Tin Man Lee

[Zof9]

Popped up in my YouTube feed.

Wow! Very different approach. Purist when it comes to editing. If you’ve considered entering competitions, well worth watching his vids.

Just purchased the Nikon 600mm 6.3.

Should have got a 300mn 2.8!

 

[RikWriter]

I'm sure he's a wonderful person, but after watching his YouTube videos, I don't care for him. He seems focused on taking photos that win competitions when most photographers don't care at all about that.

 

[SCoombs]

I tend to agree with Rik. I've found his videos helpful in some ways, but he also expresses a *very* narrow view of what constitutes a good photo which I just don't agree with and which based on their work a lot of other professionals don't agree with either.

I'd more easily overlook this if not that the overall message I take away from every one of his videos can best be summed up as, "if you aren't rich you can't take wildlife photos." The main advice he gives in every video is basically to buy a $10000 lens and spend $10000 on travel. He also does s lot of (probably unintentional) click bait videos that are superficially about something else but ultimately just say to buy an expensive lens. For instance, he had a video that was titled Ike a review of the 180-600 but ultimately just said but $15000 prime instead. If I recall he even has a video about what lenses to get on a budget which essentially just says that if you're one budget you have to either spring for a $5000 or $6000 exotic or take only wide angle photos.

 

[MatthewK]

Yep… can’t get good or interesting photos unless you shoot with a 600f4. Whatever, guy.

 

[ScrimshawPhotography]

He’s clearly a very talented photographer, but I personally find him extremely irritating for many of the reasons others have listed. Essentially if you don’t buy a giant prime lens and go on an expensive safari where you just happen to luck into an incredible sighting, don’t bother trying with photography. His big emphasis is on taking photos that invoke “emotion”. Well not every wildlife encounter turns into an emotional scene, and sometimes you can wait for hours on your 10k safari and still only come away with standard portraits. He’s so competition focused and basically shreds anyone’s photos that aren’t wildlife photographer of the year worthy. Honestly it’s people like him that make people give up photography entirely with that attitude.

 

[fcotterill]

He's rather parochial IMHO for reasons above. Not much of an artist being locked into a formula for image making. This is a pity, because the wildlife genres embrace considerable scope for creativity, yet too many photographers chase after cliches that follow and perpetuate stereotypes.

Consider instead creative approaches to depicting natural scenes such as the beautiful images of the Mana Pools floodplain, taken by @ElenaH

Photographers looking for guidance on composition (and more besides) will find Brad Hill's talks useful, and the context to his images published on his website.

TCSTV Live: Six Easy Steps to Capturing Great Wildlife Images

A presentation by Nikon Wildlife photographer, Brad Hill, on six easy steps to capture amazing wildlife photography and elevate your images! Sponsored by Nik...

www.youtube.com

Discussion of composition in general

Spencer Cox at Photography Life has been updating their series of articles on composition. Seems like a good chance to see what you all think is important. Do you follow 'rules' if so what are the rules. Do you go for 'principles of design' if so what principles are most important to you? Are...

bcgforums.com

Another established source is Moose Peterson his blog etc. He's a pioneer wildlife photographer

Nikon users-what photographer/bloggers to follow going forward?

I have all of Steve's books (except the A1 one), watched all of his videos, and think he is one of the best, if not the best, at explaining how to get better wildlife images. Steve, however, has now expressed a preference for Sony gear (compared to the Z9 "the A1 is the best for my needs," "the...

bcgforums.com

 

[GER]

I like his clips for the different perspective to many others that are out there.
I value candour and people that come across as genuine, above most attributes and, while I think Steve is clearly top of the tree for these attributes and also common sense, I rate Tin Man Lee and Jan Wegener as my equal second picks for wildlife photography guidance.
You just can't beat Steve's views though. Almost everything of his that I watch seems so obvious in retrospect that I wonder why it wasn't obvious to me prior to him saying it.

 

[jpturner]

As others have pointed out, TML is a bit of a gear collector - his recommendations tend to be at the very highest end. He also tends to hopscotch between brands (Canon to Nikon, Nikon to Sony, Sony back to Nikon, Nikon back to Sony) then tell stories how he lost photos because his cameras were not set up right or malfunctioned at key moments (that sound a lot like not knowing your kit because of the jumping around).

That said, some of his free post processing videos are rather good. They're all teasers for his paid content (which is super pricey relative to others in the market), but still I like his approach which is focused more on local and mild offsetting adjustments rather than outcomes which appear "photoshopped." A number of his captures are fantastic.

 

[ElenaH]

Consider instead creative approaches to depicting natural scenes such as the beautiful images of the Mana Pools floodplain, taken by @ElenaH

Thank you very much to mention me in this thread! I feel very flattered!

I wrote and extensive trip report or instruction in Safaritalk Forum about Mana Pools national park:

Mana Pools as a photographic destination. Trips 2022 and 2023.

Mana Pools as a photographic destination. I've been to Mana 5 times: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2023. It looks like I started to pay a visit to Mana each year and couldn't stop anymore ;-) I'd like to open a topic of Mana as a best (?) photographic destination, share some tips and locations. I th...

www.safaritalk.net

It is about where to photograph what and when to get particular results (in Mana Pools, of course), a kind of guide with instructions. Mainly for self-drivers.

As a self-driver we pay $130 for an accommodation unit with big en-suite tent and kitchen plus a vehicle rent which can be between $100-150 per day depending on vehicle type and insurance. So, as you can see it is not expensive. Or not so expensive as dedicated photographic safaris. The advantage is that we can stay longer and get known the park and its habitants better. Moreover, we often the first who drives out and find the animals. The lodges guests are still sleeping or having breakfast in the morning.

During several years we met Jens Cullmann https://jenscullmann.de/ in Mana Pools, He is an Africa Geographic photographer of the year (in 2020, I think) and has other awards. He, like we, just was staying for month or two in Mana Pools in a camping site with his own vehicle. Year by year ... and got a result!

We meet there also other professional and amateur wildlife photographers who are coming on the same self-driver basis.
So, believe me, it is not always necessary to book a very expensive safari. You can also try to be an expert yourself. It takes time but it is rewarding.
You can also join a Safaritalk forum. People there are building groups which reduce the costs. You can also get useful information here.

As for me, I was also placed between the best in some photographic competiotions. Lastly I got fisrt place for video in a small conmetition. And what I noiced is that the most important thing is a creativity! You will certainly get good results with your 10K gear but the winner will be he most creative person or a person who made a most creative setup.
Make a simple test - have a look what gear was used by award-winners through some last wildlife competitions.
I did. I bought a few books of "Bird Photographer of the Year" (BPOTY) for different years and "Wildlife Photographer of the Year" and put statistics into excel sheet for camera/lens. You would be surprised but in the last years the wide-angle lens are the winners for bird photos! Just have a look at 1-3 places of last years. It s also interesting what comes to the BPOTY books! Even iPhone photos if they are creative. A lot of normal (even consumer) cameras with normal lens.

So, we just need to develop our skills and creativity

But I must say I like to watch Tin Man Lee videos I like also his art to tell the stories and his personality and I love to grab 400/2.8 of my partner if he is not using it
But my best shots are made with consumer lenses

 

[SCoombs]

I happened to think of this thread today when I came across two recent videos essentially back to back with couldn't really be more opposed in viewpoint.

The first is from Tin Man Lee in which he essentially rejects almost all post-processing. I want to say "almost all" is an overstatement, especially because some of his previous videos have talked about using gradient filters to slightly modify the textures or white balance, but here he goes so far as to reject the idea of using (or at least using to more than a small minimum) even highlights and shadows sliders, claiming that photo judges will reject photos where people have done this based on the histogram (for what it's worth, most photo contest rules I have read explicitly allow doing things like this). He is much harsher on other sorts of playing with the light in editing which I think would certainly be more controversial among photographers, but my impression is that most wildlife shooters tend to make use of the general sort of techniques he rejects here at least a little bit.

The second was from Jan Wegener, who has an extremely liberal view of the sorts of editing that are fair game. He is very open about making fairly significant modifications to photos. A lot of photographers will clean up a stick or a stray blade of grass in Photoshop, but Jan will take that idea to an extreme, removing much more significant features and even reshaping features that are already there. That he does this has never struck me as all that extraordinary, but his view that almost all professional wildlife photographers do this strikes me as a bit overstated:

My view is that the majority of wildlife shooters are going to have views that fall in between these two, leaning perhaps slightly more towards Wegener's approach than Lee's but still very much in between. In any case, I thought it was, in the context of this discussion, striking just how opposed the two mindsets are. (By the way, before watching Lee's video I thought based off the Youtube title/preview card that the photo with the green checkmark was the more edited photo because it has an almost too-vibrant look to me).