In 2009, the founder of PhotoWILD Workshops, Jared Lloyd, had the idea to do something different. He believed that the wildlife photography community needed more than just another tour company that propped people up in front of animals to photograph. With a background in biology, years of experience guiding the likes of National Geographic and BBC film crews, and what was by then a full-time career as wildlife photographer, he wanted to blend together environmental education with wildlife photography workshops.

Annalise Kaylor is a wildlife photographer and conservation photojournalist whose work has taken her on assignments to 40 countries around the world (and counting!). Annalise’s photo and video work can be found in a variety of media including Audubon Magazine, New York Times, Associated Press, and she also partners with NGOs and non-profits, including The Nature Conservancy and charity:water.

PhotoWILD Workshops is the culmination of 15 years of experience leading hundreds of wildlife photography workshops around the world. Blending ecology and ethology (the study of animal behavior) with hands-on small group wildlife photography workshops, PhotoWILD continues to pioneer this style of travel as the company has grown into a small team of photographers and master naturalists.

The workshops PhotoWILD offers are built to go beyond the wildlife, however.

In the world according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a workshop is defined as “a usually brief intensive educational program for a relatively small group of people that focuses especially on techniques and skills in a particular field.”

We take this definition of a workshop to heart when we create the trips we offer. Our workshops are designed to help you improve your wildlife photography and we begin things a little differently for this reason.

One of the things that makes our workshops a little different is that we begin each trip with a full-day classroom session. Let’s face it, being in the field on these trips comes with a lot of sensory overload. When you’re laying on the bank of a river in Alaska with a huge brown bear charging through the water, spray suspended all around, and coming directly at your lens, nothing else exists in the world in that moment except the bear. You don’t hear the suggestions about autofocus settings, the warning about a distracting element in the background that could potentially ruin your photograph, or how you need to adjust your composition as the situation is changing rapidly and in real time. In that moment, all you know is that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and it’s happening fast.  

These classroom sessions are designed to do a deep dive into the skill sets participants will need to truly take advantage of the opportunities we expect to encounter on the workshop. Each workshop has different demands, of course. In the rainforest, for instance, understanding flash is often a must and something you don’t want to be trying to “figure out” when the frog in front of you may be a new species to science. Likewise, standing on the bow of a boat in the northern Pacific Ocean, photographing a tornado of horned puffins circling at 50mph requires us to have our autofocus and composition strategies dialed in beforehand. It has been our experience that this single day spent discussing these skillsets at the beginning of the workshop has a dramatic impact on the success rate for participants throughout the workshop.

We braid together the art and science of wildlife photography, bringing small groups of like-minded photographers to extraordinary destinations, teaching them about wildlife and natural world, and helping them become better wildlife photographers in the process— all while having experiences they will remember the rest of their lives.