other adventures that you go on, you're all over the world. mean, have you encountered maybe not something where an animal approaches you in that nature, but are there any like dangerous situations that you've encountered just to get that photograph, just to show the space and show the beauty of the nature that you're in? No, I have too much respect for wildlife to intrude on them. So I don't put myself in any kind of danger. You know, there was one incident in Alaska with a brown bear where it aggressively came at me. was a false charge. are so crazy. Because what do you, even though most of the time it is a false charge, I would shit my pants. I don't know what I would do. No, this again, and they're very passive. You know, if you've ever spent time around brown bears, coastal brown bears, I've been within, you know, where I could reach out and touch them. That's not me. Where they approach me, they approached me and I just kind of stood my ground and they just kind of go by without even, I'd say maybe not touch, but you six feet. That's pretty close. but this one, I remember when we got there, this is on a place called Marine Creek in Katmai and we're on a sandbar. out and there's just you look up the river there's tons of bears look down the river there's tons of bears and they would want to kind of pass by us and each time they would we'd give them some room and it would go by us give them some room i'd be like on the other side of the lake or something there was one juvenile male that was giving signs that he was agitated and our guide said you know watch this bear you know, when he walked by us, he would keep going above us and he'd go below us and keeps going back and forth. And each time he did, he would urinate, kind of shake his head back and forth. And so, that was an indication that he was agitated if, you know, at best. So at some point during the end of the day, maybe we'll kind of let her guard down, but this bear is coming back up and my clients are with the guide and I said, I'll, I'll go down to the bottom of the sandbar and kind of just wave my arms. So it kind of goes around us. which we've been doing all day. And so it left the river, it went into the brush behind me and as it's walking, I could see it's walking straight ahead, but it's eyeing me out of the corner of his eye. And so just about that time when I was thinking that, you know, I don't like that. I don't like that body language. It kind of jumped in my direction. It kind of jumped over a little stream to a sandbar and just kind of lunged toward me and stopped. And I did not, I had nowhere to go anyway, not that you should run. That's the worst thing you could do. But even if I wanted to run, it's just, you know, a heavy current of a river behind me. So I just kept my hands up in the air. I turned my head to the side and, you know, I waited for the fatal impact. but he stopped and I could smell, actually smelled the salmon on his breath. He was that close. And he just kind of backed up and went back up into the brush and went around us. to my credit, I didn't scream like a little girl, but I was thinking, you know, this is it, you know, this is it. afterwards, you know, the guide, he saw what was happening just as it was happening. He kind of ran up the CM bar yelling at it and it ran off, but he's been guiding 19 years. He's got, carries a gun with him. And in the chamber, the first chamber, there's just a, like a blank, you know, that the noise would scare any bear away. The second one is like birdshot that if he had to apply the gun to a bear, it would just sting it and scare it away. The third shot would be fatal. And he says in 19 years, he's never had to use a gun for any reason. So that's how, you know, cool and laid back these bears are, but there's always one just like, you know, if you encounter enough people, eventually you're going to encounter one bad person that wants to do harm to you. Maybe if you just the law of averages. So That's the worst where it was a bluff charge. And yeah, it's scary and it's hard to kind of keep your composure, but that's really the most I've ever, well, closest I've ever had to feeling I was in kind of danger up to this point that never actually had any kind of contact with an animal of any kind other than this where the seal had contact on me and I was mauled by a seal. I would have packed up my stuff and been like, I'm going home. Dan would have quit. If a bear tried, cause I, wouldn't be able to sit there and be like comfortable ever again with bears. If that happened to me, I would be so scared. It would be tough. Yeah. You know, if that was our inland grizzly sales in Denali and not in Katmai. Yeah, that would have been the end of me probably, because if you're within a hundred yards of a grizzly, you're walking on a trail and you look up and there's a grizzly. That's probably you're, you're in danger, but these coastal brown bears, are. So consumed with just eating as much as they can they see you as a curiosity at best and there's never been any issues I mean Brett Kodiak which I'll be flying out to Kodiak on the 26th the highest concentration of brown bears in the world never a attack or a fatality of any kind so That's just their nature and that's just because Yeah, they're doing their thing. They're in their space and like, you're just visiting. thought that's where the bear guy got eaten though. What's his That was in Katmai. That was, Kim Treadwell. Yeah, that was in, Katmai. And, you know, again, you, you play with fire. think, I think he was a, I think he was a good, well -meaning person. I think he's a bit naive, because of how accepting the bears are. I think he thought that he had some special relationship with them. or something. And he was in a place where there was a lot of bear crossing. This is a part of Katmai. And it was late in the season. And this bear had, from what I understand, I had to go back and kind of read all the details, but I think he was an older bear that maybe hadn't fed well. And it was getting late where a lot of the bears were starting to go hibernate. And he attacked him and his girlfriend in the tent. And his tent was right there where a lot of bears are moving back and forth from location to location. I had a bear expert on my podcast a few months ago and he was the person who did the investigation. He has a different theory. you know, but bears just really don't want any trouble with us. so that false charge was something that will stick with me, you know, but I never felt any sort of danger with bears. since then or even before then. It was just so odd, odd bear. Yeah. And like you said, the more you do stuff like that, the more often that might happen because you're, just doing this thing repetitively and you may encounter some situations where a bear might approach you. mean, if you're in that all the time. But you also learned the body language too. You, you learned about kind of understood. Yeah. But I, again, but I still don't put myself in hard way. If a bear is coming toward me, sometimes it's best just to kind of hold your ground and, you can tell about a body language if it's comfortable or not. And if it's comfortable, just let them come to you. And he may just walk right by you without any problem, but I wouldn't approach a bear that close. When I say six feet, that was a bear that had been walking toward me. And I just kind of lowered my head. I looked down and let him pass by and it was, he didn't even look at me basically, I would never approach a bear to that, that distance. would give them the respect. they deserve. That's like, that's like the stuff when you see photographers going to take photos of like gorillas and you have the silverback just like charging through the, through the brush and like, but it's a mock charge, but it's like, I, it'd be this, I'd probably be worse than a bear. don't know. Gorilla just ripping you apart. Let's, let's, let's play a game. Bear or silverback. Right. You're to die either way. don't know. Yeah. Well, the silverbacks I've been in there. for presence also, and you say, not look them in the eye, just not, do not make bare contact. mean, eye contact and don't do this with your chest, you know, like apparently that's some sort of a male ego thing that you don't want to do. So you've taken photos of gorillas too? Yeah. my God. That's so amazing. Yeah. love gorillas. Well, these are the mountain gorillas that are, you know, critically endangered in parts. They actually share an area of volcanoes in where Rwanda, Uganda and the Congo come together. And so I've been in the Rwanda side and I've been on the Uganda side to photograph them. And I've been on the Congo side too, but I didn't see any gorillas. was hiking up to a volcano. But again, there's only about thousand, maybe 1200 of them total. So the keepers, the guides, they know almost every gorilla by name. They know them very, very well. families, they travel in families. And I never felt any sort of danger there either. How do you get a job like that? To travel around the world like you have, how do you get a job where you can go out and photograph? Like, is this for Nat Geo? Is this for some other magazine? I work with them early on in my career. And, but most of the travel I do now is I'm leading tours. okay. The gorilla trip was something I did on my own. It was a self -assignment. I still do some assignments as well. But the gorilla trip was a tour that I did myself. I just kind of went and I said this is what I wanted to do. And I spent five days trekking to the gorillas. Each day you would get a like an orientation and then the trackers are already hiking up into the mountains looking for you know a particular family. And then by the time the orientation is over, they've already kind of located them and they start talking to your guide and we start heading up and it could be, you know, 30 minutes and you're there with the gorillas. could be five or six hours. I had one trip in Uganda where it would literally six or seven hours until we found the gorillas and it's regulated in such a way that you only have one hour with the family. you, what you're there. So you leave all your stuff in a, in like you're your backpack's down in an area that's far away from the families and you walk in with one lens or maybe two lenses and you have one hour to spend with them and then you leave. So it's not putting too much pressure on the animals. And they're very tolerant. They've gotten, guess, used to people coming, maybe. There may be some other populations like on the Congo side that don't see as many people. But the ones particularly in Rwanda, are very tolerant and they know each gorilla by name. That's cool. Yeah. There's only 1200 of them. Yeah. They kind of know the families and they know the names of them and it's quite an experience. That's a cool experience. there any place you've been all over the world? Is there any place that you haven't been yet that you're wanting to go and there's like some photos in mind that you really want to take? I don't know if there's any photos in mind, but I've always wanted to go to Kamchatka in Russia. And I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. But it's very similar to Alaska. It's just right basically across the Bering Strait. It's a place where there's a high concentration of brown bears and the mountains, volcanoes. It looks like it's just a very, very cool place. And that was kind of high on my list for a while. And I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon, but you never know. But that's one place that I've wanted to go to. And who knows how long that... current political situation might last. Yeah, that's true. And then one thing that I noticed on your podcast, Beyond the Lens, you had a guest on, I think his name was Matthew Paley, and he talked about learning and being involved in the situation and that the photo comes second. I really loved that. And like, do you believe in that as well? And in immersing yourself in these experiences with these animals or these people? before you take a photo. yeah, yeah, I think, I think the experience comes first. That's always been my philosophy is that photos come second, the experience is first. So I try to go have an experience of some type. And part of that is observing, you know, photography is probably 99 .9 % observing and then maybe 1 % or less than 1 % actually doing photography. So I think Matthew in his approach, and I've heard that from other photographers as well, is that they go there and their camera's almost secondary. I'm just here to learn. That's what they say. Now they're dealing with people. Matthew Paley, Amy Fatali. I'm just here to learn. And they just learn as much as they possibly can, and they spend as much time with the people that they're working with. if you want to apply that to animals or landscapes, just go there and learn as much as you can. kind of feel the rhythms of if it's a landscape or a new place you've never been before, just kind of feel the rhythms of the place and observe and watch. And you'll know when there's a photo and what happens. So I think the worst thing to do is just come in, you know, blazing away without even, you know, just absorbing and immersing yourself in the place and the situation and then experience. then the photos will come. Photos will come themselves. Yeah. I found that too. When you're in a new space, it's just... If you take it all in, you'll think about the angle that you want, or maybe it will come days after you've been in that space because it really is about being somewhere new and the experiences. And I think that's something that we're hoping people get back to is like these experiences. We've gotten into this world where people want too many things and objects. And I think we have to get back to this, experiencing the world and the people around us. I, you know, the experience always comes first to me and then I want to make sense of it myself. How do I feel about it? You know, what do I want to say? What do we want to express? And you really can't do that until you spend a little bit of time. So I always go back to Van Gogh's Starry Night, one of the most famous paintings in the world. If you look at it, that painting is not what Van Gogh saw, right? So it's not a depiction of what he saw. It's a depiction of how seeing the starry sky felt. And that's, that's what you're trying to do to an extent, even as a photographer is I'm not trying to necessarily, depict what I saw. I'm trying to depict what I thought or what I, how that, what I saw makes me feel. And so that if I can then express it in such a way that someone thousands of miles away that wasn't even present can pick up on what I felt about that experience and then maybe even feel what I felt as I was standing behind the camera. It's complex because everybody's gonna have different emotional triggers to what they see because they have different life experiences. But that's what makes art so beautifully imperfect. Yeah, I think one of the favorite photographs of mine on your website at least is the one, there's a guy in a boat. I don't know where it is, but he's, there's a bird on top of a branch that he has. Where, where is that picture? Okay. That's in China. That's the Li river. And, I'm glad you like it, but it's, it's a good, it's a completely contrived, experience. So the experience was, was great. I enjoyed my time in China, but that shoot is totally contrived. This is, I guess maybe in the older days. the cormorant fishing used cormorants to catch fish. It's kind of cruel, but they tie a, like a lasso or a string around their neck. And then the cormorants dive and they catch a fish and then they tighten it up and they can't swallow it. And then they pull them up and they get the fish out of their mouth. So this is how cormorant fishermen worked in the past. They don't actually do that anymore. So when I say that, that situation is contrived, it's a bit contrived. So they're there for looks only, but still made a cool photograph. So I enjoyed, I enjoyed it. liked it cause I like it's so foreign to like what I've seen before. So I'm just like, I didn't understand what was going on it, but I really loved just the composition. I like the color in it as well. Just the warm tones against the blue. I think that was really cool. Thank you very much. Yeah. I think one of the big things that stands out to me too about just what you've done in your career as a photographer has changed the game a little bit on social. Like you've grown a lot on social media. I don't know if this was early on in some of these platforms, but what do you think now it takes to like really stand out on some of these platforms? There's just so much content being pushed. And as a wildlife photographer or a landscape photographer, what are the ways to display your work and get out there in the world? Nowadays on social media, do you think? Yeah, that's, that's really difficult now. I think it was easier when social media was just starting out. I, I know among others saw the potential in social media very early on. So I jumped on very quickly on, on Twitter and, even Facebook and Instagram. I was skeptical until it was probably too late. So I got a late start there, but now this it's, there's so much competition. It's hard to really is hard to stand out unless you've, you've got an audience already built in. So I've been very fortunate on, you know, on Twitter, which is now called X that I built a, the big audience there part of it was luck because I, I was invited to a, a social media retreat of some kind in San Jose back in 2014 or so. And I was named at some survey they had named like one of the top photographers, 30 photographers on the internet or social media or something like that. And I got to meet some of the executives and managers at some of these social media companies. And one of the guys at Twitter saying, we really like that you've promoted photography on our platform. And then shortly after that, I became what is called a... a favored follower status or something like that. So that when someone creates a new account, if they had an interest in, you know, when you used to be, when you created a new account, it may be still the same way, is that it logs, you know, where you're from and some of your interests and all that sort of thing. So they give you a bundle of people to follow. It's usually the president, could be your two senators, your local sports team, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then if you had an interest in say photography travel or the outdoors like that, I was included in that bundle. I was getting two or 3000 new followers a day and that lasted for like five or six years. But that was also when Twitter was just text, wasn't it? They weren't always doing it I'm not on Twitter, but they weren't always doing photos, were they? that time they were. Yeah. So this would have been 2014. I think it lasted from about 2014 to about 2017 or 18. where every day I was getting two or 3000 followers. So that's how that got built up. And then I used that to kind of build other, you know, social media following from, from that point. it's pure luck. It's pure luck. I, but I've, I've, I've seen the value in that, in that I can reach people who are interested in my work directly without having to go through, you know, gatekeepers, which it was. in the old days where you had to, you know, you to know people to get your, your work scene. Now you have a direct conduit directly to, you know, the people who are interested in your work. And so that's a, it's different game changer really. And you were on YouTube too, before YouTube was really a thing it looks like, but, it doesn't seem like you, stayed trying to build that platform up. at all. Yeah, I kind of got snake bit and I created a YouTube account and then they went through a change. I think when it was bought by Google and they required you to go through these steps, you want to keep your old account and apparently I was distracted or something and I didn't. So I can't actually access my original account anymore. So they signed me a new account through Google and I can't even get access to it. So, you know, I've not really embraced YouTube probably the way I should have as a marketer, but it's never too late, I suppose. No, I don't think so. mean, you have a podcast. You have a newsletter, I think, right? And then you have a newsletter and the podcast is audio only. And I kind of, I kind of like it that way. Yeah. I'm open to changing my mind, but I think in order to watch a YouTube video, you need that person's total attention. And I think the one of the values of podcasts is that people can listen while multitasking. If they're driving, if they're exercising, if they're going to take a walk, if they're processing images, they can listen to the podcast in the background. And I think it's an intimate way to express ideas about photography without demanding your time like a YouTube. video does. So I kind of like it that way. I'm, you know, I think all the trends are going the opposite way, to be honest. I think they're all saying if you're a podcast, you have to get on YouTube, you have to do video. that's fine. I don't really care about chasing whatever the trends are, but I kind of like the idea that people have, can listen to me while doing other things like driving. I can't tell you how many people say, I'll listen to your podcast while driving to and from work. Or I listen to my podcast when I go to the gym or I like that. Yeah, I think it is more audio based still. Like we do the video as well. I think the reason we do that is because we are video professionals and like that's something we love to do. And also we use that to chop up clips to get more of a following now that it's super hard to get people to follow what you're doing. So I think more people listen to us than they watch us, which I totally understand. But I think we're going to do it. continually to just chop up pieces and get more marketing. That's basically what it's for at the moment. And YouTube is easy to monetize. So that's a big advantage. And I think we're learning more about that space of trying to grow a bigger audience with the podcast and then direct that traffic towards the production that we do. That makes sense. And you've got a background in video, so that helps. I don't. Yeah, exactly. That's I mean, it started with photography, and then it moved into video quickly. I think I still love photography. And I think it's one of my my favorite things to do in my free time versus filming because I think I get to take in the moment pause. And like I shoot film still because I love it. And do you do? Yeah, I mean, like for fun. Like I'm not only shooting film, but like of my family or like some of the trips I'll go on, I'll shoot 35 millimeter. I think it's just nice to pause and like the feel the frame. But if I were doing like, wildlife stuff, I wouldn't trust myself as well to get those exact shots because it's like, you only get so many you can't view it. That's that's a tough one. I don't do you know anybody that shoots film in the wildlife world? I don't. most of the people who shoot film are kind of like, what you said out there, they're, you know, the do is for fun or as a hobby and they, they like to retro feel like people still listen to, you know, vinyl records. I, know, and some people will say that vinyl records, they sound better. I can't imagine how or why they could sound better. think digital has to sound better just as digital photography does look better. but there's some people just, they like that retro feel and that throwback and, You know, life's about whatever turns you on. You know, if you like shooting film, shoot film. It'd be very, very difficult to run a business, a photography business doing film these days. And I said goodbye to film in 2005. I think I shot my last role and I never even thought about going back because digital is so much easier and it's so superior as far as equality and everything else. So. I don't make fun of people who do. I'm not. Richard. Don't make fun of me, please. Sean was just listening to the vinyl. man. I'm that guy. know, life is short and I think you should do whatever makes you happy and whatever turns you on. So I'm not going to judge anyone. But particularly, particularly, particularly wildlife, it would be difficult. I can see doing landscape. And if I were to do landscape with film, I'd probably continue to shoot four by five, which I did for about two years. You know, big. big pieces of film. But I can see, know, I somewhat miss, I do miss that somewhat. But once I put that last roll of film through the, on the light table, I haven't looked back. I get it though. I mean, like I said, it's a fun thing for me and I still shoot a lot of digital. think one of the things that I love about digital too is we're in this fast paced environment now. Like we were talking about, like everybody's posting. So like you do want to share your work as quickly as you can to just get that moment out there so people can see it. And I think with film, it's just, it's not going to happen. It's not efficient anymore. you mentioned wildlife, particularly wildlife, because I just got back from Namibia and I, this is where the seal happened, but we spend a lot of time shooting, you know, the Tochinoasso Park, which is, your more classic safari. and elephants and giraffes and rhinos and lions. And we also stopped at a place in Walvis Bay where we photographed the flamingo colony. And some of my students have shot thousands of images, like 4 ,000 images. And that was very, expensive if you're shooting film. Now, I understand that a lot of this is just shooting, which is not, you're not. you're not giving it enough thought, you you probably don't need to take that many photos. But the philosophy is, it's not costing you anything other than time. Editing time is to, know, if there's a bird flamingo flying out in front of you, you're going to, you have, you know, 20 frames per second, you're going to fire off, you know, 15, 20 frames as it's going by. You're more likely to get the right photo with the right wing pat, you know, the wing position and the right background and though the one that's going to be in focus slightly better than the others or the eye has light on it, any number of things. So you go through 20 of them and one of them is going to be far superior than the other. there is, you know, some logic behind that, but that's just something you can't do with film. don't have, you can't advance film that quickly to do 20 frames per second or 15 or 10 frames per second. And it would be very expensive and it would be not a very efficient way to work. So. I don't know anybody shooting wildlife and doing film, but I do know some people who are doing street photography and landscapes who are doing film. Yeah, that makes sense. mean, I think it's all about you can't ask the animal to do that motion again, like filming people or photographing people on the street. Like, hey, we need you to do that pose again. It's like these are moments in time that happen and sometimes they'll never happen again. Once it's gone, it's gone. Yeah. Which is cool to be able to capture. know Dan has done some of that, like out in the Maine wilderness with some moose and eagles. So that's where we live. Yeah. But it's, mean, as a wildlife photographer, you're sitting out there for hours waiting for something cool to happen. You know what I mean? So you're not just like, I see an eagle. Let me take a shot. You're kind of waiting for it to maybe fly down, catch a fish or do something exciting. you don't shoot film, do you? No, I've never shot. Never? OK, OK. I know. I'm the only weirdo. You listen to music on vinyl. That would be Sean T. I'm just not that guy. Hey, I'm not the one that says listen. Like, I listen to vinyl because it sounds better. I just have vinyl. I also listen to digital music. That's what I say. Whatever floats your boat. Yeah. Richard, I wanted to ask you. So I know, I mean, really it's not a big deal because every camera can really do the same job at this point. Like they're just so good. But what do you shoot with? Are you Canon, Nikon, Sony? I'm Canon and I travel with two R5s wherever I go. I know that we have some new options that are coming out with the R5 Mark II and there's an R1 coming out. But the R5s have been fantastic tool for what I need. It's got strengths, it's got weaknesses when you compare them to the Nikon and the Sony. offerings, but I just don't get caught up in that too much. I know that when I'm leading a workshop, that tends to be a good part of the conversation. So I am up on all the latest, you what does what better, what camera does this, what camera does that. It's, you know, I just don't, doesn't interest me to be honest, but I have to know it. So, yeah, Canon R fives and a variety of different lenses to go with it. I still have one old EF lens with the, with the converter because it is still make a two to 400 any longer F four, you know, with the total converter built into it. It's my favorite. One of my favorite wildlife lenses is a little too big and heavy for certain circumstances. So if I'm going on my own, for example, to, to Africa, I'll bring it. If I'm going to my own, on my own to Alaska, that's the lens I would prefer to bring. But when I'm leading a tour, it's just too bulky and it's obnoxious. And I'm there to help and teach, not take my own photos. So I'll bring the 100 to 500, which is small. It's sharp. It's, can, I can move around and react quickly to what's going on. I use that lens when I go to Antarctica, use it when I, up in Svalbard. This is, you know, when you're doing a lot of handheld photography. So that R5 with the 100 and 500, that combination is an awesome tool for wildlife. Yeah, I like the Canon systems too. We use a lot of those for filming as well. But you're right, sometimes when you get stuck in gear, it's not always, especially nowadays, there's so many options that I think a lot of them are very similar in what they can perform and do. And they have some differences, but I think it's all Like how you, it's a tool. It's how you use it. It's the tool. And I think, and I had this conversation, I had friends launching on my podcasts and we're going down that road and I, and I see this a lot in a lot of beginner students on my trips that they just have too much camera. They have too many options to too many options that haven't even learned basic exposure yet or how to use autofocus. there's, there's, there's a hundred different autofocus modes. and options and it confuses them. It's frustrating and they get turned off because they don't even understand the camera works when you can create the same photos with just a very basic set of settings with autofocus. you know, I, you, you embrace the things that are, positive, like auto ISO and the 20 frames per second. But then there's these, these hybrid and exotic focus modes and the menu bank on all these cameras are so deep and so, convoluted and Byzantine that if I were just starting out, you want to get good equipment. You're going on a once in lifetime trip to Africa or, Antarctica. So you want the best equipment, but you put that in their hands. There's just, there's just too many options. So I could see the frustration. I feel it too, because I can't learn every single camera and all the different options and all the different focus modes. Each one's out. I can figure it out, but I can feel that frustration from them and I feel it myself. If it's not a camera that I use personally. Yeah, it's almost like they're just putting in options as like sales points, you know, cause you, you go through some of these menus and you're like, where is the thing that I was always looking for that was always on menu three. Now there's like seven menus, there's different audio options now on video cameras and all these other options that most people are almost. Everybody is not going to use, it's there in case you're in that once in a lifetime situation. Right. So I just don't get caught up in the gear too much, but when it comes time to upgrading my two R5s, which may be happening later this year or maybe next year, then I will, I'll do a little research and find out if it's even worth, A, it's even worth upgrading. Do I want to upgrade? it, you know, just the sake of, you know, upgrading for the sake of upgrading? is not a good plan either. If what I have right now can still do what I need to do, then there may not be a need to upgrade. So then I'll look into a little deeper and make a decision. it's just a topic that I just can't get into very easily. I much rather talk about the artistic and the creative sides of photography and why. why people take certain photos that they do and what are they trying to express and what are they trying to say, what are they trying to make people feel. Those conversations I think are much more interesting. Yeah. Especially when you can learn your camera too, like you were saying earlier. When you can slow your shutter speed down and take a nice blurry photo of something and it's like, how the hell did you take that almost? It's like when you know all your settings, you can kind of get the photo you're looking for. you to learn your camera so that you don't even think about it. So that's, it's an extension of your hand. And the less you think about the camera and the less you think about settings and let you think about all that's that the more you open yourself up to the experience and the more you open yourself up to creating a more expressive photography. Otherwise the camera and all that technical stuff just gets in the way. And so you know, like anything else you practice and practice and practice until it just becomes intuitive, becomes natural so that you can forget it, you know, don't have to think about it. Yeah. Wildlife photography. mean, it's all about moments in time, but there must be times where you go out to get certain photographs because of the certain, the light that's going to be happening. And so, and like, I'm sure you look at positioning of where the sun's going to be and hope that. the animal is in that space, how important is it to understand the environment you're going into ahead of time? Like do you research like what it's like, what the foliage is like? Right. So yeah, planning and I like to call it anticipating what's going to happen. So if you're talking about wildlife, if you know the more, well, the more you know about an animal's behavior, the more you know about a place you're going to, the better prepared you are to know or at least have an instinct as to what's going to happen next and not what's happening now. So if your strategy is to react what is happening now, by the time you go to take the image, it's already too late. So I'd like to give this example where I'm in Kenya and I remember this very vividly. I'm with my guide and this is during the pandemic. So it's very quiet. There's not a lot of people in Masimara. It's just he and I, and there's this, I was trying to get some photos, some artistic images of some zebras. And so we're kind of traveling alongside that this herd of zebras as they're moving across these planes. And we pull up, you know, 40 feet or 50 feet and we'd shoot and then we'd have to pull up another 40 feet and shoot. And finally I just said, Do you know where they're going? He says, yeah, they're right over that hill. They're going down there. There's a water hole. I said, great. So instead of doing what we're doing now, why don't we just go to the water hole and let them come to us. So then once you get to the water hole, you know they're coming. Then you can kind of work on where exactly do we want to park the vehicle? What kind of background am I going to have? Where's the light coming from? And now we can anticipate what is going to happen instead of constantly reacting to what is happening in real time. And, It's kind of like the old Wayne Gretzky, know, I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is. So the more you know about how the habits, behaviors of a certain animal, the better prepared you are to anticipate what's going to happen next instead of reacting to what is happening now. Yeah, that makes sense. And did you always... want to be a wildlife photographer? Is this something that you were like, this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. This is something that I'm super passionate about. Or did something just click all of a know, it goes back to my childhood where I was, you know, I loved nature. I loved the outdoors. And that's probably where it started because then you get into your teens and you're now distracted with other things in the teens and twenties. And then at some point you kind of grow up and then you kind of rediscover that first love, which is, you know, wildlife and wild places in the outdoors and playing out in the woods like I did as a kid. And so at some point I got back into that and I was doing, you know, backpacking trips and fly fishing and mountain bike riding and all these kinds of things on the outdoors. And like most people take a camera with them when they travel to these places, just to kind of show your friends and family back home. know what you're doing. And so that's what basically the start of it is that I would get these pictures back from the drug store that the prints and I would just kind of say to myself, well, this doesn't really look like what I saw. And so I'm going through the pictures and I'm showing my friends. I'm like, this one didn't come out. This one really didn't come out, but it's tantalizing because one, if there's 24 of them, maybe one or two actually did represent what I saw or maybe even better what I saw. And I wasn't doing anything different for those one or two than I was the other 22 that were not. So that just kind of triggered the curiosity into me and stuff like, why is that? I thought the camera's job was just to record what I saw, right? And then the more you realize that the differences between how, well, film in that day and how the human visual system sees and interprets visual information, it's a miracle that you have one or to or any that looked like what you saw. And so then you start learning, well, okay, what, can I do to shortcut that the imperfections of the camera and all that could make it look more like what I saw. And it just kind of snowballed. And then I found myself going out, not for all those activities that I just mentioned. I was going out for the sake of just taking pictures and that's how it started. But it was always fueled by my love and passion for the outdoors, not photography and I still would say that today that people would say, well, you you have an interest in photography. No, I really don't. My passion is the subjects that I'm working with. The photography is just a, a means to communicate and share those experiences. It's a very mechanical, very, interesting, you know, exercise. My passion is the outdoors and travel exotic places and animals and wildlife. Those are my passions. photography, the act of actually doing photography is just a necessary exercise to share those things. That's what it is. Yeah, that makes sense too. It's almost like you're, you're an author. You're taking these things that you see and you're bringing them home and like, same with writing, when people write, they're, they're spilling out their thoughts and their ideas of how they discovered these new places. And you're doing that in a visual medium. And so I think that makes sense. Like I've always wanted to do that too. Like I go to some space, like I went to Patagonia once and loved Patagonia and really wanted to capture it. And I, there was one moment where I woke up at like 1 a to go take this photograph that I really want because the sun was rising right on the peaks. And it went in. Yeah. And you got up at 1 a I got up at 1 a Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got up at 1 a and I hiked in the dark with a couple people. We were at the W track and the towers. I forget exactly the Toro Del Pine and. to Piney. you the towers and there's the little lake at the base. So we want to pitch black. So start, you start, it's like a four hour. It's a four hour hike to get to that spot. yeah. And so we did it. We got up there. It's still dark and you just watch it rise and like hit the peaks and like you take in the moment. You take the photo, but. Being there and feeling that moment and then being able to share it is definitely like what I was after. And I think that's like what you're describing. It's like the passion for photography is really the passion to share these moments. Right. And if I were a better writer, maybe I could do the same thing by writing and sharing those moments that way. Or if I were a painter, I could share those moments and the things that are important to me, meaningful to me. through that medium or poetry or any number of ways you could share those things that are meaningful to you and you're passionate about with other people. It's just that I'm, know, songwriting any number of ways, but it's just that I'm not good at any of those other things. It's just that photography was the most natural way, the most natural conduit that I could use to share the things in the places that are meaningful to me. makes sense. Where? But it has nothing to do with me having love for photography. I don't go out and just photograph any old thing. don't go to the store or to the post office, but I take my camera with me. Like some people say, I take my camera everywhere. Because you never know when there's going to be something you want to photograph. I don't. I just don't. It has to be something meaningful to me. And usually I have to be in a certain zone where I'm in that zone and thinking about creating not just you know on my way to the grocery store Yeah, what are you most excited for next in your journeys? Is there is there a trip? Is there a place? Is there something that you're excited to experience coming up? Yeah, I have you know a lot of the last coming up. I just mentioned one is in the fjords in around Glacier Bay National Park in Juneau And then immediately after that, going to Katmai to my, my, friends, the bears, the coastal Brown bears and landing in Kodiak Island and taking a flow plane out to a boat and spending some time just doing shore excursions to where the bears are. that's my next trip. And then I have Scotland and I have Antarctica and I always love going to Antarctica. that's coming up early next year. So, you know, my, place that I'm most excited about is usually the place I'm going next. Particularly if it's a place that is new or is a place that I've been to multiple times that still turns me on. There's still something there that keeps drawing me back. Like there's some unfinished business that I have to, I want to go. There's other places where I've been once and I was like, well, that was great. That was great. I said, you know, I'm flying out and like, I don't need to come back here again. Other places where I've been multiple times, I still feel like I have more work there to do, that there's still more to explore. There's still a mystery there that I've yet to uncover. So I think that varies from person to person. So some places that people love that I just don't have any, that I just never connected to emotionally. And other places that I have connected emotionally, I still want to go back to that people are like to have no desire to. And that's what makes it interesting because we're all different. Yeah. Is there a place in the U .S. that you besides Alaska that you go to often? to Maine. Yeah, come to Maine. Maine is interesting. probably it's going to be either places I'm very familiar with. And I live in the Southeast, so the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It's Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I've been to hundreds of times. And I have such a familiarity with it that when I go there, you know, I just kind of connect with it. There's a sort of love affair there. And then I Death Valley would be another place that I keep going back to and I keep finding new things that I hadn't seen before or missed or I'll explore a different part of the park and find something new. That's a place that I always get excited about going back to. you still fly fish at all? I don't have time. that's, I could say that probably fly fishing more than anything else got me into photography because that was like the back, going back into the nineties where I was really into fly fishing and it's such a visually beautiful sport from the places that you do fly fishing are usually not ugly places. the fish themselves are very beautiful. The arc of the cast and all that is very, very visually, beautiful sport. And, my first, published images were fly fishing images in a fly fishing magazine. And I was like, they paid me $600 for like five photos. I was like, wow, you know, this, this could be, you can make a living at doing this. And it, that, and then I just kind of expanded out into different areas and I started story landscapes and, people out in the outdoors doing different things. And, it was like a side business and that eventually led to me saying, you know what? I'm going to be in my. late thirties. if I don't give myself at least, the opportunity to fail if, if that's there, but I have to give this a try. I would never forgive myself if I didn't at least take a shot at it. And I said, you know, I saved up for about two years and if two, after two years, it doesn't look like he's going anywhere. I can always go back to get a conventional job again and kind of build a career. I was never really had any trouble, finding work and being, being fairly good at what I did. But I don't think I could have forgiven myself if I didn't at least take a chance. And if I failed, at least you failed. And you said, well, I tried. I give myself that opportunity. It just didn't work out. But I've always been nagging feeling of, I could have done that. Maybe if I'd given myself a chance, I could have done that. And taking that chance was the best thing I ever did. Yeah. I tell other people that when they're asking about getting into photography or video. It's like, If you have an interest in that space, you should at least give it a shot. it, give it its time because you can always go backwards to the thing that you're doing currently. And, I think a lot of people don't take that leap and they maybe regret not trying to do that, whether it's music or photography or painting or. And then, and then people, some people make the mistake of doing that and then treating it like it's still a hobby instead of, really, you know, I've never, you know, I worked hard in my previous career, but I never worked harder after I started doing this full time. And, you know, it, it's requires a tremendous amount of work. It, it, it, have to treat it like a business. And for some people that ruins it for them, but they don't, they don't want to, you know, ruin their beautiful hobby that they have by by making it a business. And if that's the case, and by all means, do not ruin it to keep it as a hobby. But I still work and people would be surprised at how many hours a week that I put into working. But I love what I do. So it's not, that's not a labor that I that I'm bored with, or I feel like it's drudgery. I love what I do. So I don't mind putting in the work, but there's a lot of work that goes into it. Yeah, there's a lot of work that goes into any thing that has a creative process and it's all behind the scenes that people don't really see. They don't see the late night staying up, editing photos or whatever it is that you get down a rabbit hole doing and it's because you're passionate about it. I mean, I do the same thing. Like I'll spend hours doing something that most people would not want to do, but I just like, I love it. I get into it and just love it. And that's when you know, found something. that's worth pursuing. Yeah. And I think it's also important that just because it's your passion doesn't necessarily mean that you should try to make that a career. I don't think passion, if you find, if you find that you're very good at it, then I think you should pour energy in it and try to make it work. But some people are just not good at it. mean, that's to put it bluntly, if you're not good at it, don't, don't waste your life and all this time. trying to create a career out of something or try to make a business out of it if you just not, or if you're not gonna put the work in, definitely, if you're not gonna commit and make sacrifices, if you're not prepared to make those sacrifices, then don't bother either. Yeah, it's like basically to make it in any of these fields, it's consistency. And consistency on the surface seems so easy. It's just repetition of doing this thing correctly and better than you did the day before. But why, if it's that easy or easy sounding, do so many people not do it? Yeah. Good point. I'm not sure. Good point. I have no idea because that's, look at any marketing books or any marketing talks, they're always like, even with social media, it's like consistency, consistency. And we all tend, I mean, I'm guilty of it myself. Like I don't continually do that thing that maybe I should have to increase my business. Right. Especially when you don't see the results right away. You're like, what am I doing this for? know? Yeah. When I made that transition to full time, I gave myself two years. And after two years, I wasn't quite in the black yet, but I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. So I knew that things were moving in the right direction. So I kept at it. But it takes some time till you see those results. And then, know, and now we go back, you know, that was 20 years ago. The whole landscape of what it took to be a photographer then is completely different than it is now. So then there's that ability to adapt to market changes. You know, that whole business model is completely different. It's been turned upside down. So if you're still trying to do things, the old that you that worked before in the, in the nineties and tried to apply them to how they work now, you're not going to get anywhere. You're going to fail. Yeah. I, so even with like my photography, got into, I was big into wildlife photography, but then I got into video, doing video, wildlife video. but I find myself always going back to photography because there's something about printing out an image and either hanging it on your wall or something like that. Then video, mean, one, takes a lot of equipment to bring out into the field for video for photography, you know, a camera and a lens and a couple of batteries. it's just so much easier, but. I always find myself falling back to, to photography. Well, I, I don't much know much about video, to be honest. it's, it's, it's intriguing because there, there are certain experiences that I have in the field where a single photograph just does not capture what I want to express. And I'm like, this would be perfect, or at least much better as a video than a single capture of an image. So I wish I, somehow had. devoted more time or at least tried to learn that part of capturing experiences in the field by using video. But I just sometimes don't have the time to open that book up and start heading that direction. But I do appreciate those who do it well. Yeah. I started watching Bert, Bertie Gregory, think, I think his name is. He does a lot of stuff for Nachio, but he started coming out with these YouTube. informative kind of behind the scenes wildlife videos and they were just so much different than every other wildlife video that was out there. And then they actually came out with like a Disney plus, you know, series or whatever, but it's just like, it's just amazing. It's so cool to see what goes into, you know, when they shoot professionally for, for wildlife. Yeah. And they devote a lot of time and put a lot of hours in the field to get, you know, an hour's worth of video. don't know how many hours you have to spend in the field to get an hours with the video. It's the ratio is mind -bending. Yeah. Well, Richard, if you ever need us to come on one of those trips with you and film your process, we're always available to jump on a plane and go to Namibia. It's always good to know a good videographer. It's good to know that. Yeah, for sure. Or if you want to pack up the fly rod, the camera, and come up to Maine, New Hampshire, we'll go out in the woods and we'll make a video and get some images. I haven't touched a fly rod in 20 years and I kind of sometimes I do miss it, but I just don't have the time to really to get to do that anymore, which is a shame in one way, but I am doing what I love. there's no complaints. Well, let us know if you want to come up this way ever. We'll make a little outdoor adventure trip. We'll bring our video cameras. Beautiful state. Yeah. Beautiful state. Yeah. Well, this was awesome. Thank you for coming on. We appreciate everything you've done in your work and thank you for spending the time with us on the podcast. My pleasure. It's been fun. We have to do this again sometime. Maybe I'll have you guys on my podcast. Sounds good to us. Cool. you