Wildlife Image Intensive
Two days. Four sessions. The complete life of a wildlife image, from the reason you shoot to the work the world finally sees.
Gerry van der Walt · Co-founder of Wild Eye · Adorama & B&H presenter
Not a photography course.
Not a Lightroom course.
It starts where those stop:
the layer that connects them.
Your images are accurate. That was never the problem.
You have drives full of good images. Sharp, well exposed, decently composed. Correct. And the work still does not feel like yours. It looks like everyone else's good images, and no one has ever sat down with you and said why. The gap is not technical. Nobody ever asked you what the work is for. Keep going the way you are going and in five years you will have more of the same: better gear, bigger drives, and a body of work that still does not say anything. This weekend starts at the actual gap.
This weekend wasn't guessed into existence. Over the past two years I've sat in more than a hundred one-on-one conversations with serious wildlife photographers about where the work gets stuck: the edits that are correct but not theirs, the websites that never quite happen, the drives full of good images that don't say anything yet. Every session in this Intensive was built from what those conversations kept telling me.
Most photography education picks one lane. The technical course teaches the camera. The Lightroom course teaches the sliders. The behaviour course teaches the animal. I have taught in those rooms myself, my own The Secret Life of Animals lives in that world, and every one of them still has its value. The closest I have come to saying this out loud in public is a talk I gave for Adorama in New York called Technically Creative Wildlife Photography. Worth an hour if you want to hear where this thinking started. This weekend is not one of those lanes. It connects them: the layer where the camera skills, the processing and the animal knowledge finally meet a direction. In addition to, not instead of.
Why this is different
- Live, not recorded. Ask about your own work and get an answer on the spot.
- Two hours of one-on-one, included. No recording can sit down with your work. This does.
- A date, not a someday. A recorded course waits in a browser tab. This has a weekend, a room, and a teacher expecting you.
- Your images in the room. The culling demonstrations and live edits run on attendee files, not example images.
- 25 people, not 25,000. The intake questions and the Briefing mean the weekend is shaped around the photographers actually in it, with a private WhatsApp group that keeps the room open after the weekend.
- The whole system, not one lane. Field craft, animal behaviour, the catalogue, the edit, and what comes after, all pulling toward one thing: your creative voice.
- Taught from the field. Twenty-five years of safaris, animal behaviour education and creative work sit behind every session.
- Built by a coach. The promise, the Briefing, the private sessions: this weekend is designed to change how you work, not just show you more.
- Rebuilt for every intake. The tools move fast. What you see in October is what's current in October, not a recording made two years ago.
In addition to what you've already done.
Not instead of it.
One ticket. Everything on this list.
- Two private one-on-one creative coaching sessions: yours after the weekend, booked when you are ready, any time up to the end of February 2027
- Four live sessions across two days: field vision, catalogue, editing, and what comes after
- Live Q&A in every session: bring your questions about your own work, leave with answers
- The Briefing: a live 30-minute call with Gerry and the whole room, one week before the weekend
- A private WhatsApp group for your intake: 25 photographers and Gerry. It opens at the Briefing and stays open after the weekend, for questions, follow-ups and keeping each other honest.
- Your promise: the one-line creative direction you write on Saturday morning and use for years
- Your RAW files in the room: three files submitted when you book, selected images edited live, every photographer's work in the culling demonstrations
- Lifetime access to every recording, including the Briefing
- Your own dashboard: the dates, the downloads, the replays and every link, in one place, yours from the end of the Briefing
- Everything in writing afterwards: the manual, a written summary of every session, and a Lightroom shortcut sheet built for wildlife work
25 seats per intake. Three intakes a year.
Book your seat
Two hours, one-on-one, after the weekend.
Eight hours in the room with twenty-four other photographers. Then two hours with just you and me, on your images, your promise, your next move.
The first sits within 60 days of the weekend. The second any time up to the end of February 2027.
What happens, from here to there
Book your seat
Two minutes, and three short questions about your photography. Your answers shape the weekend, because this Intensive gets built around the room that's actually in it.
Send your RAW files
Three images you want worked on. Selected files get edited live, chosen for what they teach the whole room, and every photographer's submissions appear on screen in the culling demonstrations.
The Briefing · Saturday 26 September, 11:00 ET
Thirty minutes, live. The running order, how to prepare, and what this room told me it wants from the weekend. Same time, same link as the Intensive itself, so on the day everything already feels familiar. Recorded if you can't make it. Your dashboard opens the moment we finish, and everything for the weekend lives there from then on.
The weekend · 3 & 4 October
Four sessions. Shoot It, File It, Finish It, Share It. You write your promise on Saturday morning and by Sunday evening it sits at the centre of a complete system for your photography.
Your two private sessions
Included with every seat. Your images, your promise, your next step, or wherever you want to take it. Book the first within 60 days of the weekend, and the second any time up to the end of February 2027, once you have been out shooting with the new thinking.
The work continues
Lifetime recordings, the manual, the written summary of every session, the WhatsApp group still open, and a room of photographers who speak your language.
It starts with one line.
Some photographers live in the technical: sharpness, settings, the gear. Others live in the creative and never quite trust the tools. This weekend is where the two meet. On Saturday morning you write a single sentence: what your work is trying to say. We call it your promise, and it becomes the test for everything that follows. It's the same tool I've used for years with the photographers I coach creatively, and it works.
Which images you keep. How you edit them. What ends up on your website. By Sunday evening the technical and the creative are pulling in the same direction, and the direction is yours. Most training teaches you tools. This weekend gives the tools a job.
The job is your voice. Not a style you borrowed, not a preset. The thing that makes someone recognise a frame as yours before they see your name on it.
A voice is not a look. It is a set of decisions you keep making. What you point the camera at and what you leave out. How close you get. What you do with light. Which frames you keep and which ones you quietly delete. Make those decisions consistently and a pattern forms, and the pattern is the voice. Most photographers already have one and cannot see it, because nobody has ever put their work in front of them and named it back to them.
You can work on it deliberately. That is most of what this weekend does. We find the pattern in what you already shoot, test it against the promise you wrote on Saturday morning, then push it on purpose instead of by accident. Which images you keep. How far you take an edit. What goes on the website and what never leaves the drive. Every one of those is a place to feed the voice or starve it.
Most photographers get very good at the technical and never get around to that part, because nobody ever tells them it is a separate skill. It is, and it is the whole reason this weekend exists.
Vision, ethics, animal behaviour, gear and creative technique in the field
A catalogue built to surface your best work, plus the newest Lightroom ecosystem tools
The edit as the second half of the photograph: Lightroom, Nik, Topaz and DxO PureRAW
Portfolio, website, social, publishing, and what comes next for the work
Shoot It
The promise is your North Star. Everything starts with why.
- Why you photograph: social media, print, publication, competition, or purely for yourself. Each one changes everything downstream.
- Writing your promise, the one line that runs through the whole weekend
- Ethics as part of your vision, not a lecture
- Reading animal behaviour: anticipating the moment instead of chasing it
- Shooting for the sighting, not the single frame
- Planning off the promise: where to go, what time of year, and the pre-trip method, reference images pulled and collections built before you fly
- Gear in service of vision: settling "is my gear holding me back" for good
- Creative field techniques as decisions: panning, slow shutter, high key, low key, silhouette, backlight
File It
Your catalogue exists to surface the images that match your promise.
- Archiving long trips without losing your mind
- Folder and catalogue architecture that holds up for years
- The travel workflow: in camp versus back home
- Keywording for wildlife: species, place, behaviour
- Collections built for a creative-driven approach
- Monographs: the sighting as a body of work, not a hunt for one hero
- Wildlife-specific Lightroom technique, plus which new ecosystem updates actually matter
- Two ways to cull, and survey view: the fastest route from a burst to a monograph, with attendee submissions on screen
Finish It
The photograph is made twice. Once in the field, once at the desk.
- The accuracy trap: why correct edits feel dead, and editing toward the promise instead of toward the sliders
- Reading the image before touching it: light, story, destination
- Advanced masking, keeping the result natural
- New Lightroom features worth building into the edit
- Developing an editing signature: the collections audit, finding your tendencies and pushing them deliberately
- The plugin stack: DxO PureRAW, Topaz, Nik. What each one does, when it earns its place, and how it applies to your workflow
- The roadmap: Lightroom into Photoshop and out to the plugins
- Live edits of selected attendee RAW files, worked against the owner's promise. Your own images get their full treatment in your private sessions.
It's not a Lightroom course. Nobody walks you through the develop module from the beginning. It is about tools, used creatively: what's current in Lightroom, and what the Nik Collection, Topaz and PureRAW do to a wildlife file. Which ones earn their place, how far to push them, and when to leave the file alone.
Share It
An image that never leaves your hard drive does not exist yet.
- The website roadmap: how the whole thing hangs together
- Your promise, front and centre on the site
- Curating to 12 only: the 12-image portfolio, your calling card and your measuring stick
- Galleries by trip: documentation below, interpretation above
- Platforms: how to weigh the options without the overwhelm
- Working social with a spine: series thinking, sustainable cadence, your voice
- Getting published today: what counts, including online, and how to present it
- What comes next: prints, projects, a body of work
Your images, on screen. Submit three RAW files when you book. Selected files get edited live in session three, chosen for what they teach the whole room, and if yours isn't picked, it gets its full treatment in your private sessions.
The shape of each day
Same shape both days. Saturday is Shoot It and File It. Sunday is Finish It and Share It. All times US Eastern.
25 serious wildlife photographers, one weekend, no gatekeeping.
For a lot of people this is the first room of their own kind they've ever been in.
I have sat in the vehicle next to photographers with every piece of equipment they could ever need and no idea what they were trying to say. That gap is fixable, and fixing it is the best part of my job.
Guiding taught me the animal, all the way to the qualification that lets you walk guests on foot among big game. Fifteen years of hosting photographic safaris, and counting, taught me what photographers actually do when the moment is live. Twenty-five years of teaching taught me how to connect the two. And more than six years of coaching, performance and creative, taught me the part that matters most: how to unlock what's already in a person. It's the thing I'm best at.
I co-founded Wild Eye, one of Africa's best-known photographic safari companies, and I have presented on stage at Adorama New York and the B&H Event Space. These days I also train as a polar expedition athlete. This is the only place all of it meets.
Every seat comes with two hours of my time.
After the weekend you book two private one-on-one creative coaching sessions with me, both included with your ticket. Use them your way: go deeper on the themes, the content, or put your own images on the table and work them properly. Real one-on-one time, booked at your own pace. The first sits within 60 days of the weekend, the second any time up to the end of February 2027, so you can take it once you have been out shooting with what you built here. And if you find value in it, the option exists to carry on with longer packages afterwards, priced for people who have done the Intensive.
One ticket. Everything included.
Includes two private one-on-one sessions at $250 each.
Both days live · Two private sessions · The Briefing · The WhatsApp group · Lifetime recordings · The manual · Session summaries · The shortcut sheet · Your dashboard · Your images in the room
Booking takes about two minutes. Secure checkout through PayPal.
25 seats per intake. The next Intensive runs 6 & 7 February 2027 at $1,500.
When it runs
Session times for February and June confirmed when their booking opens. Everything is recorded, so missing a session live never means missing it.
This is for you if
- You shoot wildlife seriously and want the work to mean something
- You have been shooting for years and have thousands of images, and no clear idea what to do with them or how to move up a level
- You know your camera and have working Lightroom knowledge
- You are ready to build a body of work, not just take more photographs
- You want the work to go further: the website, a real presence on social, maybe even a business around it
- You have done the technical courses, the Lightroom courses, maybe even the behaviour courses. This is not a repeat of any of them: it is the layer that connects them, with zero overlap.
- You shoot with an iPhone but you are serious about the craft: this could still be for you
This is not for you if
- You are still learning exposure and focus
- You are opening Lightroom for the first time
- You want a gear-buying guide
- Your camera is brand new and you are still learning what the buttons do
- You want someone to hand you settings to copy
- You are happy with your work exactly as it is
- You want a quick fix rather than a way of working
The Intensive assumes you already know your camera and can find your way around your processing software. If that is still being built, start here and come back.
The company I co-founded with Jono Buffey and Andrew Beck years ago and am still a proud shareholder of. Specialist photographic hosts who teach the foundations the way they should be taught: digital photography, Lightroom, and real time in the field with a guide beside you, reading the animal as it happens. They run photographic safaris across Africa and around the world, so if what you actually need is to get out and put the hours in behind the camera, that is where I would send you.
The Journal of Wildlife Photography also runs a deep course library covering the technical lanes on your own time.
Two days, live, a small room, built around the people actually in it. A course teaches you things. The Intensive takes what you already know, your camera, your Lightroom, your hours in the field, and gives it one direction. You leave with a system, not a certificate.
No. Nobody walks you through the develop module from the beginning, and if that is what you need, the Wild Eye and Journal links further down this page will serve you better. What you do get is tools used creatively. What is current in Lightroom, and what the Nik Collection, Topaz and PureRAW do to a wildlife file. Which ones earn their place, how far to push them, and when to leave the file alone. Every intake gets rebuilt around whatever is current at the time.
No. You need to be passionate and know more than the basics: comfortable with your camera, able to find your way around Lightroom. From there, everyone is welcome.
The Intensive focuses on Lightroom Classic, because the catalogue is the spine of the whole system. We also work with Topaz, Nik and DxO PureRAW. Even if you use different software, the process and the way of thinking still carry.
No. You don't need to own them beforehand, and trials exist if you want to download one and play along over the weekend.
Selected files are edited live in session three, chosen for what they teach the room. Every photographer's submissions appear in the culling demonstrations, and your private sessions are where your own images get the full treatment.
A live 30-minute call one week before the weekend, at the same time and on the same link as the Intensive. The running order, how to prepare, and what the room wants from the two days. Recorded if you can't make it live.
A private group for your intake: 25 photographers and me. It opens at the Briefing and stays open after the weekend, for questions, follow-ups and keeping each other honest.
Everything is recorded and you keep lifetime access, plus a written summary of every session. Live is strongly recommended, the sessions are interactive and the Q&A is half the value, but the recording is always there.
Two of them, both included with your seat, sixty minutes each, on Zoom, one to one. You book them yourself from a private link on your dashboard. Book the first within 60 days of the weekend and the second any time up to the end of February 2027. Use them however you want: your images, your promise, your website, or whatever the weekend opened up.
US Eastern. The room opens 10:30, we teach 11:00 to 13:00 and 13:30 to 15:30, both days. Log on early and the waiting screen holds you.
Yes. This October is the first intake there has ever been, and it is priced with that: $1,250. From February 2027 the ticket is $1,500.
One weekend to connect it all.
Book your seat25 seats per intake. The next Intensive runs 6 and 7 February 2027 at $1,500.
October doesn't work?
The February intake runs 6 and 7 February 2027 at $1,500, and booking opens after the October weekend. Leave your email and you hear first, before seats go anywhere else.
Done. You'll hear first.
Running a camera club, a photography school or a team of ten or more? The Intensive can be booked as a private intake, dates and details by arrangement. Get in touch.