People seem to think being a Wildlife Photographer is a dream job. Although that may be true part of the time, it's certainly not true all of the time. Here are 3 points to consider:

1. Shooting:

I am primarily an African Wildlife Photographer. One of the hardest things about this is I have to fly to the other side of the planet to create images. I do not shoot images in zoos or the like, so the expense and work it takes is staggering. Each day in Africa is an 18 hour day. We shoot in the mornings and evenings and use afternoons to fly to different locations/countries. It seems I barely have enough time to grab dinner and unload my memory cards before midnight. This goes on daily for 3 weeks and by the time I get back to Utah, I'm exhausted. Covid, Customs, and carrying heavy camera gear through several airports all take its toll. Shooting locally could alleviate some of this stress.

2. Editing:

Everyone's style of editing is different. I tend to do lots of post production. I don't use any type of pre-sets, it's all manual. I start with a vision for each image and work until I have completed the vision. I usually return home from Africa with somewhere around 10-12k images. Each image is viewed in Lightroom and a determination is made as to which images I will edit and use. Editing is started in Lightroom and finished in Photoshop. Needless to say, it takes a lot of time to sift through 10,000 images. I would estimate I spend a total of 2 months a year actually out shooting and 10 months of the year editing. It's hard to keep up on editing, for example, at this time I still have 14 days of a recent Africa trip to edit. Plus, I recently moved back to Utah and I'm planning on adding other types of animals to my portfolio, and as a result, I just returned from a trip to Yellowstone, and from Antelope Island photographing Bison. I am crazy behind in editing but I still want to get to Glacier and Grand Teton National Parks for the Winter snow. There just isn't enough time each day.