“Be There”: Words of Wisdom for Photography, Life
Author captures dramatic photos of an osprey on the hunt, and harkens back to long-ago advice from world-renowned photographer
Recently, I was fortunate to capture on camera one of the most remarkable wildlife scenes I’ve ever witnessed — an osprey plunging into the surf and vanishing beneath the waves before emerging from the roiling ocean with a white sea bass clutched in its fearsome talons on the shores of the Silver Strand State Beach in Coronado, CA.
Notice that I said fortunate, not lucky.
That’s because early in my career I’d received some simple advice from a world-renowned photographer that I took to heart. Not only did I immediately apply this advice to my photographic endeavors, but I quickly discovered that it worked wonderfully in various aspects of my personal and professional life as well.
Early in my career, I started out as a journalist and was fortunate (there’s that word again) to occasionally be assigned to write ski travel stories for a major daily newspaper. An avid photographer, I would always bring my camera. To my dismay, I almost always proved to be a much better writer, skier and après ski bon vivant than a photographer. My photographic production was never better than…
