We have been busy updating the workshop page of our website at www.wildnaturephototravel.com to make things easier to navigate for those browsing on mobile devices (which, according to our statistics, is most of you). We have removed the need to download a separate PDF file for each workshop and have now included all the information for each trip on each page. Please note that we are still updating many of the trips, so not all are complete as of yet, and we are also planning to add more behind-the-scenes images to each trip as well. Feedback is greatly appreciated if you have a moment to stop by and check it out. We hope the new format will be to your liking.
Please note that I will be offline for the next twelve days while I guide an expedition to the East Coast of Greenland. If you contact us during this time, please be patient, and we will get back to you when we return. If you purchase our new Canon EOS R5 MK2 Noise Reduction Presets for Adobe Lightroom, these will be emailed to you when we return.
The photograph of the month for September 2024 comes from a private expedition to Svalbard in Winter and is of a Reindeer in heavy snowfall just outside of Longyearbyen. This photograph is all about the gesture of the Reindeer, the limited colour palette and of course the drama of the falling snow. It is a very simple photograph in many ways, with a minimalistic approach that captures the movement of the Reindeer in an evocative and dramatic manner. Capturing the right gesture of wildlife is really key to powerful imagery. In this case, I lay down in the snow with a long lens and waited for the Reindder to lift its head from grazing under the snow. I was fortunate that as it did so, it also raised it’s from leg and twisted its body in exactly the same manner as the Bull on the Lamborghini emblem – hence, Raging Bull.
Whoops! With my recent travels to Sweden from Australia, I somehow managed to completely miss the August 2024 photograph of the month (and September is now due!). This photograph was made on my Zululand South Africa workshop (Read the Trip Report) earlier this year and is of a male lion at night. This photograph was made with a single spotlight on the lion as it walked up the road toward our vehicle, and it’s a great example of how a single light source can illuminate a subject and isolate it against the background. I will return to South Africa next year to lead another ground-level wildlife masterclass to this fantastic location. It is one of the very few places in Africa where you can actually get out of the vehicle and walk with Cheetahs (not lions!) and photograph from eye level with specially modified safari vehicles. This photograph was made using one of the specially modified safari vehicles that facilitates a much more intimate connection with the wildlife.
The short time in Australia has already come to an end. Early this evening, just before dinner, I am heading back to the airport and making the big puddle jump to Sweden (via Doha and Helsinki), where I will have a couple of weeks before heading to Iceland and Greenland for my Greenland East Coast Hidden Gems Expedition and the after-party—the Iceland South West Coast landscape extension. I am excited to head North to Scandinavia and then onto the Arctic for Greenland and Iceland. The East coast of Greenland is, without a doubt, my favourite place on earth to photograph icebergs. The stunning shapes, the sheer enormity of their size, grandeur, and whimsical transient nature make them the ideal subject for photographers looking to capture and create dramatic other-worldly landscapes. This will be my first workshop with the all-new Canon EOS R5 MK2 and my first opportunity to photograph with this camera in the high-Arctic. I am very excited to see how the EOS R5MK2 performs and how its all-new BSI sensor renders texture in snow and ice. I recall being disappointed by the original EOS 5DR DSLR (Pre-mirrorless) and its inability to render texture in extreme highlight detail (it did an awful job on snow and ice) – I subsequently sold that camera on return from an Antarctica expedition. The EOS R5MK2 is the first camera I have owned with more than 24 mega-pixels since that EOS 5DR DSLR, and curiosity about how it performs in the extreme highlights of snow and ice has me chomping at the bit to photograph my first iceberg with this new camera.
Time constraints here in Australia have meant I have not made a full packing list for these two workshops, but there should be no surprises about what equipment I am taking with me. In brief, the Canon EOS R3 and Canon EOS R5MK2 will be my two bodies for these trips. Lenses will include an RF 14-35mm F4, RF 24-105mm F4, RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS, RF 100-500mm F5.6-7.1 and my RF 600mm F4L IS with an RF 1.4 Teleconverter. Of course, the 600mm lens comes along for any Polar Bear or other wildlife encounters.
Our next Wild Nature Photo Travel expedition to Greenland in late Autumn will be from October 3rd to 10th, 2026. We will take just six photographers on this expedition (some places have already been taken and filled). Full details on this workshop are now available on our website HERE. We received a wonderful note just a few days ago from a prior traveller who joined us last year – thank you so much.
“Hi Josh, Thanks so much for everything! Photographing icebergs in Greenland with you was a journey into a realm of sublime beauty and raw nature. Now that I am back home and I looked back on my images I can say that the experience was utterly surreal, capturing the majestic interplay of light and shadow on the ancient ice, each berg a unique, ever-changing sculpture. I learned to appreciate not just the grandeur of these frozen giants but also the delicate details—the textures, the hues of blue, and the reflections that transform with the shifting Arctic light. The experience was both a technical challenge for me and an artistic endeavour, offering a deep connection to one of the planet’s most remote and pristine environments. Your guidance made this trip a life experience I will never forget.”
Lastly, if you are ordering our new Canon EOS R5MK2 Noise Reduction Presets over the next couple of days, please be a little patient, as I will be travelling, and offline for approximately twenty-four hours.
I have just published episode #103 of my Wild Nature Photography Podcast. In this episode I discuss the noise reduction pre-sets I have just released for the Canon EOS R5MK2 as well as my first outing and experience with the camera in the field. Now that the dust has settled on the official announcement of the Canon EOS R1 and the Canon EOS R5MKII, I want to take a few moments to discuss the differences between these two cameras, their key features and who they are intended for. There has been much misinformation and scuttlebutt on the internet (predominantly from the usual YouTubers who will say just about anything for likes, clicks and views). ‘Don’t forget to like and subscribe’ Anyway, before I digress any further, these are my thoughts as an actual pro photographer who shoots with these cameras in the field more than 200 days a year.
Shared technologies between the Canon EOS R1 and Canon EOS R5 MKII Both cameras share many core technologies and features between them such as: • DIGIC X processor AND a new DIGIC Accelerator – which enable ‘next gen’ AI tracking and focussing (more on that later). • Back illuminated stacked CMOS sensor – which have faster readout and less rolling shutter than previous sensors. • In camera noise reduction for RAW images. • 2X-4X image upscaling & cropping in camera (to JPG). • AF Eye Control. • Pre-burst mode for stills & video. • Very high electronic shutter speeds (R5II 1/32,000 electronic / R1 1/64,000 electronic). • 8.5 Stops of IBIS at the lens centre (7.7stops at peripheral). • Action Sports Tracking Priority Modes: Soccer, Basketball, Volleyball. • Ability to ‘face register’ up to 10 people to AF track. • Multi-function Hot Shoe – camera can power microphones, use new gen speed lights as well as legacy speed lights. • Dual Shooting (HD video & JPG stills). • Close to cinema range video quality. • 12 bit RAW video recording + 4 channel audio. • LUTS in camera. • Log3 + Log2 with 16 stops of dynamic range. • 4K 120p + HD 240p. • Proxy RAW footage (to seperate cards) for manageable video editing.
So while these cameras do share core technologies, the R5mkII is classed by Canon as “aspirational, brand-defining and accessible”; while the R1 is classed as “refined, luxury and niche”. Canon representatives also talked about slightly different markets with the R5mkII being for commercial photographers wanting higher mobility and high pixel count; while the R1 is about reliability, high speed, high ISO suited for sports, wildlife, documentary and government use. While most people might consider the R1 the flagship model, Canon representatives referred to both cameras as flagships. This is because the original R5 and its predecessors—the EOS DSLR 5D series—have been industry workhorse cameras that vastly outsell the ‘1’ series by more than 10 to 1. If the R1 is the jewel in Canon’s crown, the crown is mainly made of R5’s.
The big party trick Apart from the before mentioned technologies shared with the R5MkII, what are the big ticket advantages over the R3 and R5mkII? Apart from a blistering 40 fps in electronic shutter mode, you have a new ‘Cross-type AF’ which ensures the best focussing accuracy in probably any camera on the market. Traditionally with duel-pixel autofocusing, the camera looks for vertical lines (to focus on) in an image when shooting in landscape mode. If you shoot in vertical / portrait mode, many cameras find focus to be more difficult. Cross-type AF solves this issue and increases accuracy in situations that may have many horizontal lines, or subjects are small in size, or the subject has low contrast in low light (something that should significantly benefit many wildlife photographers).
Ultimately, which camera is right for you really comes down to your in the field needs and output needs (as it always has). If high ISO performance, world leading autofocus, 40 frames per second with RAW pre-capture up to 20 frames is important to you (and it is to me as a wildlife photographer) then the Canon EOS R1 is the best tool for the job. If you dont need those things, then the EOS R5 MKII punches very hard for a camera that packs 45 mega pixels. Of course, ergonomics also plays a large part in the equation. Personally, I decided to order one of each and will use the R5MK2 as a light weight landscape camera and the EOS R1 for my wildlife work. This gives me an uncompromising too for wildlife (the EOS R1) and a light weight camera for landscape – the best of both worlds.
www.WILDNATUREPHOTOTRAVEL.com 