Black Rhinoceros - Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania
Canon 1D MarkII + Canon 300mm f2.8L IS + 1.4x Converter

This may be cliché, but I’ll say it anyway... study lots of photographs.

Seek out the images that inspire wonder and compel you to ask the big questions:

“Where was it taken?”

“When was it shot?”

“How’d they do it?”

When I began making photographs in the late 1970’s, I became a book seeker. I’d visit local shops, used book stores, swap meets, libraries and garage sales in search of old books and magazines about photography. I was the bargain book boy compulsively looking for images to study. A connoisseur of texts by nature photo masters like Adams, Rowell, Lanting, Muench, Wolfe and Brandenburg, I also reveled in unearthing the work of obscure or lesser known photographers. It wasn’t the personality that I was seeking to emulate, it was the imagery being produced by talented seers of the nature.

Winter Spring - Marine on St. Croix, MN
Canon 7D + 300mm f2.8L IS

With the ever-rapid expansion of the internet, photo web-galleries, photo-streams, and photo-social network sites, it has never been easier to find amazing work to study. As a photographic enthusiast for more than thirty years, I am still on a mission to study the images produced by masters of this craft. I am forever amazed by the things people see, the way it is interpreted and passion inherent in their work.

Tip #37: Study Images - The work that precedes you - The work of your peers - The work yet to be done.

Fall Migration - Crex Meadows, WI
Canon 7D + 300mm f2.8L IS