Nature and wildlife are in trouble. Every day more habitat is destroyed and more species become extinct. The trend has been accelerating faster than most scientists had predicted. As nature and wildlife filmmakers, we probably see it more than anyone else. Fields where I use to watch pheasant and deer walk through have been turned [...]
I've written in previous posts about determination and effort. It's important to have both if you're serious about being a nature and wildlife cinematographer. But if you throw greed into the mix, you tend to be out in nature for the wrong reasons. The greed I'm talking about is the "I'm getting mine" attitude I hear about [...]
Filming nature and wildlife takes a lot of practice, patience and persistence. It takes a lot of effort and determination to get the shots that you want. One aspect of shooting nature and wildlife video that we should make sure we never overlook is having fun doing it. If you're trying to make a living [...]
As much as I'd love to sit back in the recliner, watch TV and munch on a pizza every day that doesn't result in much footage. Getting up well before sunrise to pack gear, grab something to eat, drive to a location, hike in to a good spot and set up the camera takes effort. [...]
Regal Fritillary butterflies are pretty rare in my neck of the tallgrass prairie. A few have been spotted over the years but their locations have been kept secret to protect them and their habitat. Regal fritillaries have the sad distinction of being a rare butterfly in a rare habitat. Only one tenth of one percent of [...]
When you first start out shooting nature and wildlife, you tend to do two things. The first is to try to duplicate what other filmmakers are doing. The second is to get opinions on your footage. Both of these can be good, but sometimes getting the opinions of others can actually do you more harm [...]
Welcome to the Blogging A to Z Challenge! I’m participating for the first time this year in this activity where we blog every day for the month of April (except Sundays), posting a blog post each day for each letter of the alphabet. While I often grab my camera and head out with a specific plan [...]
When it comes to nature and wildlife filmmaking, I tend to say "I wish" a lot. I wish I would see more wildlife, I wish I could travel to Australia, I wish I'd finish my film about the tallgrass prairie. I find that I tend to wish a lot. But something happened recently that made me [...]
Sometimes the hardest part about nature and wildlife filmmaking is editing. You can shoot the most incredible footage but if your goal is to make films from your footage, you need to learn to edit. Editing however is more than just trimming clips down to size, placing them on a timeline and adding some music [...]
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