Wild Nature Photo Travel Photography Podcast Wrap up 2024

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Another year has come and almost gone for the Wild Nature Photography Podcast. I am pleased to report that 2024 has been our biggest year yet with more episodes and more downloads than any previous years and I just wanted to take a moment and say thank you for the continued support that has enabled our podcast to grow and reach more people – thank you. I set out with the intention of trying to do a podcast every other week during the 2024 year and more or less achieved that with a few small gaps here and there. There is another podcast coming pre-Christmas, I have just been getting over a nasty cold I picked up somewhere in South America after Antarctica and have only just started to feel better. Of course, 2025 is now right around the corner and I hope maintain the momentum and continue to grow the channel over the course of the year. If you would like to support the channel you can do so here by buying me a coffee. Your contribution helps with the ongoing hosting costs.

Not surprisingly, the most downloaded episode for 2024 was when I dropped the news that the Canon EOS R1 would be 24 megapixels (it was amazing how quickly the YouTubers grabbed this news for their own videos). The old adage that gear sells remains true in photography with podcasts about equipment unsurprisingly attracting the most downloads. Nevertheless, I intend to continue to review photography books as I maintain they are still the very best way to improve your photography and that new equipment (although fun, is frequently detrimental to the end result in the short term). Of course, there will always be more gear talk (I enjoy that as much as the next photographer), but there is so much more to Nature photography than the equipment we use. Some Podcast statistics for 2024 below.

Emperor Penguins of Antarctica Expedition Report December 2024

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In late November / early December 2024, I ran my semi-annual wildlife expedition to the world’s most southerly Emperor Penguin colony at Gould Bay, deep in the Weddell Sea region of Antarctica. For this expedition, we flew from Punta Arenas at the bottom of Chile on a privately chartered Iceland Air 757 to the naturally occurring blue ice runway at Union Glacier in Antarctica. From this point, we overnighted at Union Glacier Basecamp before we took a 2nd smaller Basler aircraft another three hours out to the remote sea ice at Gould Bay, where we landed on the sea ice and established camp with the Emperor Penguins.

This year, for the trip report, I decided to utilise the video I recorded during each stage of the expedition to better illustrate the travel process to the Emperor Penguins and what it is like to camp, live with and photograph the emperor penguins. This year, we were fortunate to spend a full seven days (six nights) camped out at the colony. This provided us phenomenal opportunities and the chance to photograph in various weather conditions. Personally, my favourite day was heavily overcast with light snow. I have yet to encounter a full-on blizzard out at the colony, but I am hopeful for future years!

I am still working through the more than five thousand images I made during the course of the week spent out on the sea ice with the penguins, but I have included a few favourites already processed below from what I felt was our best few days – heavily overcast conditions and light snowfall.

The above montage footage was all shot with the new Canon EOS R1 at 4K 120 fps with the Canon RF 600mm F4L IS handheld. This was the first outing with the new Canon EOS R1, and I am blown away by both the ergonomics and performance of this camera. There is a purity and depth of colour to the 14-bit RAW files I have only seen before in much more expensive medium format cameras. The eye tracking focus (yes it can track the black eye of an Emperor Penguin against black feathers), the pre-capture, the build quality and overall performance all stack up to make this the best camera I have yet used. I will have more to say about this in a future podcast.

I will return to the world’s most southerly Emperor penguin colony in early November next year (2025) to lead another small group of photographers on this incredible expedition. If you have ever wanted to photograph the world’s largest and most elegant, photogenic penguin, this is the expedition for you. Limited places are still available on this extraordinary expedition. Please contact me for more details.

Optimally Calibaring Apple Liquid Retina XDR Displays for Photography

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Those who know me know I always advocate for the highest quality photographic display you can afford. It should be the first purchase you make after a digital camera. A wide-gamut, high-quality, calibrated photographic monitor is the difference between optimally processing your RAW files and standing blindfolded, throwing darts at a board. But what do you do while in the field on a laptop? Or, how do you otherwise make do if you have an Apple Liquid Retina XDR display and have neither the budget nor space for an external display? I should footnote this: If you can afford an Apple Liquid Retina XDR display, you have no excuse not to own a significantly better photographic display such as those from BenQ (Read our Recent review on the new BenQ 4K display).

Jeremy Daalder over at Image Science recently published the best piece I have read to date on optimally calibrating an Apple Liquid Retina XDR Display. If you own an Apple laptop with a Liquid Retina XDR display or one of Apple’s hugely over-priced external displays then you owe it to yourself to take five minutes out of your day, and read his article. This is the first piece I have read on the internet that accurately documents the process for a successful calibration of these displays.

INTRODUCTION

Apple’s newest XDR Liquid Retina displays, such as is seen inside the new 14” and 16” MacBook Pro (and the XDR Pro Display) are a completely different ball game when it comes to calibration. The new XDR Liquid Retina displays (hereafter referred to as XDR displays) are different than their predecessors in that they employ a full array local dimming miniLED backlight. The issues at play here are essentially two-fold. Because of Apple’s decision to implement:

  1. A miniLED backlight (which older calibrators just weren’t designed to calibrate), and
  2. the forced usage of Reference Modes (both their clunky implementation of them and specifically the inability to NOT use them)…

…both the required calibration technologies and the process for calibrating them is completely different to ALL older Apple displays (including all older external displays, any iMacs, any Intel-based Laptops, any Macbook Air’s, and even the newer Apple Silicon based 13” and 15” MacBook Pros).

READ ON HERE

Photograph of the Month December 2024 – Emperor Penguins

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The photograph of the month for December 2024 (and the last for the 2024 year!) comes from my recent expedition to the world’s most southerly Emperor Penguin colony at Gould Bay in the Weddell Sea region of Antarctica (Trip report coming soon). This was from what I felt was our best day on the sea ice with soft overcast light conditions and gently falling snow. In these conditions, it isn’t hard to make good photographs when you have such stunning subjects in front of you. In this instance, it was just about waiting for the tender moment when the adult bent down to better shelter its small chick; which was huddling close for warmth.