Instagram: @brookelittlebear

Brooke is a wildlife photographer based out of Salt Lake City, Utah. She has always been a lover of animals, and when she first began shooting she was naturally hooked on photographing wildlife right from the start. Her ultimate goal is to photograph all the core species of megafauna found in North America. When Brooke is not actively photographing, tracking, or scouting for wildlife, you can find her snowboarding.

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"This is one of the owls I've been photographing near my home in Utah."

"In Utah, I'm still lucky enough to find wild faces close to home. Lucky to live where the wild meets the city."

"Foxes are my favorite wildlife to capture. The foxes from Colorado, where I lived for years, were an important part of my photography. I could recognize each fox over the years, as they grew and had pups of their own."

"There are no roads leading to Churchill, Manitoba, known as the “polar bear capital of the world.” Travel can be daunting, as your only options are a multi-day train trip which is often delayed, or a round-about flight by way of Winnipeg. Nestled on the Western shores of the Hudson Bay, my plane landed in Churchill on an icy November morning.

I arrived just in time to catch the tail end of Polar Bear Season - the six week stretch when polar bears outnumber humans as they congregate on the tundra surrounding Churchill waiting for the ice to form on Hudson Bay. Once the ice forms, the bears make their way far onto the ice in search of seals to hunt. I was lucky to arrive just in time to spend a few days photographing the bears before they disappeared across the ice for the remainder of the winter months."

"I am not a landscape photographer. I certainly want to be, and plan on spending more time rounding out my techniques on this other side of photography this year. But as of right now, I am laughably clueless when I'm trying to photograph anything other than animals. I spent this evening stumbling through desert shrubs trying to figure out how the heck to compose a sunset shot. I was standing on my tippy toes, laying on my stomach, crouching behind bushes and cacti to try and get some decent framing for my composition. All things considered, this shoot could have been even more difficult but I absolutely lucked out with the gear I'd packed. The new 12-45mm F4.0 PRO lens is hands down one of the most versatile lenses I've ever shot with, giving me an awesome range to experiment with. Paired with my E-M1 Mark III, there was no need for a tripod so I was free to stumble around as much as I needed to finally get the composition I wanted. When I was done, I popped the whole camera and lens setup into my hoodie pocket and hiked back to camp. How awesome is that?"

Instagram: @creativeislandphoto

Peter is a photographer and educator who regularly leads photography courses and workshops on landscape, wildlife, and astrophotography. His work has been published in magazines and books and has been recognized for excellence on a number of photography websites. He is an avid outdoor enthusiast with a passion for wilderness camping, canoeing and kayaking.

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"Patience can really pay off, especially when photographing wildlife. Although I saw this snowy owl while driving, I spent about 10 minutes slowly approaching it so that I could get in closer and photograph it at eye level. Generally, snowy owls are quite tolerant of humans, and after my approach I was able to photograph this beautiful female for about 10 or 15 minutes before she decided that she had had enough of me."

"Unlike snowy owls, barred owls tend to be far more elusive because they reside primarily in forested areas and blend in quite well with their surroundings. I got lucky with this one because it was perched on the edge of a trail. When photographing wildlife of any kind I am not just focused on the subject, but also the background. It's not always possible, but I make every effort to eliminate any distracting elements in the frame by changing my position."

"Planning goes into every shot that you take - some more than others. The planning for this shot started about 10 months before I pressed the shutter release. During a kayaking trip in July I came across this rocky shoreline that I thought had potential for a nice landscape shot. Given that it was midday, and the sun was in the wrong direction at that time of the year for a good sunset, I put the shot on the back burner until spring. To help with planning I used the PhotoPills app to determine the optimal timing and then paddled back out to this location. I made sure that I arrived with plenty of time to "work the scene" for the best composition. The most challenging part of the evening was the hour-long paddle back to my vehicle in the dark!" 

"As a photographer who mainly shoots landscapes, astro, and wildlife, my job is to take the scene in front of me and try to present it in the most visually appealing way possible, without manipulating that environment too much. With concept photography I get use a different part of my brain and come up with an image that stretches my creativity. The idea for this shot came after we had a bit of rain, which created a nice reflective sheen on the ice in front of my home. One umbrella, 7 shots and a bit of blending was all it took to bring this idea to life."

"Astro-landscape photography comes with many challenges. One of them is finding your way around in the dark. On a recent trip to Great Sand Dunes National Park I wanted to capture the Milky Way rising over the distant mountains and so I headed out into the darkness of the desert without really knowing exactly where I was going. Even when I'm back home on Manitoulin Island a familiar spot can be hard to negotiate in the dark. For this shot I walked about 50 feet from my camera and illuminated the sand using a flash light app on my phone. A bit of low-level lighting can add some impressive detail to your astro images."