Meet The Pro: Christopher Balmer

Host Toby Jermyn welcomes Yellowstone-based American wildlife photographer Christopher Balmer, who has over 50 years behind the lens, owns two camera stores near Yellowstone, runs a photo adventure business, and has sold tens of thousands of fine art prints and over 200,000 stock images.

Balmer shares five wall images and a powerful image by his wife, Katie. He emphasises mastering exposure, white balance, and metering in the field, minimising editing, and selling prints through local subjects, galleries, and interior decorators.

Gallery of Christopher's images:
https://pangolin.smugmug.com/SmugMug-Website/Pangolin-Podcast/Christopher-Balmer/Meet-the-Pro-Christopher-Balmer

Connect with Christopher
https://www.yellowstonecamera.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@perfectlightcamera/videos
instagram.com/yellowstonecamera
https://www.facebook.com/perfectlightcamera/

GUEST IMAGE
Katie Ashcraft Balmer
https://www.instagram.com/capturing_perfect_light/

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

Pangolin Photo Safaris
Africa's premier photo safari operator and lodge owner.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Join our growing community of wildlife photography enthusiasts by signing up for the Friday Focus newsletter which Is full of camera gear advice, photo tips, and safari specials around the world. 

https://link.pangolinphoto.com/Pod-Community

We are Pangolin Wildlife Photography, based in the Chobe, Northern Botswana. When we are not making videos for our channel, we host our guests and clients from all over the world on our Wildlife Photography safaris throughout Botswana and the rest of Africa—and sometimes beyond!

Learn More about our safaris here: https://link.pangolinphoto.com/BZ-Safaris

Transcript

Toby Jermyn: Hello and welcome to another brand new episode 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 is 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 is a link in the description to a gallery. On today's show, this is one of those times where I told my clients as they were coming to us, I said, "I want you to hold your finger on your shutter button and shoot at 10 or 12 or 15 frames per second as fast as you can until your memory card's empty or your batteries are dead. And don't stop until then because you have no idea what's in front of you." 

My guest today is an American wildlife photographer best known for his work in and around Yellowstone and for his passionate no-nonsense approach to mastering exposure in-camera. With more than 50 years behind the lens and nearly half of that working as a professional, he's been photographing everything from wildlife and landscapes to portraits, weddings, and stock, and to date has sold tens of thousands of fine art prints and over 200,000 stock images worldwide. Today, he owns two camera stores near Yellowstone and a successful photo adventure business, using those platforms to teach thousands of students and to champion a philosophy of spending less time in front of a computer and more time outside photographing. Welcome to the show, Mr. Christopher Balmer. Hello, Chris.

Christopher Balmer: Well, hi Toby. How are you? Thank you for having me.

Toby Jermyn: I'm very, very well again. Nice to see you again. In fact, we saw each other not too long ago, didn't we?

Christopher Balmer: We did. Yeah. I was over in your lodge in January with our group as we do every year.

Toby Jermyn: As you do every year, having a lovely time. Some really good sightings as well. I believe it was very good this year.

Christopher Balmer: Yeah. Even regardless of a lot of the rain in the area, still had wonderful sightings.

Toby Jermyn: Awesome. Brilliant. And you are today—I know exactly where you are because you're back at home near Yellowstone, aren't you?

Christopher Balmer: Yeah, I'm about three minutes from the gate of West Yellow—of the west gate of Yellowstone National Park. So, it doesn't get more convenient than that.

Toby Jermyn: You really have no excuse to get out there, do you?

Christopher Balmer: That's right. That's right.

Toby Jermyn: And sadly, most of us don't make it out there very often—as often as we should.

Christopher Balmer: No, unfortunately. Yes. It tends to be more of a desk job sometimes these days.

Toby Jermyn: And obviously, at the time of recording, you've just had my business partner Guts visiting you for two groups back-to-back. How was that? Did he behave?

Christopher Balmer: He behaved well. No, let me back up. Janine behaved really well. Guts did most of the time. And when he didn't, Janine put him in order. So, it all went well.

Toby Jermyn: That is the standard order of things as well. And he sent me a few photographs of clients having fantastic sightings, really good bison, really good landscapes.

Christopher Balmer: Yeah, we had some great snow days where you get the bison walking in big groups straight at you, snow coming down. So, the clients had a great time.

Toby Jermyn: I ask this question of all our guests, you know, and it's always a difficult one. But when I asked you to come up with four images, you know, four of your own and one by another photographer you admire, how difficult? I know that your 20 what, 23, 24, 25 years of photographing professionally. You must have quite the catalogue.

Christopher Balmer: I do. Most of my most favourite images aren't always the ones I sell the most of. These four happen to be ones that I sell a lot of because I enjoy them myself personally from a photographer perspective and a wildlife person. So it was hard but they narrowed themselves down pretty quickly.

Toby Jermyn: Brilliant. I think without further ado, let's start with the first image and, yeah, would you like to tell the viewers and our listeners all about this, please?

Christopher Balmer: So this first image is obviously in Yellowstone during the winter. It's a black and white image shot in black and white of a bison with other bison behind them almost in a triangular shape and of course then blurred out. But really classic photo and you touched on it just now as well. Let's deal with the elephant—or the bison—in the room.  This is shot in black and white. No editing. Let's talk about this because this is a big thing and it really is your unique thing. So this is actually taken in JPEG and I know that's a crazy thing to say nowadays. I do shoot in JPEG. Again, and think of it from this perspective. I tell people all the time to shoot in RAW if you're going to edit or if you're not going to edit, just in case you mess something up. I'm willing to throw images away that people might cut their right arm off for because I missed the white balance or I missed the exposure. And I'm willing to do that. I tell everybody, "don't be me." But my philosophy is this: I have the patience and persistence to go back again and again and again to get that image. Now, I have the blessings and ability to do that. A lot of people don't have that ability, right? Like I get to go to Africa every single year. And if you're going to go one time and you get a shot of a lifetime, and you miss the white balance—fix it. Now, I won't, but they should. So, I always tell people that I may be anti-editing, but I don't expect anybody else to be. But it is neat that when you see something like this, you know that you're at least capable of capturing an image like this straight out of camera.

Toby Jermyn: And I've just come up with a new T-shirt range for you as well. Because I'm sure that we all know here on YouTube that if you watch FroKnowsPhoto, he's always wearing a T-shirt saying "I shoot RAW." Can you just get T-shirts made up saying "I shoot JPEG and I don't care"?

Christopher Balmer: I think I will. I think I will. Yes, I think I will. But it's a personal choice and it's everybody's personal choice. But I just like to have people know that they can do it without editing if they choose to.

Toby Jermyn: I think there's something very interesting in that as well because one of the barriers to entry for people getting into wildlife photography is they are so concerned—you know, people have told them "you've got to shoot in RAW, then you can manipulate the image," and it becomes a little bit overwhelming. So, as a way of explaining to people, "look, you don't have to; you can start off, shoot in JPEG, get the settings right, enjoy the experience." It's a journey, but it's a nice, low-impact, entry-level way of looking at it.

Christopher Balmer: I think it is. And I still believe strongly that you learn how to shoot your camera correctly first, then learn how to edit. And you'll hear people quite often say it's important to shoot the image right. To me, that's nailing the exposure perfectly, sharpness perfectly, white balance perfectly. Then if you want to edit, great. There's nothing wrong with that. But we're dealing with child's play. Photography is so simple, but as adults, we make it hard. All you have to remember is ISO, f-stop, shutter speeds, white balance, colour profiles. And if you know how to control those five things, which are super simple to control, you can shoot these exact same pictures. It was astounding to me that people say "you can't do this." And that's where I go berserk because I'll have people come and look at these big prints and they'll go, "that's impossible." I'm like, "All right, dude. Let's go right now. Let's go out in the field. I'll show you how to do this." Because you really can. And it's a sad thing to me that so many people are told from day one that they can't do this. And that's prevalent. And that's why we have found a niche in this business. That's why we're so busy. The reason I sell so many pictures is because they're not edited. They're tired of fake skies. They're tired of images that aren't really what was there. They're tired of all that. And I think as AI takes over, more and more and more and more people are going to buy real. And that's one of the reasons we sell so many.

Toby Jermyn: I think you're right actually. There's a premium for authenticity these days because nowadays everyone looks on social media and goes "edited, fake." We're always asking questions about editing things. It's very refreshing not to have to do it, actually.

Christopher Balmer: Yeah. Because like last year we sold 2,300 paper images and about 400 metal prints in one year. That's extraordinary. Yeah. So it's—and I'm just a dumb old photographer from Idaho. So there we go.

Toby Jermyn: Now this is the quintessential shot that everybody wants to get in Yellowstone. What time of year was this?

Christopher Balmer: This was in February of last year during one of our winter workshops. And I don't get to shoot a lot during those workshops. And it was one of those things where I was able to get out of the snow coach and get an image as well. And to be honest with you, I was quite lucky. If you look at the bison on the right-hand side of the image, right behind him is one of those orange poles they have for the snow levels. And I was shooting at 10 frames per second and I got three images; on the fourth image, you can see the orange pole. I don't edit. So that's it. So I happened to capture the right image at the right time. And my wife has a great saying about luck: "It's where opportunity and preparation meet." That's what happened there.

Toby Jermyn: And what do you think it is about this particular image that's made it such a big seller? Is it Americans living in the area buying this because it reminds them of the area? Is it internationals?

Christopher Balmer: So, this is crazy. No, this is actually sold—I've had one go to Paris. I've had one go to England and we had two go up into Canada. So, it is a universal image. Now, those really big prints, the metal prints that are 16x24, 24x36—those have gone all over the world that I know of. But this one's been really popular, and I think it is what you just said. It's the quintessential image of a bison in the winter. The key to me in this is it had to be black and white. So, I shot it in black and white in the camera, and I tweaked contrast and brightness in-camera before I shot the picture. So, that's important to note. But I truly love this image because, for me, I've grown up in Yellowstone nearly 60 years. I've seen tens of thousands of bison. To be honest with you, for quite a long time, I didn't like them a lot because they always got in the way of me getting into the park because they would stand in the road and go, "No, here. Let me create a three-hour bear jam for you." So, yeah. But now I love them. I love them and I respect them greatly. And it's a stark contrast of the colour against the white background. It's really lovely.

Toby Jermyn: This is one of the main reasons why our clients wanted to come with you to Yellowstone; this was the big shot that everybody wanted to get and I think they got some amazing photographs this time. So, we've talked about the shots you got and how lucky you got with the orange pole obscured behind the co-operative bison. Tell us about a shot that you missed or you didn't get because of this technique. Is there one that really comes to mind?

Christopher Balmer: I would say some of the charging bears during our bear workshops. Sometimes those things happen so quickly your reaction time is not fast enough. And that is where I do pay the price for not editing because sometimes I can miss that colour. I mean my white balance may not be perfect. In most cases though, it's exposure, right? That's the thing that has to be dialled in very, very quickly. And I'm a big proponent of metering. I change my metering numerous times a day from spot, centre-weighted, to matrix. I'm constantly changing it because I want the camera to read the light in a different way. And so those things slow me down. So, I would say most likely it's the bears. Even though I'm on the ground, able to shoot, able to set up, quite often things happen very rapidly. So, I do miss those. Yeah.

Toby Jermyn: And talk about metering here because you've got a lot of white and a lot of black and your camera must be going, "I have no idea what you're trying to do." So, which metering would you use in a situation like this?

Christopher Balmer: Okay. So, two things that come up in this image that are important to note: I'm not focusing on the eye. I'm focusing in between the nose and the eyes because what happens when you're this close to an animal with the compression of the lens, even if you're shooting at f/5.6, f/8, or f/6.3—somewhere in that range—if you focus on the eyes, the nose will be out of focus. And so I don't ever risk that. So here's the neat thing: I'm able to meter and focus in the same spot. So if you see the snow that's right on the bridge of his nose, I'm spot metering there and then I'm over-exposing with the camera to get the snow to go to white. And that's what I did in this image. Yeah.

Toby Jermyn: Very cool. There we go. We're only like 10 minutes in and we've got a lot of photo tips going on. Thank you very much, Chris. This explains, you know, why you're such a successful educator. This is fantastic.

Okay, before we get carried away, let's move on to your second image, please. Chris, will you tell the viewers and listeners about this one?

Christopher Balmer: So, this is an infrared image taken with the Z8 camera that's been converted to infrared of an elephant on the Chobe River, very, very close and very low to the water. So I can get the reflection of the elephant with some really dramatic clouds in the back. In fact, this is something I do not recommend to clients—I have my hands reaching over the edge of the boat, but there are lots of crocodiles in that river. So I probably wouldn't recommend doing that. I don't do this anymore. But the image was perfect for an infrared camera. What I love about them is the brighter the day, the better the image is. So when everybody else is putting their cameras away, I'm getting this one out. I hope you don't mind me telling a really quick story. I was getting fairly burnt out. I'd been shooting for, you know, 50 years. I still really enjoyed photography, but I just wasn't shooting as much as I used to. And my Nikon representative actually mentioned to me and said, "Hey, you ought to try an infrared camera." And I said, "Okay." So, I finally got one. I got a Z8 and then I had it converted to infrared. It has brought a whole new passion back to me. For a guy that used to shoot black and white film for all those years, you learn to read light. And the beautiful thing about infrared cameras is you are looking at light in a different way. So really wonderful.

Toby Jermyn: And for the layperson watching this, what is infrared? How does it vary from a normal sensor? Give me the elevator pitch. What is it?

Christopher Balmer: Well, it sees light spectrums that we can't see. Okay. So, one of the weird things about these cameras is when you get one, what you do is you set a custom white balance off of green and then you never have to change it. But essentially, it's seeing light spectrums that we can't see. Everything that's green turns white. So, quite often when I'm shooting over at your place in Chobe or if I'm down in South Africa or up in Namibia—all those places—it's weird. If there's any green, it almost looks like snow. And so again, all it's doing is you're taking the filter off of the camera that creates the colour and you're putting an infrared filter on that camera. There are several different options you can do if you want really wild colours, all kinds of things. But just keep in mind that again, if you do that, that camera's that way all the time. So yes, don't go too crazy because you might end up regretting it.

Toby Jermyn: And is it an easy process to do a conversion? I mean, presumably you use an older body, maybe. You know, you're not going to go buy your brand new camera and go, "Here's my Canon R1 and I'm just going to go."

Christopher Balmer: So, that's a great question. One of the things I'll tell you that is really important is do not convert a DSLR. Convert a mirrorless. For some reason, the mirrorless cameras focus better. Don't have to spend a lot of money. Send it off to a company. The one I used was LifePixel. That's what NASA uses. Nikon uses them. Canon uses them. They're quite good. $300 to convert it. Well, if you think about it with your bang for your buck, it's not bad, is it? Because like you said, when the light gets harsh and the clouds start to build up, you gain another hour or so of photographic time, don't you, with your infrared camera.

Christopher Balmer: I'll be honest with you Toby, I shoot my infrared camera on—it's going to sound crazy—the sunnier the day, the better it works. So, I'll shoot mine at noon or 1:00 in the afternoon on a bright, sunny day, and it produces fantastic images. So, it opens up this whole new world and whole new time of images because quite often we find ourselves as wildlife photographers going out into the field and the light is just not the best, or we don't find the subject until the light's already harsh. And it's a great time to think differently and look at light differently, and then grab that camera, pick it up and shoot.

Toby Jermyn: So, you've been shooting for a very long time. You know, more than half of that you've been shooting professionally. Tell us about how did you get into photography? Were you always into photography? Is that what you did at school?

Christopher Balmer: No. So, how I got into it—and I won't go into all this, but I was very, very sick as a kid. I spent about 100 to 150 days each year in the hospital from age 3 to 11. So, you know, way over a thousand days in the hospital. Had many surgeries. My grandfather gave me a Brownie camera with a couple of rolls of film, and it was to help me kind of escape because he'd always been taking me out in nature. Whenever I wasn't sick or I was able to, they would take me outdoors so I could enjoy that, obviously. And so he gave me a Brownie at 9 years old and I started shooting. But that's how I got into photography. Yeah. And I was a fishing guide, hunting guide, outdoor guide, Yellowstone guide as I was growing up. And all through that, photography was a part of it. And then 25 years ago, I just happened to start selling pictures and it took off from there.

Toby Jermyn: Would it be fair to say then that, you know, having been in hospital—maybe this is, here we go, I'm going amateur psychologist now—but do you think that's what really motivates you to have this mindset of wanting to be outdoors and not stuck behind a computer? Because when you were so young, that was taken away from you. So is that one of your motivations?

Christopher Balmer: It is. And when you're as sick as I was and being told you would never live very long... A lot of people say live day-by-day. I would say I really live hour-by-hour. I value my time with my family, my friends outdoors. And I've always told myself, "if I'm on a computer fixing a photo, I'm not with my wife. I'm not with my kids. I'm not in nature. What am I doing taking a photo?" Does that make sense? Because for me, it's a little different because I sell my images. So, I'm making my living selling images. But for most people, I always ask them, "What are you going to do with your images?" You're probably going to post them on Facebook, share them with families or friends, and you may print one or two. But is any of that really worth the time away from nature and your family? Really, is that photograph really worth it? And so for me, I want to master my camera. I want to master light and I want to do it in the field so when I come home, I can be where I'm supposed to be.

Toby Jermyn: It's a very nice philosophy. I like that. I think you'll know as well that Guts has the same thing. Guts is an incredibly naturally gifted photographer and he takes these amazing photographs and then doesn't do anything with them. We literally have to turn him upside down and raid his hard drives to go and get his images off them. Yeah. There are always these amazing photographs and we never see them. So, there we go.

All right. What we're going to do is we are going to take a quick break. Now, before we do that though, a quick reminder that if you're enjoying this podcast and you want to see more of them, please make sure you subscribe, hit the like button, turn on your notifications, do all that good stuff. Leave us a comment. Let us know if you would convert an old camera into infrared. Have you been inspired to do so? Right, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we will go on to Chris's third image.

Welcome back to part two of the Pangolin podcast with my guest today, Christopher Balmer. And we're moving on to image three. So would you please like to describe to the viewers and listeners this photograph?

Christopher Balmer: So this to me is a really powerful eagle image—a bald eagle taken vertically. What makes it so great is the fog in the background, the rock formation that it's standing on, the wildflowers, just a very beautiful image to me. And it is my favourite eagle image of all time.

Toby Jermyn: And where was it taken?

Christopher Balmer: This is during our bear trip that we do out in Katmai, which is funny because I do an eagle workshop each year. Even helping clients, I still probably take 20,000 images. I have clients that take up to 40,000 images of eagles in 5 days. So, I've taken literally a million photos of eagles. Literally a million. Then during the bear trip, I get my favourite eagle image of all time. So, yeah, this is in my national park.

Toby Jermyn: Yeah, it's really stunning. I hadn't noticed the fog until you pointed it out. I just enjoyed the fact that the background wasn't distracting me from the wildflowers and everything going on in the foreground. I think had there not been fog, it would have been a very different image, wouldn't it?

Christopher Balmer: It probably would not have been taken. It would have been a very difficult image. The fog kept the light very subdued, so it was easier to expose. Something I'll mention about this one, Toby, is—it may surprise a lot of people—I am not focusing on the eagle at all. I am focusing on the rock below him. We are on a boat. We're next to this big rock formation. We're out in the open ocean and we're literally bouncing like this. I mean, hard. Almost impossible to focus on the bird. And so what I'm actually doing is focusing on the rock. And that's pretty strange to a lot of people to think, "Wow, why would you not focus on the eagle?" We were moving so much you probably couldn't. So, I'm in continuous focus. I'm bouncing and I'm shooting at 10 or 12 frames per second. And to be honest with you, I probably shot 150 to 200 pictures of this. Now, almost every single one of them turned out tack-sharp because I'm shooting a fast enough shutter speed. I don't use eye tracking. I don't use animal detection ever. But for the people that do, this is an instance where you may want to turn it off.

Toby Jermyn: That was going to be my question because if you were using eye tracking, it might have assisted you. Do you never use animal eye tracking?

Christopher Balmer: I just don't ever use it. Quite often I'll focus and meter in the same spot to speed things up for me. So, I'm always teaching consistency and efficiency. Sometimes having to meter in one place and focus in another place can slow you down, even for a second. I'm not willing to sacrifice that second. So, I've learned to track extremely well hand-holding lenses, but that's through years and years of really dedicated practice. But this is an instance where I just don't want to use eye tracking because also I don't want to meter off that white head at this point. So, if I'm able to meter and focus in one spot and do it all at one time, that speeds things up for me because I'm having to make all those decisions within a split moment and not mess up, because that image is not going to be edited. So, it's just creating efficiency and consistency in your photography.

Toby Jermyn: And is this—I know that sometimes the only edit that you might do is a bit of a crop—but is this as close to the original frame?

Christopher Balmer: This is probably about a 5% crop at most. And that is a great point to bring, Toby, is that I will crop on occasion, but even then I am trying to move my focus point to my subject, creating the composition in-camera so that I do not have to crop later.

Toby Jermyn: I could imagine this sells very well, does it?

Christopher Balmer: It does very well. It's an image I just shot last year, so it's fairly new, but I think we've already sold 50 or 60 big metal prints and probably 40 or 50 smaller metal prints, and then paper prints, probably three or four hundred.

Toby Jermyn: That's amazing. Is there money in stock photography? Who's buying this? Is it corporates? Is it magazines? Is it individuals?

Christopher Balmer: The biggest thing about this is I don't do stock anymore. We still sell some of it, but very, very little. This is all limited edition metal fine art prints. I will tell a little secret to all of your viewers that may want to sell pictures. The key nowadays—so many people try to sell them online. They're doing all kinds of things. They're trying to do art shows. My recommendation is this: wherever you live, have local images, okay? Or local animals, local landscapes. Find interior decorators. They are the secret. Get them to start carrying your work. They'll sell your images for you. The biggest thing though is always hand-sign your images. Always hand-sign them. Never have them drop-shipped.

Toby Jermyn: Okay, that's a good one. I like that one because, yeah, again, it's that authenticity, isn't it?

Christopher Balmer: It is. Yes.

Toby Jermyn: It also helps that you have a shop right next door to the gate of Yellowstone, doesn't it? I think you told me once, how many million people drive past your shop every year?

Christopher Balmer: Well, from my shop to the gate is one minute. So, I have about 15,000 tourists per day from all over the world that drive past my store.

Toby Jermyn: That helps. I think that probably does help. And if somebody wants to start selling prints, I mean, it's an investment, isn't it? You would want to team up with maybe, you know, a gallery or something like that. I think it's always easier to sell a print when somebody can see the finished product and imagine it on their wall. Have you got any other tips? If somebody's not able to do that, how do you convince somebody to buy something from you to hang on their wall?

Christopher Balmer: For me, it's—again, you have to have the print, like you said, for someone to see. You have to get in front of people's eyes. And my biggest suggestion for anybody out there is try to get into a gallery like you just said. But here's how you get into galleries. Here's an example real quick. I have a friend of mine who owns a gallery in Jackson. And I asked her one time, "So, how often do people try to get you to sell their photographs?" She goes, "I have several a day." She said, "But here's the problem. They walk in with their cell phone and they scroll through pictures and say, 'See my pictures.' Or they have an iPad." She said, "I throw them out immediately. I have no interest at all. But if you walk in with a big metal print that I can see and physically touch, I'll probably buy it." So again, even the people that run these galleries don't want to see a picture on your computer. They want to see a print. So that investment does come into play. You've got to be willing to spend some money to make the money.

Toby Jermyn: Yeah. I think the thing is, like with most things, you've got to put your money where your mouth is. You know, you've got to make that investment because people want to be able to see it. Then they can easily imagine it on a wall. They get the scale. They can see the details. So, yes, I think if you're going to do it, you've got to try and invest. I think, yeah.

Christopher Balmer: And one more note real quick, Toby: I always tell people, "don't be scared to put yourself out there." If it doesn't sell, it doesn't sell. But if you don't put it out there, you'll never know. And otherwise, it goes onto a hard drive or it goes onto Facebook, never to be seen again. And if nothing else, put it on your own wall. I mean, it's not exactly like you have to throw it away or give it—give it to somebody for the most amazing Christmas gift. There you go.

Toby Jermyn: Yeah. You have to remember something. The same image I sell is the same image you want on your wall. It's the same image you want to take. So, there's no difference. When you take a photograph, do you instantly know, "yeah, that's going to sell well; that's going to be a good one"? Are there any like—okay, maybe give me one or two reasons you look at it and go, "okay, that's going to sell well." I know that back in the day of stock photography, people would sometimes shoot in a certain way. For example, a double-page spread to allow a title to go over the top with a nice, clear sunset image and things like that. But you're not thinking that way. You're thinking, "this would look good on a wall," in essence.

Christopher Balmer: Yes. When I was doing stock photography, I was always thinking, "you know, hey, I need a bluebird facing this way so there's room here for the ad in the magazine," for example. The way I'm thinking now all the time is, "do I want to have that image in a panoramic? Do I want it vertical? What kind of walls are they going to hang on? Where would this image look good? Would it look good in a bank?" I have some great eagle shots that are, you know, wings completely out like this coming straight at me, eye-level. That's in a bank or financial institution or a lawyer's office. That sounds funny, but you get to know where the image is going to go. So, yeah.

Toby Jermyn: Is there any particular species that sells better than all the others?

Christopher Balmer: Bears always sell well, especially grizzly bears. Black bears, not as much. Grizzly bears always do. But from your home area, elephants, hands down. I've shot every kind of leopard you can imagine. Lions, cheetahs, everything you can, all the birds. And even though I love a lot of the birds, elephants always sell the best. Everybody loves an elephant.

Toby Jermyn: There we go. They do. Okay, cool. Let's move on to your fourth image, please. And this—I'm going to be biased—this is my favourite of the four.

Christopher Balmer: So, this is a quad of cubs—grizzly cubs, Kodiak bears actually, or coastal bears. And the two in the middle—the one brother with his paw up on the back of the other brother—made this image. Just absolutely perfect. A perfectly blue background. Really basic, simple image just about the bears. I love the symmetry of it. Big bear, smaller bear, big bear, small.

Toby Jermyn: But they're all the same age, aren't they, the cubs? Is it just a different perspective?

Christopher Balmer: Yeah, they are all the same age. And if you notice, the three on the right have what's called a natal collar still. That's that lighter colour around their neck that will eventually go away. If you look at the one on the left, it already has. But this is a mum that I've actually photographed about four years in a row and she was with all four, and it was just amazing because quads are extremely rare. I've seen thousands of bears in my life. I've only seen two sets of quads.

Toby Jermyn: Oh, there we go. And I'll tell you what, not only do bear prints sell well, but as an African photo safari operator who runs an internationally acclaimed wildlife photography competition, bears do really well. There's something about bears. Bears, especially polar bears and grizzly bears.

Christopher Balmer: Yeah. And back to the selling thing: cuteness sells. This is cute. This is very cute.

Toby Jermyn: And you're absolutely right. That intimate moment there with the touching makes it.

Christopher Balmer: It does. It does. And for me, it's such an emotional thing because, again, I've seen so many bears, but to see them this close in an environment with no other photographers within miles of us... This is one of those times where I told my clients as they were coming to us, I said, "This is great." I said, "I want you to hold your finger on your shutter button and shoot at 10 or 12 or 15 frames per second as fast as you can until your memory card's empty or your batteries are dead, and don't stop until then because you have no idea what's in front of you." And it really is just an extraordinary moment.

Toby Jermyn: An extraordinary moment, and very low as well. The shooting—are you vehicle or boat-based? Are you down on the ground on your belly?

Christopher Balmer: We're on the ground and I'm laying down. If you look at a lot of my images, I am so often laying down. And I tell people now that I'm 60 years old, it's a lot harder to get up, but I still do it because the angle just makes the image. This is one of the reasons too, Toby, why I don't use tripods anymore. And that sounds crazy to people, but I shoot my 800 millimetre or my 600 millimetre handheld 100% of the time because I'm able to move. I'm able to get different angles. And if I see everybody up on tripods and they're photographing a bear in Yellowstone, the first thing I do is lay down because I know I'm going to get an image that none of them will.

Toby Jermyn: And was this Katmai again?

Christopher Balmer: This is—yeah, this is a remote area of Katmai. We have some permits to get into some areas that are pretty special. Almost no people at all.

Toby Jermyn: And the question we're now asking ourselves is: where was mum?

Christopher Balmer: Okay, so we were out on an open beach. The tide was all the way down. It was about a 20-foot tide. The beach was probably two miles long, but from where we were to the actual tree line was probably 350 to 400 yards. I saw the bears coming from back then. She walked them directly to us, within 30 feet of us, grunted at them, basically telling them to stay, and then she went out and fished. And this is what they were doing—watching her fish. And every time she would chase a fish, they would stand up and do a dance. So, I have pictures of all four of these standing up and kind of wiggling and doing this little dance. And then, as soon as mum would catch the fish, she'd bring it to them. They'd eat it. We watched her for several hours. She would catch three fish, feed them to them. She would catch the fourth one and eat it by herself out in the water where they couldn't get to it.

Toby Jermyn: Mum's got to eat because mum's got to catch the fish. There you go.

Christopher Balmer: That's right. That's exactly right.

Toby Jermyn: This almost looks like one of the photographs you might have taken where in your mind, you were looking at it going, "This could work for stock. This would work really well in a magazine," because you've left this really lovely space at the top where you could have a title, a statement, or something like that going through. But you mentioned you used to sell a lot of stock, but you've stopped now. Is stock gone completely? I know some people still do okay at it, but the money that was there five to ten years ago is gone.

Christopher Balmer: That's where AI is going to have a big impact on photography. I don't believe it's going to have a big impact, like everybody else is thinking, on the rest of this in sales and in the art of photography. I don't think that's going to go away. In fact, if anything, I think it's going to become stronger. I think people are going to seek it even more. But this is an image that in stock would have sold very, very well. We've probably sold at least in the last year a thousand paper prints of this. The cuteness factor sells it every time. And it's a great storytelling image. If I wasn't to tell you the story, can you imagine all the different stories you would wonder about—what these four bears are looking at and what they're doing?

Toby Jermyn: It's a caption competition image, isn't it? You could have four little speech bubbles and go fill those in. Okay, there we go.

Christopher Balmer: That's exactly right.

Toby Jermyn: Okay, we are going to take our final break now. But before we do that, just a gentle reminder that if you would like to join our growing community of wildlife photography enthusiasts, you can sign up for our Friday Focus newsletter. What I'll do is I'll put a link in the description down below. We'll slap a QR code in somewhere so that you can scan it and join it. And then every Friday, we send out a newsletter with loads of photographs, updates on when we're doing podcasts like this and releasing them. And also, as I mentioned, the photo competition. We have that every year as well. So, make sure you join our community. Right, we'll be back in a second with the image taken by another photographer that Chris has chosen. See you in a minute.

Welcome back to the final part of the Pangolin podcast with my guest today, Christopher Balmer, all the way over there in Yellowstone. Chris, we are now on to the image which was taken by another photographer who you admire. Maybe an image you wished you had taken yourself. So would you like to explain to the viewers and listeners, firstly, what is the image of, and secondly, who took the image and why did you choose it?

Christopher Balmer: This image is of a very angry-looking jaguar up on a log, looking straight at us, claws way, way out—just an intense image. And the image, of all people, has been taken by my wife Katie. We had a boat full of clients on our Pantanal workshop. We came around a corner. The cat is in this pose and Katie goes, "boom boom," and says, "Hey, there's a jaguar." I think she said it after she had already shot a couple of pictures. So, I got a picture, but the claws weren't out, the angry look wasn't there. But I just—it's one of the best pictures for me that represents a jaguar and the power of that cat.

Toby Jermyn: It's a very unique jaguar image because we all see—actually, there have been lots of photographs recently; we've had a few on the show as well because lots of people go to the Pantanal and usually it's a very pretty-looking jaguar, and you look at it and you go, "Is that a leopard? Is that a jaguar? Where was it taken?" This is 100% jaguar. This is like a jaguar who has been there, done it, had a fight or two and is a real survivor. He's a mean-looking bugger, isn't he?

Christopher Balmer: He really is. And that, you know, I've photographed leopards, cheetahs, all kinds of things in Africa. But I'll tell you there are two cats that actually intimidate me a little bit, and that's jaguars and tigers in India. They both always have that look like, "Hey, I think I can get in that boat and I can probably kill you, you, and you, and then I'll eat you and there's nothing you can do about it." And I've always had that feeling about jaguars. So for me, the powerful presence of this cat really shows you what they're about.

Toby Jermyn: I really like the claws. I think the claws are really interesting as well because they're more extended than normal, which adds to the aggressive nature of this cat—he's a fighter.

Christopher Balmer: Yeah, it's one of those images that stood out to me. I have lots of very well-known photographers that are good friends and I admire so many of their images, but I think a lot of us sometimes forget to really look at the people closest to us and how good they are. And Katie was a portrait photographer when I met her, and happily, I've converted most of that out of her. I think now she's more of a nature and wildlife shooter. She'll shoot portraits if she has to or is asked by family. But she's turned out to be a great nature photographer.

Toby Jermyn: Well, I think it's a very diplomatic choice to choose your wife as well. I think in the spirit of—Steve Perry did the same thing as well. I think that's—

Christopher Balmer: Oh, yeah. I saw that. Yeah, he did.

Toby Jermyn: She—I don't know, Katie might well be just out of shot as well, doing the same thing: "You'd better! Don't you start choosing somebody else's."

Christopher Balmer: That's right. That's right. No, I really went back and forth, but I knew this is one that stood out to me. We have it printed in the store. The neat thing is it's the only picture in the store that's not mine.

Toby Jermyn: Well, the question I have for you, which everyone's going to ask, is: does Katie edit?

Christopher Balmer: No, she does not. The reason we got along so well is she admired the way I was shooting and what I was doing. Now, when it comes to portraits, of course, she does. In the portrait world, you have to. But in nature stuff, no, she leaves them alone. And again, we both have that same kind of philosophy that if we don't get the image, that's okay. We can put that camera down. We can throw that image away and hopefully we're blessed enough to go back to that same spot and shoot again. That's the big thing. The thing I've seen lost in photography is patience and persistence. That's what I enjoy. It gets me back in the field. It gives me an excuse to go back out there again. So Katie and I both enjoy that: where she doesn't edit, I don't edit. Yeah, we miss, and we get to go back to those places again and again and have an excuse to do so. So, it's good. Yeah. Any excuse, quite frankly.

Toby Jermyn: Okay. Well, before we wrap up, Chris, at the beginning of the show, I posed the idea that you were going to be hanging these images on the wall of your humble dwelling. Obviously, Katie is coming with you. She'll be delighted. Maybe that's why you wanted to choose one of her images as well, so it's not just all about you and your images and your humble dwelling. But you get to choose where your humble dwelling is. So, anywhere in the world—you can't say Yellowstone, you've got to come up with somewhere else.

Christopher Balmer: Well, to me, there would be two choices really, and it's a real toss-up. Africa or Iceland. But hands down, for one choice, it would be Africa. The biodiversity there, and the creation there, and just the people, the food... You know, that's why, Toby—that's why we come to your lodge every year. I don't know if people know that, but we rent the entire lodge every year. It's really become a wonderful place to me. And for anybody that's listening out there that hasn't been to Pangolin, you need to simply go and make it number one on your bucket list. And no, I'm not saying that because Toby's here, and I'm not saying it because they told me to. It's an extraordinary—you guys, I believe that Africa is a life-changing trip and life-changing experience.

Toby Jermyn: So, yeah. Even better than that, we'll leave a link in the description down below to Chris's workshops and everything, and you can come with Chris to Pangolin. And I look forward to everybody arriving with "I shoot JPEG" T-shirts. How about that? We might be able to do that. We'll show up with your shirts, too. Yeah, that's easy. "I shoot JPEG at Pangolin." Chris, thank you so much for making time. I know you've been super busy. Thank you very much for hosting Guts and Janine and all our clients. They had the best time in Yellowstone. Long may that continue. And I look forward to seeing you again in Chobe, and then maybe we can get a time to have a proper coffee and a catch-up.

Christopher Balmer: I sure hope so. I feel really blessed to be part of this and thank you so much for having me today and, uh, I just always tell everybody to have a blessed life and a blessed day.

Toby Jermyn: Thank you for joining me on another episode of the Pangolin podcast. I hope you have enjoyed it. As always, I'd love to hear your comments and feedback, so please do leave them in the comments down below. If you're an audio listener, we'd love it if you could give us a star rating or a quick review. And if you don't want to miss the next episode or any of the other wildlife photography videos, make sure that you subscribe to the channel and turn on the notifications. Finally, don't forget to sign up for 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. I look forward to seeing you on a Pangolin photo safari soon. And all that's left for me to say is that the Pangolin podcast was hosted by me, Toby Jermyn, and produced and edited by Bella Falk. Thank you.