Through My Lens: A Life in Wildlife Photography I was born under the wide open skies of South Africa, where wildlife isn't something you visit, it's something you grow up breathing. That early immersion planted a seed that would quietly shape everything that followed. At 17, a camera found its way into my hands for the first time, a film Nikon, unforgiving and honest. There was no deleting a bad frame, no chimping after every shot. You learned to *see* before you pressed the shutter. That discipline became the foundation of everything I do today. When I eventually made my way to the United States, the landscapes changed, but the obsession didn't. Travel became the thread that stitched my life together, family adventures, distant destinations, wild corners of the world that most people only read about. Over the years, I've compiled more than 90 photobooks documenting these journeys: family histories, cultural discoveries, and the natural world in all its raw, unscripted beauty. They line my shelves like a visual diary of a life fully lived. Wildlife photography, for me, has never been about the "pretty" moments. Yes, a lion at golden hour is extraordinary, but what truly stops my heart is behavior. The complexity of animal interactions, the hierarchy, the survival instinct laid bare. I've watched wild dogs take down a puku with the cold efficiency of nature doing exactly what nature does. I've trekked through dense mountain forest to sit quietly in the presence of mountain gorillas, creatures so human in their gaze it rearranges something inside you. These are the moments I chase. My curiosity extends beyond the image itself. I want to understand the animal, its habitat, its social structure, what pressures it faces, how it communicates. The photograph is the result of that understanding, not a substitute for it. Today I shoot with a Sony Alpha mirrorless system, a world away from that first film Nikon, faster, quieter, technically extraordinary. But the eye behind the camera was trained decades ago on rolls of film and the patience that came with them. The gear has evolved; the philosophy hasn't. Wildlife photography has given me a front-row seat to some of the most humbling spectacles on Earth. It's taught me that nature doesn't perform for us, we are simply fortunate witnesses when we show up quietly enough, and wait long enough, to be trusted with the view. Every trip. Every frame. Every creature. All of it a privilege I don't take lightly.