The right photography workshop can shape how you see the world long after the trip ends. This article explores how teaching style, ethics, group size, safety, and communication influence not just the images you make, but the experience itself.

After 220 days of travel in 2024, I slowed my pace in 2025 and found something unexpected. Returning to familiar places, working with smaller groups, and choosing experience over accumulation reshaped how I photograph and how I teach. This year became a reminder that photography is not about doing more, but about seeing more, learning deeply, and showing up with intention.

There’s a unique rhythm to photographing nature’s extremes—the frost on a leaf and the caribou crossing a ridge. In this guide, I share how I plan a single trip to capture both ends of that spectrum, from macro to mammals, using a lightweight two-lens setup, location strategy, and ethical field practices that let nature lead the story.

Looking back over all this last year has thrown at me and the things I voluntarily took on, here are my top lessons from the field.

Many photographers overlook a powerful tool: the histogram. This post explains the connections between histograms, exposure, better images.