Meet The Pro: Steve Perry

In this episode, we are joined by the award-winning wildlife and landscape photographer, Steve Perry, co-founder of Backcountry Gallery. Steve shares his unique experiences and techniques behind capturing some of his most stunning photographs. 

Here is a link to a gallery of Steve's images: https://pangolin.smugmug.com/SmugMug-Website/Website-Pages/Meet-the-Pro-Steve-Perry

Connect with Steve Perry: https://backcountrygallery.com/

If you would like to be kept informed of our new video releases, then please join our community by clicking here: https://link.pangolinphoto.com/YTcommunity

If you are interested in joining us on safari, then click here: https://link.pangolinphoto.com/YTsafari 

From the Chobe River, Serengeti, and Costa Rica to the Galapagos Islands, Steve recounts gripping stories behind his favourite shots and offers insightful photography tips. The episode also highlights the ethical considerations in wildlife photography and the technical advancements that are shaping the industry. 

Finally, Steve selects a standout photograph taken by another photographer that he admires. Whether you’re an aspiring photographer or a wildlife enthusiast, this episode is packed with valuable advice and captivating tales from the wild.

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

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Chapters

• 2:32 Crocodile photographed in the Chobe (Steve Perry)
• 3:50 Crocodile photographed in the Chobe (Rose Perry)
• 5:36 1st Image: Bison in the Rain
• 9:26 2nd Image: Lion cubs on the trail
• 17:29 3rd Image: Scarlet Macaw in Flight
• 27:50 4th Image: Sea Lion in Galapagos
• 33:10 Inspirational Image: Lion cub by Rose Perry

Transcript

Toby: Welcome to episode 10 of the 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, they're allowed to bring five photographs to hang on the wall of their humble dwelling.

Now, four of these must be their own, and the final image must be one that 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 to a gallery in the description.

On today's show.

Steve: I run out in the water; the waves are breaking, so I'm one eye on the waves and one eye on this little sea lion pup, and of course, I wanted to get kind of eye level, so, you know, not only am I running out there; I'm like going down on my knees as he's coming towards me.

This may have been a bad idea. I don't; yeah, don't do this at home.

Toby: Today's guest is an award-winning wildlife and landscape photographer and co-founder of Backcountry Gallery. Known for his genuine passion for the outdoors.

He captures stunning images from remote wilderness around the world.

He's also a respected educator, sharing his expertise through workshops, online tutorials, and podcasts like this.

His approachable style has inspired countless photographers to improve their craft, and in our case, to even start a YouTube channel.

So I'm very excited to have him on this big 10th episode.

Welcome to the show, Steve Perry.

Steve: Thank you so much. I really appreciate being here.
That's very nice of you to have me on, thank you.

Toby: It's an absolute pleasure. Now, Steve, I know where you've just been.

Would you like to share with all the listeners, where you've just been, you've just returned home, haven't you?

Steve: We did; we just returned home. We were in the Chobe River and we were at the Delta as well.

So we were with your company there for about a month and had an absolute phenomenally good time, saw so many good sightings, so many interesting things.

All of our guests were really happy. And I know I have some new portfolio shots, thanks to being there.

Toby: And you spent some time on our new Houseboat as well, Steve, how do you like the upgrade?

Steve: It was like the old ones here and the other ones, right, I can't reach high enough.
It was really a significant upgrade.

It is the envy of the Chobe.

Toby: I'd like to assure people I've not told Steve to say this.

This is a genuine review.

So there we go.

And, I know this isn't going to be one of the five photographs that you've chosen, but you shared this with me just before we started, and I think we need to include it as well, because you had such a unique sighting; we're going to share this photo with the listeners and the viewers, and just explain what is going on here.

Steve: Okay, so you have two photos. The first one is a crocodile.

And he has got a catfish in his mouth.

And if you look inside the mouth of the catfish, there's another fish inside the mouth of the catfish. And he was actually in the process of lifting it out of the
water to give it a good shake.

And that's where I captured this moment right here.

Toby: It's extraordinary looking at this and yeah, I mean, it's lovely light.

It must be, was it late afternoon or something like that?

Steve: Actually, we barely got this one because the sun was basically kissing the horizon when we got this.

If you look at the crocodile, you can see that he's in shadow underneath.

That's because the sun was just basically going down.

We were just about to lose it.

So he came up and I was like, oh my gosh, that's fantastic.

And the fun thing is, we had no idea the catfish had the other fish in his mouth till after we looked at the images, so he came up, and I'm just snapping away as
he's coming up with a 600 mm.

And yeah, we had no idea until after we looked at the photos, what we had there.

So that was pretty cool.

And then I had too much lens at that moment.

'Cause he really, you know, was banging it around there.

But my wife, who was shooting next to me had her 400mm f/2.8 and she got the following shot.

And the catfish being kind of torn apart, and the other fish being ejected from the catfish.

So the other fish is just floating there in the air.

And both of those shots happen within a split second of each other.

And it's neat because a lot of times, you know, you talk about like being with your partner and doing photography, and it's so rare that you both end up having that kinda synchronisation there with your image.

It's like both of these images work very well on their own, but together they really tell this story.

So it was really a neat experience and that was just one of the sightings that we had. We had a ton of very unique sightings there.

So.

Toby: When you shared it with me, my first impression was this barbel was having a really good day and had caught a lovely, nice big fish and the bream, which is the small fish, he's having a really bad day.

Give it a second, a crocodile comes to the rescue, ejects him, his day gets better.

As you can see, the barbel's day got considerably worse.

But yeah, we often bemoan that it's very difficult to take an original photograph.

But well done, well done. I don't think anyone is ever going to replicate this one.

Steve: It's a tough, one-two punch there for sure. Matter of fact, we were talking about it with all the advent of AI.

I'm worried that people are like, oh, that's AI, but have the raw files to prove it, it's not.

Toby: I'd like to see the prompt that you had to put into AI to generate this image.

It's going to. Even AI is going to go, I'm sorry, no, I can't do.

That's impossible.

Anyway, we're already like five or six minutes into the podcast.

We haven't even touched on your first image yet, let's crack on with the show,

Steve, before we wax lyrical about all sorts of things to do with this shot.

Tell us about your first shot, please, and why you chose it, please describe this to us.

Steve: Okay, so what we were looking at here is a bison all wet, standing out in the rain with a soft, bluish kind of background and this was taken in Wind Cave National Park.

And it was a busy Friday or Saturday night in Custer State Park. And there's a little cut-through that you can take over to Wind Cave when the crowds get too bad and so I snuck over there because it was just a zoo in the other place.

There's some prairie dogs there, sometimes you see coyotes. And the clouds started getting darker and darker and darker, and once the rain started getting heavy. I'm like, okay, I'm going to see if I can get some of these bison in the rain.

So I start driving and it just, at this point, it's pouring and there's wind blowing and there's lightning and it's the full thunderstorm experience.

And this guy's up there, and he is on a little bit of a hill. So, looking out of the car, I'm basically at eye level so I was really excited about that. So I roll the window down and I'm kind of worried about ruining the car because there's so much water pouring in at that moment.

And, but I'm like, I'm gonna get the shot, and I stick the lens out, and I'm firing away. And I ended up using a lot of different techniques for this one.

The first one is I dropped my shutter speed down to 1/250 and there's a couple reasons for that. One, it was dark. If you look at the ISO for this, it's 4000.

It was really, really dark. So, you know, a lower shutter speed was kind of necessary
anyhow. But on the other hand, I also want to make sure I had some streaking in the rain. If you use a little bit of faster shutter speed, your rain turns into kinda little pinpoints, and that's okay. I mean, it depends what you're after.

But for this shot, I wanted to emphasise the rain a little bit more. So I want to be between one 1/160 and 1/250 of a second.

That's kind of my sweet spot for length on these drops. I didn't want to go too slow, though, because again, it's a thunderstorm. Winds are shaking the truck and everything else. So it was kind of a challenge.

And basically what I did is I did long bursts, so I use a single point AF got on the eye 'cause subject detection is not going to get on a bison eye, and I just kinda laid on it.

And there's a couple reasons for that. The first, of course, is the slow shutter speed.

So I'm playing the odds that even though the truck is moving a little bit from the wind, even though I'm not completely steady, and maybe the bison's not completely steady, maybe one of these is going to be sharp.

Maybe one in 1/10 or 1/5 or 1/20, depending on how much things are moving. The other thing is, when you have any kind of precipitation, you're trying to get that sharp eyeball, you gotta do a longer burst because some of those shots, you're going to have a streak right in front of the eye, and you have to kinda shoot between the raindrops so that you get just the right streaking pattern and using a longer burst gives you more opportunities to do that.

Plus again, you're playing the odds to try to get a sharp image.

So a lot of different techniques were at play here and I was on a little bit of a deadline 'cause I was in the truck, and I knew my wife would kill me if I destroyed the electronics and the door and the windows stopped working.

Toby: I think it's also an important lesson in the fact that animals like this, which are very large, dark subjects, I mean, obviously, we've got Cape Buffalo where we are, they're often very difficult to take photographs of because they're very large.

They don't really have an expression. So what I love here is the story.

And also, it's another lesson in just because it's raining, don't stop shooting.

Even if it does mean you're going to break your car.

You gotta roll with what you've got, haven't you?

Steve: Yeah, absolutely.

I tell people some of my absolute best photos are taken in the absolute worst weather. So a lot of times when the weather gets bad, I want to go out, and I want
to try to shoot in those conditions.

I'm always looking for moody, rainy, interesting weather because it just adds so much to the photo.

So with a bison, you see 'em all over the west, and most of the time their head's down; they're eating, there's nothing going on there.

It's kind of boring.

So when you get some conditions that turn it into an interesting shot, you have to capitalise on that.

Toby: It's a really, really lovely, lovely photograph.

Okey dokey. Let's move straight on to your second image, please.

Will you tell us why you chose this one.

Steve: In this shot, we have a little lion cub, kinda leading on a little trail,
and behind him is another little lion cub, one of his siblings, and behind his sibling is his mother.

And what I love about this shot is that I feel like there's a bunch of stories in there, and it also kind of speaks to lion behaviour.

I'm a huge fan of big cats, well, just cats in general, and I love the body language
and some of the expressions and things that you get from them.

So with this little one, he was walking down this trail.

He's the brave one because mom's behind him.

These guys were probably four or five weeks old.

This was our first morning in the Serengeti.

So it was very exciting and, basically, they're walking down this trail, and we're playing hopscotch with the vehicles at this point, so everybody gets a chance.

So one vehicle goes, and then when the lions walk past it; the next one's there ready to go and get the shot.

And this little guy in the front, he is got his mouth open, his ears are forward.
One of the things people forget to look at when they're photographing wildlife
are the ears; everyone looks for catch lights.

Everybody knows that's a pretty common one, but you gotta watch what the ears are doing.

And you look at the little guy in front, his ears are forward, and they're engaged with whatever it is he is looking at.

So it makes you wonder, what is he looking at off to the side that we can't see?

Then you see his little sibling there, and those ears are back.

So that tells you that he is listening for his mom.

He wants to make sure mom's there.

You see his ears are back and his eyes are forward.

And then you look at mom, and she's looking off more or less my direction.

But she's listening off to the right and she's listening to the rear as well.

So she's kind of very aware of everything that's going around 'cause
she needs to protect her cubs every animal in the shot has a story and

I think it worked out really well.

Plus, I was using a longer lens, so that allowed me to shoot back from a little bit farther distance.

And the advantage with that is it gives you the impression that I was on the
ground with them, and I promise you, I was not; I did not break any rules.

And probably if I were on the ground with them, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.

But the nice thing, one of the things I think people make mistakes is they get too close to the animals.

Just because you can get next to an animal in your car and shoot down on it doesn't mean you should.

It's always better to be back a little farther and use a longer lens because it kind of gives you that eye-level impression.

And when you're shooting more or less eye-to-eye, or it feels that way in the photo, anyhow, it creates a much deeper sense of intimacy.

When you shoot down on an animal, it dominates the animal and you lose all of that. And I guess the last thing on this image I would want to talk about is the big mistake I made.

I was at 1/400 of a second, and it just goes to show that you need to pay attention to your settings.

I was at 1/400 at ISO 640, so I could have gone faster. And what had happened, I was using auto ISO, manual auto ISO, like I always do.

And this was our first morning out, so I was a little rusty.

So we had initially started, and I was at 1/400 shooting something else, and I neglected to look at that when they were coming down the path.

I got lucky 'cause I had a few of these that were nice and sharp, including this one, but there was a few that were not so sharp, and it was a silly mistake.

But it's one of the things I tell people is, before you come on a big trip,
make sure you spend some time in the field and just get back into practice.

Don't do what I do; do what I say because obviously I didn't and I wouldn't have made that mistake. Probably the number one thing, train yourself when you lift that camera up to always look along the bottom and just double-check your settings before every shot.

And I try to do that. If anyone figures out how to make that a habit, let me know.

Toby: You need a little voice.

Just go, Steve, Steve, Steve. Did you remember, every time you pick up your camera, some motion sensor or something like that.

See, this is what I love about you and your content is we've been watching your
YouTube channel for a very long time, and that's how I reached out to you.

But I love the fact that you are always very giving in your knowledge.

You don't hold anything back.

You know, nothing's a big secret, and I think that's the way it should be.

But where did this all begin for you? Were you always into photography?

Was it a passion from an early age?

Steve: It was; I started off around, I don't know, I was thinking I was about 10 years old, doing wildlife photography.

And I was selling articles and photos to magazines when I was a teenager.

Not a lot, but I was selling some.

And a friend of mine and I were, there were some local woodlands around our house. And we'd go out and cause mischief in the woods as the boys cause, I
don't want to go into deeper detail, but let's just say there were some fires lit that probably shouldn't have been.

But anyway, he and his dad were hunting all the time, and he would tell me about those stories.

I'm like, Ooh, I should go hunting. That sounds like fun. I like the outdoors. I'd probably like to hunt.

I start talking about that around home and my mom came over to my dad and she says, is there something you could do with him in the outdoors that won't end up with me eating squirrels in the end of it?

So Dad said, well, yeah, he likes that new camera that I got.

And by the way, I did not get to use that camera.

It was a Minolta X-700, pretty fancy at the time.

I ended up with eventually a Pentax ME Super, which was very used and
a JCPenney 70-200mm lens. It took some really awful photos with it.

But I was hooked, I was really hooked after that.

And I've been doing it ever since.

Toby: And your company's called Backcountry Gallery, but you don't have a gallery, do you?

Steve: No, I gotta rename it. But I can't at this point

I'm stuck.

The original idea was that I would have a gallery, and then I went to a seminar, and it featured Tom Mangelsen, Frans Lanting and Art Wolfe.

Three well-respected, super, super great guys, I ended up talking to Tom for
just probably less than five minutes 'cause I was going to start a gallery and I told him, I said, 'I feel like you are the foremost expert on galleries. What advice would you give me?'

And he told me not to do it. He says the future lies in education.

So I immediately came home. Shifted gears, started a YouTube channel, started working on books.

'Cause I have been doing educational stuff forever. So that was right in my wheelhouse.

So yeah, the original intent behind the name was to have a gallery, but it ended up not working out that way.

But we've kept the name 'cause everybody seems to know it now,

Toby: Well, never say never, never say never. One day you might do a gallery.

You know, when you're bored of all the travelling and you're zooming around the place, and you think to yourself, I want a nice, easy life now. Have a gallery and then sell off all the images.

The one in the window should be your catfish being eaten by a crocodile.

That's gonna get people in through the door.

If nothing else,

Steve: I wanna see someone hang that on their wall, though.

I think they should. I mean, it'd be a talking point.

Toby: I'm not sure that it's going to add to the aesthetic of most people's houses, but there you go.

Right in the dining room.

All your guests can sit there around the table and lose their appetite, I dunno.

In an awkward silence, they're just going, did you have to? Why?

Why have you put this on the wall? But it's an interesting point, isn't it?

Because actually the photographs that a lot of us take when we're on safari, you'll take a beautiful image like this and it works brilliantly, and it tells a story and things like that, but it's often, the other images, like photographs that you take in high key or low key, or you are playing around with motion blur which lend themselves to being printed.

Steve: Oh, absolutely. I agree a hundred percent with that.

It's a lot of times, one of my favourite things that happens in a workshop is when I push somebody to try something new and they actually do it, and then they look at it, and they go, 'oh, well, that's pretty cool.'

And now they're doing that all the time, you know?

So, I'm always excited to explore new things.

And I feel like when your clients do that too; they have a really good time, and they learn a lot too.

Toby: That's it, exactly.

So I mean, if you are interested in joining Steve and any one of his safaris, we'll leave a link in the description down below and you can get in touch with him, whether it's coming to see us or you do a lot of stuff in Costa Rica as well, don't you? and other places in that side of the world.

Steve: We have workshops in Costa Rica, we have workshops in the Galapagos, we have workshops in Tanzania.

Toby: And now we're going to work on some other destinations for you.

And convince you to add more to your schedule. Okay, well, we're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we are going to move on to Steve's next image.

So we'll see you in a second.

Toby: Welcome back to the Pangolin Podcast with my guest today, Steve Perry.

Now, just before the break, we mentioned that you go to Costa Rica, and I believe this next photograph was actually taken in Costa Rica.

Would you like to tell us a little bit about this and why you chose it?

Steve: So this is a photo of a macaw.

He's flying straight up. He's facing the camera and his wings are completely backlit.

So you're basically seeing his belly and in his mouth is a little bit of palm fruit. It's one of those we were talking about earlier, where it's a little bit unique.

It's not just a standard flight shot. I just feel like this one has a very, I guess I don't want to be hyperbolic, but like an angelic feel to it.

It looks like an angel reaching up to the heavens.

The background's really dark and all of that was deliberate.

And you can see in his mouth, he's got a little palm fruit in there.

And these guys love to eat these palm fruits.

So what they do is they're very cooperative about it.

Otherwise it'd just be a mob scene. So what they do is they take turns going over to the palm tree with a fruit.

They break it off and as soon as they break it off, you get ready 'cause they're
gonna drop, and they're gonna fly up.

And that's exactly what this guy did.

And they were going back and forth from this branch.

So I just positioned myself so that I could get a dark background and backlight so that I could get this particular shot.

And it took a lot of shots.

But this was my first trip to Costa Rica with the Sony A1, and I was having a great time with it because it was so much easier to use than what I'd used in the past
and I was able to track the bird real well.

I was able to keep it in the frame. This is basically a full-frame shot. I just kind of cut the sides off for an 8x10. It was really close on those tail feathers, as you can see.

But I wanted to get that nice big full-frame shot. So if I ever wanted to make a big print, I could.

And, I really want to take advantage of the backlight. The metering was a little bit tricky.

I was in manual mode, and I wanted to make sure that I had enough shutter speed, so I was at 1/3200, which is kinda my standard bird in flight shutter speed.

And then I just adjusted it so that I was just to the point where I was not clipping those highlights there. A situation like this, you definitely need to go full manual.

A lot of times, people get a little hesitant to go full manual, but if you're in a tricky lighting situation, sometimes it's better just to do the driving yourself.

Take control.

Toby: And this is with, I mean, this sort of shot is tricky enough as it is, but you know, if anybody's, you watching this and is shooting, say, with a DSLR has moved over to mirrorless as well, when you don't have the advantage of the new technology of animal eye tracking, and that sort of thing, what would be your tip?

What's your tracking technique? because this is a bird that's flying down, flying up, in light, with a dark background.

I mean, what, where do you go to with that?

Steve: Well, my advice would be to take that DSLR, sell it, and get a Sony A1 or Nikon Z 9.

Just kidding.

I had two DSLR shooters with me, and you know, admittedly, they were frustrated.

It's one of those things where, you know, there is an edge.

We can pretend there's not. But I also, one of the things I like to do is just be brutally honest with people.

Let's, you know, tell it like it is.

However, this is not impossible with the DSLR.

They both got nice shots using a DSLR and in this case, they were, I think, both of them were using D850s, and you put it into group AF it's gonna be great.

Canon DSLRs, I think, have zone which is similar to group AF and the biggest trick is you need to set that autofocus. 'Cause you don't really have tracking.

So you need to set that autofocus point where you want the bird's head.

And then basically as you're tracking, you're gonna do everything in your power to keep the bird's head in that area.

And it takes a little bit of practice in this particular case, it's even harder 'cause with a bird flying left to right or right to left.

It's fairly easy to kind of pan that way. We're all used to panning like that.

In this case, it's a sweeping motion. So you have to go down and track him up and it's a little bit more difficult.

But with practice, you know, it's like the biggest piece of advice I have is just practice.

Head out to some place where you have birds that you don't care about.

Seagulls, something like that. Just, or gulls, I'm sorry.

If you call 'em seagulls, the birders go crazy.

There's no such thing as a seagull.

There's a gull.

Toby: There we go.

Steve: There's a gull. Yeah. And if you call 'em seagulls, the birders come right after you.

But that's okay. I'd rather be right.

That's fine.

If they do, but you go out and do some gulls.

Middle of the day, crappy light, who cares? Don't even take pictures.

Just get the feel of moving the camera and keeping it on the bird.

And I tell you, an afternoon or two of doing that, you know, for a few hours, it will just skyrocket your ability to get those good bird flight shots.

Toby: It would be interesting to see now, you know, you mentioned some of the older gear that you were using when you were just getting started with this and with today's technology, I wonder if the actual percentage of shots, which are keepers, is any different to what it used to be back in the day.

Because we take tens of thousands of images and technology is there on your side. 

Steve: I think it's still better. I know we have the faster frame rates and that, but the technology makes such a difference.

Just this photo here of the macaw flying, with its wing spread is a good example.
My keeper rate was far higher than theirs. But they go back a little farther, though.

Go back to the manual focus days. I remember, I was looking through a, an outdoor photographer magazine and there were some slow flying bird in there in flight against a blue sky.

It was incredibly boring. By today's standards, if we were in Lightroom, we'd hit the X key.

Okay. It was boring.

But back then, and it's like, can you believe this?

My gosh, what kinda skill did it take to manually focus that lens and to get a sharp, I don't know, great blue heron or Sandhill crane in flight, and the average person back then just was not doing that.

It's just not going to happen. And now, pretty much with five minutes of instruction, I can get anybody to get a sharp,bird and flight shot, especially if
a slower-flying bird, if you know if they have a modern camera.

Toby: But instead of it being 1 or 2 photographs out of your roll of 36. Now they've got 10 keepers out of 3000 that they just took.

Steve: Well, hopefully they have more than 10.

Hopefully, they have more than 10.

You know, the other thing is you get better quality keepers now too, and I think that's something that people don't think about all the time. It's when I take, let's say a yellow-billed stork, a fairly slow flying bird, it's going by.

When I take that with my modern cameras, there's a good chance that if I take 20 frames; most of those are going to be good. But what I get to do now is I get to pick which one of those is the best keeper.

So in the past, if one of those, let's say back in the early DSLR days. Maybe you got one of those sharp. That's the one you keep because the other ones are garbage.
Now we get to pick which one of those 20 we want. So it's not so much about keepers. They're all keepers, but it's about better keepers.

Toby: Absolutely. On a previous episode, we've spoken with
Mark Carwardine, who was the head of the judging panel for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year, and it's very interesting to hear his stories about when he was judging it's a quantum change almost every year with technology coming in.

So photographs that would've won something 20, 30 years ago wouldn't even make it past the first round now.

Steve: Right. Right. But I think that's good, though.

I think one of the advantages technology gives us is that it allows us to focus more on the creative and artistic aspect of the photos.

For me, I hear people say this all the time. They say, you know, technology's destroying photography. Just point the camera and it does everything for you.

And, here's the thing is if you've relied on being technically proficient to have an edge over your competitors, those days are gone. That does not exist anymore.

And what little is left of it's gonna go away in the next five years.

Where the future lies, in my opinion, is with creativity in art, in artistry. I think that's where the better photos are going to start coming.

I want the camera; I want that technology to stay outta my way. I don't want to have to chase a bison around my viewfinder with a single AF point.

I want the AF point to get on there and then I don't have to think about it. I want the exposure to just work. I don't wanna think about any of that.

I wanna look at the composition. I wanna look at my subject placement.

I wanna look at my background. My lighting direction.

Those are the things that make great photographs.

Almost universally, when you look at a good photograph, it's not so much, that it's technically perfect, 'cause we can do that all day long.

It's that it has some artistic or creative aspect to it that is unique and interesting.

And that's what's drawing people in.

Toby: Absolutely, couldn't agree more. So yes, use the tools available to us.

Okay.

Talking about the tools available to us, I think you are unique in the fact that during this podcast you have talked about your Nikons and you've talked about your Sonys as well, and for a lot of people, they are very much, you know, one brand
and that's where I work with.

So your brand affiliation, waivers between the two and probably to other brands as well. Is that something you've always done?

Steve: There's a little story there, whenNikon was kind of behind Sony, like way behind Sony, remember that?

There were rumors that they may not even survive.

And it seemed like Sony would be a good place to move over to, or to at least have, should Nikon maybe not actually ever get it together.

Which, of course, they, you know they of course did.

So it kind of ended up with the two systems.

And I like 'em both. They're both really good.

And I kind of use 'em back and forth. This has been more of a Sony year
because I had a new book that I'm putting out with the Sony A1 II
guide that I had out. So I've been using that a little bit more.

I have a feeling we're gonna see some new stuff from Nikon next year, so

I'm sure that'll be a – I'm sure 2026 will be a Nikon year for me, and all the Sony stuff will collect dust.

Toby: Well, there we go.

So yeah, the arms race between the major brands will continue.

Well, it's good for all of us, isn't it?

I suppose if they're all gonna be pushing the boundaries and competing, then it doesn't matter which brand you are.

And you don't need the latest, greatest, you know, gear to get these sorts of shots these days. You can use really good prosumer-level cameras and get extraordinary shots.

Yeah, we, it's the golden age of digital photography, or I hope it is.

Anyway, who knows?

Maybe it's gonna get better, but right now it's, we have so much capability and we can do so many things that were just impossible.

Not even like, you know, it's just five years ago were much more difficult or impossible than what we have now.

It's fantastic.

It really is a good time to become a photographer.

Toby: The golden age of photography. You heard it here first. There we go.

Let's get some t-shirts made up, shall we? Okay, let's move on to your fourth image. Tell us about the story behind this shot.

Steve: This is in the Galapagos.

This is a little sea lion pup as he is surfing the waves, looking for his mother. So what had happened here is his mom went out to fish, and I think he was asleep when it happened, and he was kind of going up and down the beach looking for what happened to her. This was with a workshop.

So a few of us, not everybody, what we did is we would basically run down the beach as fast as we could to get in front of him.

And I got out all the way into the water. So this was a brand new Sony A1 II.

So this, this could have ended poorly, and a 300mm f/2.8, I think, too.

So that was, yeah, this may have been a bad idea.

I don't; yeah, don't do this at home.

So I run in front of him; I run out in the water, the waves are breaking, so I'm one eye on the waves and one eye on the sea lion.And of course I wanted to get kind of eye level, so, you know, not only am I'm running out there; I'm going down on my knees as he's coming towards me. And then when he got close enough, I got out of the way. And just to be a hundred percent clear, because that sounds kind of bad, if you're, you know, concerned about the animal's welfare.

These guys are 1000% acclimated. They do not care about us at all.

If I would've stayed in the water, he would've gone just right next to me.

We do not change his behaviour at all. If I saw him veer off or if I saw a change in the behaviour I'd, we would've stopped doing it immediately. But he didn't care, and we were getting out of his way well before he was like right on top of us.

So just to, you know, put everyone at ease. We're very careful with our animals when we're out there.

But it was just so much fun. Running up and down the beach trying to grab this photo.

And the failure rate was so high because of camera focus on the waves. And he wouldn't come up high enough.

I mean, just, anything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

And, you know, subject detection, it happened so quick, it doesn't have a chance to really grab on. So you're basically using single point and just try to hopefully that you're someplace near the eye as he's racing towards you.

So it was a tricky shot. So that's why I included it here. But I really enjoyed taking it.

Toby: I love the idea of a seal going backwards and forwards up and down the beach and every time he pops out there is Steve Perry off of YouTube standing there trying to take a photograph of him.

And he is like, I just saw this guy. I just saw this guy back there.

What the hell?

It's interesting you talk about ethics. I mean, ethics in wildlife photography or in any type of wildlife encounter is very much in the news at the moment.

You know, over the last few months, we've had lots of stories, especially coming out of East Africa as well.

What's your take on this, and how do you explain to your guests that we need to draw the line somewhere?

Steve: It's always tricky, especially when you have guests with you. It's a little bit easier when you're by yourself because you're not under any pressure to get a photo.

And basically, my guidelines, though. Whether I have guests or not is how much are we changing the animal's behaviour, and is it detrimental?

We were talking about the sea lion coming towards the camera and again, if I had saw a change in his behaviour.

We pull the plug. And, fortunately, the guests usually understand that kind of stuff.

They get it; It's a little bit difficult because you wanna make sure that your guests are getting the photos, but you also wanna make sure that you're not endangering the animals. So you have to kind walk that line and, you know, there's extremism on both sides. My big indicator that I'm doing something wrong is if I'm changing the animal's behaviour.

If we're in the truck and we're trying to get a photo, or we're in the boat and we're trying to get the photo, and the animal moves once, maybe we'll try it again.

Moves twice. It doesn't want its photo taken.

Let's move on. Let's find something else.

We do our best not to pressure 'em, but I say, I think there's extremism there too, though.

You know, you'll have somebody if you happen to accidentally have a bird take off on you, and they're like, you made that bird take off.

Meanwhile, in order to get to that spot we were driving in a safari vehicle or in a boat, and 300 birds took off, in our path, on our way there.

And nobody said a word about that. You have to really balance it so that you're not harming the animals; you're not causing them any undue stress.

But at the same time, you wanna make sure that your guests are getting nice shots because it's better to have tourism than not. I was talking to my friend Dennis in Costa Rica, one of the things they discovered there was that with tourism, it's
actually more beneficial to keep the rainforest than to cut it down.

So if there is a little tiny bit of pressure on those animals, sometimes that's an okay trade-off. But again, I think you have to be very ethical about it.

If you're following an animal that wants to be away from you, you're doing it wrong.

If you are constantly calling birds in using a bird call, you're doing it over and over for half an hour, and everybody else is doing it.

You're crossing a line.

If you're baiting animals with other animals, you're crossing a line. I mean, everybody's got their own take on this, of course.

And I'm sure the comments are gonna explode with agreement and disagreement on this one.

Toby: I couldn't agree more, and that's why we love having you in the Chobe and going on safari with you. It's great to work with like-minded people like yourself.

We are going to move on to your fifth image, but before we do that, we are going to take a little break.

So we will see you in a second.

Welcome back to the final section of the Pangolin Podcast with me, Toby Jermyn and my guest today, Steve Perry.

Now this is the part of the show where we've invited Steve to select an image that he's gonna hang on the wall of his humble dwelling that was taken by another photographer, a photo that he perhaps wish he'd taken himself or a photographer he admires.

So Steve, will you please tell us about your guest photograph?

Steve: This photograph, we have a little lion cub, and he's situated with a rock kind of next to him, and he is got one arm up on the rock and the other one's on a rock below it.

So he looks like he's just kind of posing there.

But the important thing is behind him is the lioness and she is yawning.

But she looks like she's roaring. She's got her mouth open. You can see her teeth.

It's a very dramatic image. It sort of shows what the little guy or a little girl looks like now and what the future holds.

Toby: And the photographer is...

Steve: And the photographer is actually my wife, Rose Perry.

She's one that I definitely admire, and she does a really good job.

And one of the things with this photo that was really frustrating for me when I saw it was that I was next to her, and I didn't get this one.

And this happens frequently with the two of us.

And what happened was I was either distracted or I didn't like the lion yawning behind the cub. So I stopped it, but Rose said, hey, this is what he looks like now, or what she looks like now, and this is what the future's gonna look like, I'm like, how did I miss that?

So that's one of the things I like about shooting with Rose. And one of the reasons I admire is a lot of times she will have a completely different take on a scene or even a photo, we'll both shoot the same photo.

And we'll come up with two completely different results. And sometimes I like her results better than mine. And sometimes we work like a team. Like at the beginning of the video. You know, I had the longer lens and I got the close-up with that catfish.

But a lot of times, she comes up with very interesting stuff that I sometimes miss.

She's got a different eye, and I like to think we complement each other.

Toby: With the gear choices that you have, obviously, you mentioned she had 400mm; you were on the 600mm.

Is that the standard ones that you, you reach for or do you? Are you very generous in sharing the gear?

Steve: Oh no. We are not generous at all with the gear.

We fight over it if it comes down to it. Fortunately, usually what happens is in order to prevent, arguing who get this lens or that lens is I'll take one set of gear, Nikon or Sony, and she'll take the other set. And usually what's set, I end up taking
is the one that I'm currently working on. It's like, okay, I'm writing a book on,
this particular camera, so I'm gonna need to use, you know, that gear. As far as
lenses; it depends what we're shooting.

She prefers the 400 2.8 a little bit just because it's a little bit easier to handle.

It's not significantly lighter than a 600, people think it is.

But it's a little easier to handle 'cause it's a little bit shorter lens.

A lot of times I kind of lean towards the 600, but, you know, we were up shooting bears in Alaska.

We were both shooting 400 2.8s. Sony for me and Nikon for her.

But I was jealous of that teleconverter in the Nikon 400 2.8.

And she made sure that she clicked it and showed it to me a few times too, just to watch as I was trying to get the teleconverter on or off the other one.

So that was fun.

Toby: Passive-aggressive teleconverter application.

It's just like, there you go. Bet you wish you could do this, don't you?

Oh yeah, my guests were doing that on this last trip too.

Steve: That was fun.

Toby: Are you quite competitive with Rose? I mean, you say you work as a
team, but are you sitting there sometimes going, well, that's very
nice, but look, look what I got. Sometimes I'm a little jealous.

Steve: I'm not proud of it, but you know, sometimes I get a little bit jealous.
I see something like, dang, why did I not get that?

How did I miss that shot?

So yeah, there's always a little bit of competition in there, and I know sometimes I drive her absolutely nuts. She's a saint to put up with me.

She really is.

Toby: There we go. Well, to I'm going to wrap things up in a minute.

And the last question we like to ask all of our guests is that you are going to live in a humble dwelling somewhere in the world, and these are the images you're gonna hang on your wall.

So the question we'd like to ask our guests at the end is, where is that humble dwelling going to be?

Steve: I've thought about this one a little bit, and it's a really hard question, do you know how hard this is to answer?

Just, you know, this is tricky. I think for me, I kind of lean towards the Galapagos, I wanna say Alaska with bears. 'Cause I'm kind of obsessed with that at the moment.

But the problem is, you say for an indefinite amount of time, and I don't like the cold, so I'm gonna go someplace warm.

So I'm gonna pick the Galapagos so that I have nice, sunny beaches, and that's all still new and shiny for me too. We've only gone there; we've been there about a month at this point. So we're definitely looking forward to coming back and exploring some more.

So I think that would, for right now, for this year, that's my answer.

Toby: There we go. Well, that seems like a very sensible, sort of pragmatic solution, thinking about the lifestyle as well as the subject matter.

I couldn't agree with you more. Steve, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show.

Thank you very much for making time in your very, very busy schedule. Really appreciate it.

Please say hello to Rose for me.

Steve: Absolutely. I'll let her know you said hello, and thank you so much for having me. This has been a lot of fun.

Toby: Thank you very much for listening to episode 10 of the Pangolin Podcast.

We hope you enjoyed it. As always, we'd love to hear your comments and feedback, so please leave them in the comment section down below.

If you don't want to miss the next episode or any of our other wildlife photography videos, make sure you are subscribed to the channel with the notifications on.

Finally, don't forget to sign up to the Pangolin Photo Safari's Friday Focus Newsletter. You can do that by heading over to pangolinphoto.com, or you can scan the QR code on your screen now.

I look forward to seeing you on a Pangolin Photo Safari soon, and all that is left for me to do is to say that the Pangolin Podcast was hosted by me, Toby Jermyn, and produced and edited by Bella Falk.

Thank you.