Meet The Pro: Simon d'Entremont

Welcome to the first episode of the Pangolin Podcast hosted by Toby Jermyn.

Here is the link to the images chosen by Simon for the episode: https://pangolin.smugmug.com/SmugMug-Website/Website-Pages/Simon-dEntremont

In this episode, Toby talks to renowned Canadian wildlife photographer Simon d'Entremont. Simon, who is also a popular YouTube content creator, shares the story of his unique career shift from stockbroker and civil servant to becoming a celebrated wildlife photographer. 

He discusses the significance of five selected images: four of his iconic photos and one by photographer Peter McKinnon. 

Additionally, Simon offers insight into his techniques, field experiences, advice for aspiring photographers, and the creative process behind his popular YouTube channel. 

Dive into a conversation that covers the beauty and challenges of wildlife photography, the importance of planning, and the joy of connecting with nature through the lens.

The Pangolin Podcast was produced and edited by Bella Falk: https://www.passportandpixels.com

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Chapters

• 3:17 Image 1: Peggys Cove Lighthouse
• 9:18 Image 2: Homecoming Tree
• 19:06 Image 3: Red Winged BlackBird
• 29:01 Image 4: Bee eater in Kenya
• 31:51 Image 5: Peter McKinnon Red Bull Eclipse

Transcript

Toby: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the brand new Pangolin Podcast. I'm your host, Toby Jermyn. Thank you very much for joining me. 

In each episode, I've invited a professional wildlife photographer to imagine themselves in a remote location, and along with their camera gear and supplies, they're allowed to bring five carefully selected photographs to hang on the wall of their humble dwelling. Four of these must be their own images, and the final one must be one they admire by another photographer. 

If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see the images as we talk. But for audio listeners on other platforms, there's a link in the description to a gallery. We hope you enjoy it. 

On 

Simon: today's show when you're crawling on your belly using your elbows. Crawling through walrus poo, and trying not to get it on your camera to get that shot, it reminds you that it's not always that pretty.[00:01:00] 

Toby: My guest today is one of Canada's top wildlife photographers and one of the most engaging and compelling creators on YouTube today with nearly 700,000 subscribers and growing fast. It is of course, Mr. Simon d'Entremont from Nova Scotia. I'm sure that he's a familiar face to most of you, but what you probably don't know is that pro wildlife photographer is actually Simon's third career. 

He started out as a stockbroker and then worked as a civil servant for the government of Nova Scotia for 10 years, holding three senior deputy ministerial positions. I first noticed Simon's meteoric rise in the world of wildlife photography when his subscriber account was a fraction of what it is today. 

And I reached out to him to invite him to come to Botswana, which he duly did. And since then, we have hosted several of his photographic tours around Africa and hopefully many, many more in the future. And so with that, I am delighted to be able to welcome Simon as the first guest of our new [00:02:00] Pangolin Podcast series. 

So without further ado, let's meet the pro. Hello, Simon. 

Simon: Hey, Toby. Thanks so much and such a, such a gracious introduction. Thank you so much. 

Toby: Well, I had to go big for the first one, didn't I? 

Simon: That's right, that's right. I have a former boss who used to tell me after people who would say nice things to him, he'd come into my office and say, Simon, you fooled another one. 

So there you go. 

Toby: Well, you can add me to that list then, of all the people you fooled. There you go. Simon, thank you very much for joining me on the first Pangolin Podcast. Now, I've asked you to choose five images to share with us and for each of these images, we're gonna talk a little bit about how you took them, why they mean so much to you, and at the same time, I hope that the conversation will meander around and talk about all sorts of things to do with your blossoming wildlife photography career. 

Simon: Looking forward to 

Toby: it. It's gonna 

Simon: be great. 

Toby: So the first image you've chosen is a stunning landscape. Now you are better known as a wildlife photographer. So tell [00:03:00] me, why did you choose a landscape as your first image? 

Simon: When it comes to your theme of being stranded on a deserted island or somewhere and bringing some photos with you, you tend to focus maybe less on 

the prettier photos and more on the more meaningful ones. So this is an image of Peggy's Cove Lighthouse at sunset, and the sun is setting behind the lighthouse, creating a beautiful red sky with some cloud above and there's a small sliver above the horizon from which the sun is peeking out at the intersection of the horizon and the edge of the lighthouse, creating a beautiful 

sun star with those spikes all around and Peggy's Cove, the lighthouse in this photo is actually the most popular tourism destination in Nova Scotia where I live. It's a place that everyone goes and everyone knows. And it's actually on my wall. Yeah. Right up above me, right here. And this was part of my journey actually for becoming a wildlife photographer. 

I shot wildlife for years. I got [00:04:00] stuck into a rut I would call it, where everything was abous—bird on a stick. You know, you get a bird on a stick and you take that photo and the next week you see the same bird you take it again and it's on a similar looking stick and it's the, it's two versions of the same photo. 

So I did that for a couple years and I said, I've got to break out of shooting a bird on a stick. I need to implement more creative photography techniques into my wildlife photography. So where could I learn that? And I thought, well, landscape photographers are good at understanding colours and shapes and light and so on. 

So I dabbled into landscape photography as a way of building my skillset to take better wildlife photos. And then when I went back to taking wildlife photos, I would bring some of those skills with me. And of course, if you're gonna be on a deserted island for a while, you want reminders of home. So this is a famous landmark where I live, and the shot actually 

I saw the sun coming down. There was a cloud cover all the way, except there was a little [00:05:00] slice of clear sky right on the horizon, and I knew when the sun would pass through that, it would pass through this little slit, I positioned myself to where I thought the sun would come out at the intersection of the lighthouse and the horizon, and I waited for the sun to come down, and when it did, I only had to move about 10-inches left. 

Right. And the technique to get the sun star is a small aperture. So I shot this I think at f/13, 16, something like that. You really close the aperture down and you partially block the sun and those are the two things that create that sun star. You need a super small aperture, 'cause it's the aperture blades reflections that actually create the spikes 

and you need to partially block the sun with a rock, a tree, the side of an elephant, they can all work. 

Toby: I was gonna say, I was gonna say, I mean this is, this is an amazing wildlife skill, isn't it? Especially when it comes to that golden hour where you want to try and capture something and you're shooting straight into the sun. 

What a great way to practice. 

Simon: Yeah. [00:06:00] So put that, you know, if there's an elephant or a giraffe on the horizon and the sun is coming up, put the sun right on their edge and make your aperture very small. 

Toby: Was this a shot you had in mind that you wanted to get one day? Was this the result of many, 

Simon: many attempts? 

I had just happened to go there when I thought there might be some interesting light, and I've been there more than once. But what's interesting, the shot itself, I exposure bracketed it with three shots. And this is just the dark exposure and that's it. So it's not, and there's no fancy processing. It came out this way. 

Brilliant. 

Toby: Okay. Excellent. I'm glad you've already got it on your wall. You've already got the frame. You can take that one with you. Thanks so much. Simon, during the introduction, I obviously mentioned that you had a decade long career in the civil service in Nova Scotia. Do find that some of the skills that you learned from being so in the public, having to engage with people, try to get your ideas across. 

Has that helped you going [00:07:00] forward in your new wildlife photography tutorials and, and leading tours? 

Simon: Sure. I certainly, I learned a lot of skills. I was responsible for managing departments with hundreds of people and hundreds of million dollar budgets. And when you're at that senior level, you end up dabbling in the little bit of everything. 

You have gotta understand the financial side, you gotta understand the communication side. You do end up doing public speaking events, which I think helped me as well. And in my early days in the public service, you know, you write briefing notes and you learn to how to structure things for people to understand and to be brief. 

In two pages, you have to explain a complex issue to someone, how it works, what your options for your decisions are, and which option you should choose. And one smart trick that you use in briefing notes that works in YouTube videos as well is. You explain things in the way at the beginning so that at the end when you make a recommendation, it makes a lot more sense because at the beginning you explain how things work [00:08:00] and at the end you say, of course, that would be what you should do. 

So I do a little bit of that as well. I've always been a little bit of a science nerd. I enjoy reading about quantum mechanics and astrophysics and these types of things. That comes out a bit in some of my videos in in my teaching style, and I'm a visual person. I like to see visuals of how things move and how things work, and I put some of that in my videos as well. 

And people seem to really enjoy them. 

Toby: No, I mean, your videos are incredibly, incredibly engaging and compelling like I said. If that was somebody wanting to start a YouTube channel, what would be the one nugget of advice you would give to somebody wanting to get into this game? Being able to just present 

Simon: ideas effectively, I think is a good skill and it's good to have some proficiency at something 

if you're starting a YouTube channel. It's hard to break into an area where if I was doing cell phone reviews. How many of those are out there, and I don't have any particular skill to stand out. Whereas in my photography, when I do photography [00:09:00] videos at the beginning, I do a little bit of introduction and I splash some of my photos and it, it's like a competency test. 

That I pass at the beginning of my video that people will say, well, he takes pretty good photos. He must know something of what he's talking about. And then I back it up with hopefully good education and entertaining delivery. 

Toby: Great. I mean it's been a fantastic journey for us. I mean the Photo Hosts on our channel were very, the say they were absolutely terrified of starting, but now, now they're into it and they, they are, they've become really adept at it. 

But it's 

daunting. 

Simon: It's really daunting when you start. And developing a presence of their own online, which I'm really enjoying to see as well. Yeah, it's excellent. 

Toby: Now you mentioned Astrophotography. I think that brings us onto our next image. Do you wanna tell us about this one? 

Simon: This photo is a silhouette of an oak tree with a Milky Way coming up behind it, and it's a famous tree in Nova Scotia. I chose it both because it is a famous landmark, but also it's gone. This tree was knocked down by a [00:10:00] hurricane, and this oak tree was the most famous tree in the province of Nova Scotia where I live. 

It was right by the highway. About an hour before you reach Halifax, our main city, so this was the homecoming tree. When you're coming from outside the province, other parts of Canada, and you're driving to Halifax, our biggest city, you drive past this tree, and this was everyone's favourite tree, and I got this beautiful shot of it, of the Milky Way behind it. 

The bright parts behind the tree are actually light pollution from the city of Halifax and the airport, which worked out perfectly to create a beautiful glow. So I picked it because it's home. It's also not there anymore, and it's my bestselling print of all time. Actually, when the hurricane knocked down the tree, someone reposted my photo to social media and said, hey, Simon d'Entremont's got a great photo of that tree and I sold 60 prints of it in the next week. 

Wow. Astrophotography is my roots, and that's one of the other reasons I chose it. My first ever photo was of the Milky [00:11:00] Way with a film camera, and that's how I started into photography is trying to find a way to attach a camera to my telescope to take photos of the moon and galaxies. And wildlife photography came after, and I've always had a little bit of a science bent to me. 

You know, if I would've had another career other than the one I had, I probably would've been an astrophysicist. 

Toby: Tell us a little bit about the technical challenges of this shot. You've got a lot of light sources. You play with dark, you're like, you're trying to create a silhouette. Where, what were the real challenges in taking this photograph? 

So 

Simon: number 

Toby: one, 

Simon: I created the image by taking about a dozen shots of the Milky Way sky, and you have to shoot very short exposures because the Milky Way moves, and it'll streak if you take exposures longer than, let's say 15 seconds or so. There's a formula actually 500 divided by your focal length 

is how many seconds you can take an exposure before the stars will streak. So I'm taking 15 second exposures, and because it's such a short [00:12:00] exposure time, you have to crank up your ISO to like 3,200 even 6,400 and the images get a bit noisy, so what you can do is, is shoot a dozen images and stack them in software to clean up the noise. 

So that's what I did there. Then for the land part of the shot, what I did is I took one long slow exposure at a lower ISO, maybe two or three minutes. Cause the land will still be totally black if I just try to use a 13 second exposure that I use for the sky. And then I put the two together in Photoshop. 

One of the biggest challenges is I'm right next to a highway, and it was at 2:00 AM and you'd be surprised how many big trucks carrying cargo are still travelling at 2:00 AM so every two minutes or every minute there was a truck going by so for me to try to take that long exposure of the land with no trucks in it. 

I had to take several, I had several ruined exposures of that with big trucks passing by and, and lighting up the scene, including the tree. Cause when they [00:13:00] come around a corner by the highway, their headlights are pointed right at that big tree. So it would light up like a, like a circus, you know. 

Toby: You must, you must have just heard them coming in the distance and yourself. 

Come on please, please. A hundred percent. And then 

Simon: the processing had to tame as well a bit of the light pollution that's in the background. Cause of an airport there. Of course that's the trick in processing, including in wildlife photo processing. I tried to embrace the imperfections these days. 

You know, there used to be that when a branch was in front of the face of my fox, I used to try to clone it out. Now it's, it's part of the environment. 

Toby: So as with most images like this, most people would be looking at it and saying, you know, apart from the odd truck coming past, this must have been just a lovely evening out. 

But I think you can attest to the fact that it's never easy, is it? 

Simon: No. People think that wildlife photography's a glamorous living because, or hobby, because the photos are so pretty. But I was once asked what would I call a book on [00:14:00] photography if I wrote one and I answered that it would be called Mostly Lying in the Mud. 

Because that's what it actually is when you're in Svalbard and there are some walruses and you're trying to get close and a nice low angle and you're crawling on your belly, using your elbows, crawling through walrus poo, and trying not to get it on your camera to get that shot. It reminds you that it's not always that pretty, but 

that's, you know, I enjoy the field craft part of photography as well, and I enjoy, you know, sneaking up on animals and without disturbing them and so on. That's part of the adventure. But my other tip as well is that my number one wildlife photography tip is don't wear your good clothes because, you know, getting innovative angles and so on is a big part of good wildlife photos that are gonna stand out, and that means 

getting down low climb, I've climbed trees to get eye level shots of owls and I've scrounged in the [00:15:00] mud to get low angle on ducks. And, so don't bring your good clothes as one of my top tips. 

Toby: That's a top tip. And I think lying down in the mud is generous as the term mud goes. I think more often than not, it might not be mud. 

Yeah, that's right. I have a 

Simon: towel permanently in my vehicle to put on my seats. Before I sit down in it, because you never know what I've sat in. 

Toby: Well that in itself leads me to another question. Is there something that you take other than your towel that you would always remember to pack? 

Simon: I like being able to do a grab and go situation. So I like grabbing my camera and a 600 mm lens, maybe a 1.4x teleconverter on it, two batteries and two memory cards. Now when I go on an expedition, go to Africa, go to Yellowstone, or whatever. Of course, you're, you're packing a big bag, you've got lots of accessories. 

But I actually like a fairly nimble setup. But of course, when you go to Africa, you gotta have a second lens as well. Can't just have a big 600, things are up close, so it's nice to have shorter lens or a zoom or something [00:16:00] like that. But I like a pretty pretty nimble approach. For some, for landscape photography, bringing a few filters along like a neutral density and a circular polarizer are pretty handy. 

And what would you, what would you say on a, 

Toby: on a more extended trip, like an expedition, what are your next lenses? You got your 600 prime? 

Simon: Yeah, 600 prime, but I'm probably gonna end up getting a 400 of these days. Cause in Africa, 600 almost a bit long, but I shoot lots of little birds around here in Nova Scotia, so you need some focal length for that. 

But I really love the look of the 70-200. My photographic ambition actually is to include more environment in my photos. And if when you've got longer lenses, like a 100-400, you're still taking portraits and I'm trying to shoot wider. So my photographic ambition is to include more environment and shoot wider. 

So even though I need a 100-400, I bring a 70-200 to force me to include more because you have to put more environment, 'cause you don't have as much magnification. It forces you to [00:17:00] look around the scene and to include other things to put in photos. Cause to be honest, taking tight portraits with fast lenses is almost a crutch, and I'm guilty of that, of not being good enough to find an environmental shot that tells more story and that leads to my other piece of advice. 

Good wildlife photos should be about things, not of things. I've got a photo of a leopard. Uptight, which is great, but if I back up a little bit, it's a leopard standing next to a river and he is trying to figure out whether or not he wants to jump the river. So shooting a bit wide and getting a bit more story in the photo is a good photographic skill to develop. 

Toby: Talking of Africa and talking about the stories of Africa. That's your, is that your next trip is Africa? Have you got something in between? What have you got planned for this year? 

Simon: It is. I did Yellowstone last month, which was fantastic. You know, bison in the snow and some wolves. I got really lucky. I showed up my first time there and my first sighting was 15 wolves on three bison kills. 

And the first, you know, and I've got people who had been there for 20 years [00:18:00] and said they'd never had a sighting that good. That was my first 15-minutes riding in the snow coach, so that was fantastic. My next trips are to Botswana, where I'm gonna go visit your team and we'll be on the Chobe River, which of course is really become one of my favourites. 

You know it's a great problem that I tell my guests, which they don't believe me, that by day three we'll say elephants, yeah okay. I've seen enough of those. Cause you see so many, you wait for the, you know, dust bathing elephant in front of the sunset. We'll stop for that. And that's where you pull out the 70-200. 

Get a nice wide shot. And then I've got the British Columbia for grizzly bears in the month of August, here in Canada. And then Kenya, September and October where I'm leading some tours as well. 

Toby: So I think now we will move on to the next image, which is 

Simon: a blackbird or what's happening here? 

It's a red-winged blackbird with the breath of the bird coming out of its mouth. Back lit against a [00:19:00] dark background with a beautiful golden glow all around it. And the reason I chose this photo was a few different reasons. Number one, it proves that if you put your mind to it, you can actually plan out a shot. 

This was actually an intentional photo, not a fluke. I, I planned out the conditions and I actually made my first YouTube video about taking this photo. So this is the start of my YouTube career. So that's one of the reasons that I chose it. And also... a red-winged blackbird is actually one of the top two or three most common species in North America. 

There's probably 400 million of them in North America, and yet you can make a photo that stands out out of the most common subject and leading to another one of my "de ton", we call them in French. A saying is that if you can't find uncommon subjects, take uncommon photos of the common ones. And that's my advice. 

Cause I get people who tell me, oh, there's nothing exotic where I live and there's nothing to photograph or whatever. This red-winged blackbird is the most common species in North America and you can [00:20:00] take a great photo if you know, make the photo special. Now, I might as well run through what the winning conditions are to get shot. 

Basically you need a singing bird, which often is gonna be in the spring, in the northern hemisphere as they sing for mates. You need a sunlit subject, but background in the shade so that the bright breath shows up against it and you need it to be cold within a couple of degrees of the freezing point. 

And you need zero wind, zero, like not one kilometer, not one knot of wind. So that's actually the almost the hardest condition is to get flat calm. So in the spring where I live here. If I look at the forecast and it says it's gonna be calm minus two degrees and sunny, I'll sometimes go out and get the shot and shows that you can make something unique out of the most common and available species. 

Toby: You are absolutely right and I think people become obsessed with photographing the exotic because that lends credibility to the photograph. But [00:21:00] I think you'll find, especially where we are, there's so much you can take a photograph of it not just about the megafauna. And it's looking for the shot, and we always say that as soon as you've got a camera in your hand, everything becomes interesting because now you can see the detail 

Simon: a hundred percent 

a hundred percent. I think the most skilled photographers will just find interesting things or interesting ways to capture things without going on an exotic trip anywhere. Even though I'm in the exotic trip and you're in the exotic trip business. You don't need to wait for your exotic trip to, you know, find great photographic opportunities. 

Toby: Yeah. So get out there and practice. Get out there and practice. That's the trick. So Simon, I just wanna touch again on your success you have on YouTube at the moment. I'm trying to figure out what is the magic dust? I can understand that you put a lot of work, a lot of research, understanding. 

But what would you say, what's the one thing that has helped you to stand out from the crowd and become the success you are today? 

Simon: I think the answer is that there is, you [00:22:00] can't boil it down to one thing. I started off with a video on how to get the red-winged blackbird breath shot, and I thought my channel would be about going out into the field and following me in the field. 

But interestingly enough, if I go back and look at my first six videos I've ever created, there are three behind the scenes, you know, out in the field. I'll take you in the field, show you, I take my photos. There are three more educational ones where I just teach people about photography principles. The three behind the scenes videos are averaging 40,000 views, and the three educational ones are averaging 400,000 views. 

So what became very clear to me is the market is much bigger for education versus behind the scenes. So now the behind the scenes videos, it's hard to do well with them. But what I do now is I go out to places like Kenya and shoot footage. Then I go back home and make an educational video on how to take a certain type of shot in Kenya, like shooting in low light. 

And I use my [00:23:00] footage of my field trip as content as part of my educational video. But in terms of how have I been successful, boy, it's still hard to put my finger on it 'cause I broke a bunch of rules. Everyone said don't have an introduction to your video, don't spend any second saying my name is, or anything like that. 

'cause no one cares but me. The first 40 seconds of my video, I start off with an engaging question, Hey, is this a problem for you? To try to get their attention. And then, you know, I do like I did, I mentioned earlier about the briefing note. Explain what the problem is, explain in detail how the problem works. 

And then when you explain the solution at the end you say, of course, that's the solution. And then a good communication skill. I'm likable, apparently, and there's no way for me to characterise that. I know other YouTubers who are making similar content to me that aren't having success unfortunately, and their content is in my eyes as good as mine. 

But somehow the likability [00:24:00] factor is not translating as much. Cause people say, Simon, you're that uncle. I always wanted to teach me how to do something. So that comes across somehow. And it's a combination of good communication skill and a good teaching strategy as well. And then in my video editing, including a lot of visual content, I never speak for more than 5 or 10 seconds in my video without putting something else on the screen to kind of break up the monotony. 

So it's a, it's a combination of all those things. 

Toby: I think. I think I'd echo the, say the statement that. You are likable and very relatable. I think people relate to you very easily. You know, you've taken them on a journey and there's a lot of humility in the way that you, you give this information, you, you're kind of like, I know it's difficult, but I've figured it out and come with me on this journey and I'm gonna explain to you how to solve this. 

So. Yeah. Kudos to you. Kudos to you. 

Simon: Thanks. And the other thing is I think I stand up for the little guy. I have no patience for photographic snobbiness. I've got a bigger [00:25:00] camera and you know, if you shoot with a phone, you're not a real photographer. I've got a video. The lies of real photographers, you know, real photographers do this. 

I have no patience for that at all, and I have no patience for gatekeeping all the secrets to yourself to keep other people out from getting into photography because you feel threatened. I have no patience for that. So I stand up for the little guy with the cheap camera. I'll stand up for them all day long and I'll never ever turn up my nose to someone who's learning, asking, you know, questions that don't make sense to the experienced photographer. 

Every once in a while, you know your YouTuber, people will say snide remarks about you and your videos every once in a while. And when they do, a whole bunch of people come to my defense so people know now not to make negative comments about about me on my videos 'cause they're gonna take a beating from everyone else. 

So, I think I've got a team of people that I've felt good about the lack of snobby [00:26:00] approach to photography that I bring as well. 

Toby: You've built a, you've built a community, and it's a community, and I think that's it. There's the more welcoming you are to be. You have to understand that everybody started photography at exactly the same place and everyone is at different levels in their photographic journey. 

In anything, in any hobby, you can be put off really quickly when somebody makes you feel less than. Because you don't, because you're at the beginning of your journey. So I think that's, that's very important to be able to, that to come across in your videos. 

Simon: Yeah. And I finish every video with, I know you can do it and you'd be surprised how many people mention that to me 

and then they send me messages on Instagram and I know you can do it. You know, it's become, if I ever make a t-shirt or a hat and start making some merch, I know you can do it will be my line. 

Toby: Is the t-shirt gonna have to say, I knew I could do it, is that was gonna have to be the other round. Yeah, that's right. 

Simon: You'd be surprised. The emails I get from people, especially people with mental health problems, [00:27:00] PTSD and so on that write me these wonderful emails about how my teaching them photography has helped them take on a hobby and distract them from all the problems in their life and have picked them up and got them outta the house that they were stuck in the house for years. 

And the other type of email I get is, hi, I'm 13 years old and I want to be like you when I grow up. I get them almost every day. And the the quick advice there is to get good and get known. Those are kind of the two things. So. Proficiency is important and you need to be able to have good quality work and you need to get yourself out there. 

And social media is the easiest way by far these days to get known. And you don't need to get known all around the world. You can be the local hero first. For me, I started posting on Facebook and Instagram and then next thing you know, the newspaper's calling and say, Hey, can we write a story about you in that photo? 

And, and then the television station called and said, Hey, can we do an interview online after the news? Then it goes from there. You start small, get known locally, [00:28:00] and then just use every step to kind of grow your experience, your skillset. And of course, video's very popular these days. And I know that's a controversial thing to say 'cause a lot of photographers want to fight the trend for video, but TikTok and Instagram are video platforms as much as photography platforms. 

So having a few video clips of your wildlife and the photo a video clip of you taking the photo and the photo or being brave enough to turn the camera on your face and talk to the camera. Will get you a lot more attention than just posting photos on Instagram. 

Toby: Simon we're now on your fourth image, tell me about this one. 

Simon: These are white-fronted bee-eaters in Kenya. And of course, I had needed something African on my deserted island to remind me, but also a reminder that good skill can actually make the shot. So these bee-eaters were flying and the beautiful [00:29:00] thing about bee-eaters is that they often will leave a perch, go get something to eat and come back to the same perch. 

So what I would do, me and my guides have developed the 3, 2, 1 system, which is basically when the bird leaves the perch, the photographer stays on the perch and when the bird starts flying back to the perch, the guide will count down 3, 2, 1, and then you start shooting right when the bird shows up. Also, it was at sunset and I got the guide to move the vehicle so that I had the dark background against which the sun, the back lit wings would show up and we did the 3, 2, 1 and got one of them. 

And I said to my guide, now all we need is two to land at the same time and about a minute later, I got the two landing at the same time. I'm at my heart I'm a bird guy, and I started my wildlife photography with birds. So for me, seeing a bee-eater and getting a photo of one was just as exciting as getting a leopard. 

And it was a reminder to me that you can [00:30:00] science your way into an artistic photo rather than it just be luck. And, and just 

Toby: art. You've obviously been a passionate bird photographer for quite some time though. So are birds your go-to photographic subject? 

Simon: I think birds are, they're accessible. I live on a major migration pathway both spring and fall here in Nova Scotia. 

So we get lots of birds and we get great phenomena. Like for example, I, within an hour or two drive from home, there's a place where I can see flocks of tens of thousands of sandpipers coming back south from breeding grounds in the Arctic and Peregrine falcons diving after them trying to get a lunch. 

And one of the things I like about birds is the great variety of them. They're pretty and I think they're challenging. I, I've always gravitated to hard photography. I do astrophotography, I do deep space astrophotography with a telescope. Dreadfully hard. There's like a hundred steps, and if you mess up step 32, the whole image is ruined and the night is ruined. 

But I enjoy the [00:31:00] tough photography because I get that rewarding feeling that I've done something that's difficult, but still done it well. 

Toby: For your fifth and final image, we asked you to choose one that was taken by another photographer. You've chosen this one, which is a very dramatic image of two planes flying through a total solar eclipse by Peter McKinnon. 

So tell me, why did you choose this image? 

Simon: Oh, this one. Well, being a guy who's interested in astrophotography getting photos of eclipses and so on are right down my alley. And for this particular eclipse, I had a plan, a friend of mine, and I, Gavin Hardcastle, who goes by Fototripper on YouTube, had a plan. 

We were going to get his spouse to stand up on the top of a hill in a sundress with an umbrella in the orb of the, of the eclipse and, and get her [00:32:00] photo right in the eclipse. The problem is the eclipse was 65 degrees elevation, and 45 degrees was the tallest the steepest hill we could find. So we couldn't get that shot and I thought, darn, it's above 45 degrees. 

There's nothing I can do. And then I saw Peter McKinnon's photo, who's a fellow Canadian, a fellow Canon Ambassador as well. After he posted the photo, I posted something along the lines of I couldn't get the shot I wanted because the eclipse was too high in the sky. I guess I wasn't thinking big enough. Basically 

cause I did start thinking can I get a tightrope walker and shoot a tightrope walker and stuff and I never thought in a million years to think of putting a plane in two planes flying through the scene while I was taking a photo of it. So I love the photo, I love the execution. There's a great YouTube video about it as well. 

But also a reminder, it's the shot that, you know, I need to think bigger. So the next eclipse is gonna be Iceland [00:33:00] and Portugal, I think in 2026. My brain has started thinking now and I'm thinking, go big. You know, think of something really good, not just decent. So yeah, that is the shot that I wish I could have taken 

'cause being an astro guy and a photographer at the same time really made me envious of that one. I did end up getting some shots of that eclipse and interestingly enough, it was beautiful blue sky all afternoon, and then 10 minutes before some hazy cloud came in and I actually thought it was gonna ruin my photo. 

And when I looked at the photos afterwards, underneath the haze, during the total eclipse, there are these prominences that stick out around and they're lighting up the haze in a beautiful pink glow. So actually thought my photo was ruined and it's probably made better by that. 

Toby: I actually watched this video about how it was done and its nail biting edge of your seat stuff, to try and get something to align [00:34:00] absolutely amazing. 

And here at Pangolin, we're big fans of Peter McKinnon. I think he, like you, has an amazing channel. Everything he does is absolutely fascinating. So tell you what, Peter McKinnon, if you are watching this, here's an invitation. Why don't you come on safari with myself and Simon are you up for that one, Simon? 

Simon: I'm a hundred percent. Peter, will let's make it happen. 

Toby: Now, before I let you go, the premise of the talk is that you were working in a remote location, so I'm gonna give you the opportunity to choose where that remote location would be. Where would you be spending eternity and why? You know, there's some 

Simon: places I can that I haven't been, that I can see myself wanting to go, like Antarctica, South Georgia, Falkland Islands, for example, but I'm not sure that's the place to hang out. 

All year round. So I'd say something warm like Galapagos, I think would be nice and lots of interesting things to see. And if I'm allowed to bring a camera on my excursion as well to photograph, I've [00:35:00] spent a lot of time looking up at big things like galaxies and maybe haven't looked down enough at the small things and small creatures that would lead me maybe to do something that I haven't done enough 

of really is macro photography and go from the very big to the very small. 

Toby: Well, I'm looking forward to following your macro photography journey then, which I'm sure you'll get to it sooner or later. Finally, if people want to follow you, find out more about what you are doing, where can they go? 

Simon: They can see me on Instagram at if they search for my name, Simon d'Entremont, you'll find it. And on Facebook as Simon d'Entremont Nature Photography. Of course, you can find me on YouTube and I've got a website that if you search for my name on a search engine. I'm sure you'll find it quite easily. And the other thing I've done in the last couple years that I'm really proud of is I've launched a wildlife photography course about over five hours of video content for people early to intermediate in their wildlife photography journey. 

And I'm working right now, I hope to finish in the next month or so on a course [00:36:00] for processing wildlife photos in Lightroom Classic. 

Toby: And we will leave some links in the description down below so you can find them straight away. Simon, thank you very much for your time. It's been an absolute joy and a pleasure spending time chatting with you today. 

And thank you for being our first guest on the Pangolin Podcast. 

Simon: Thank you so much. 

Toby: Well, there we go. The first Pangolin Podcast is done. We hope you've enjoyed it. Before you go, please don't forget to sign up to the Pangolin Photo Safaris Friday Focus newsletter. You can do that by heading over to pangolinphoto.com, or you can scan the QR code on your screen now. 

If you've enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe to the YouTube channel or wherever you get your podcast so you don't miss the next one. And while you're there, please give us a thumbs up, leave a comment, and write a review. Your feedback means a lot to us, and we're gonna keep developing the format until we get it perfect. 

Personally, I look forward to seeing you on a Pangolin Photo Safari soon, and all that's left for me to do now is to say that the [00:37:00] Pangolin Podcast was hosted by me, Toby Jermyn, and produced and edited by Bella Falk. Thank you.