Mission

The model

That is the work. Not a print shop. Not a campaign that asks you to feel something and then scroll on.

I go to places where the default economic choice is still to clear vegetation for agriculture. I make photographs and short contextual videos of the birds that depend on that vegetation. The videos go out on social media, where they reach millions of viewers worldwide. I license the work back to local lodges, guides and community projects so they can show the world what they have.

The location is always named. A species portrait floating in nowhere is not the point. A destination that can earn a living without taking the trees down is the point.

Why birds

I have worked this way in Colombia and Honduras, and in other wild places where birdlife is the clearest proof that a forest is still intact. Birds leave first when the canopy goes. People feel that loss faster than they feel a missing tree.

A bird in a standing forest is an argument. It says this place is already valuable. You do not have to invent a reason to keep it. You have to stop replacing it.

Standing forest has to be seen to pay

Ecotourism is the alternative I am trying to make visible. Not as a slogan, and not as a promise that a photograph will save a valley.

Agriculture pays because it is simple: cut, plant, sell. Standing forest pays only if someone can see it, want it, and travel to it. Local people still have to build the capacity: trails, guides, rooms, safety, the story they tell when a visitor arrives.

I help with some of those projects, but I do not fund them and I do not run them. When I do take part, it is because we have partnered to make an event happen. What I do is supply the images they could not otherwise afford, tied to a real place, so the branding of the destination can start before clearing feels inevitable.

What the photos do, and what they don’t

I will not tell you that any one site went from nothing to famous because of my photographs. I do not have that story, and I will not invent it.

The honest version is smaller and more useful. Locals ask for the photos. They use them. Some of those places stay viable enough to keep operating. Some are not ready yet, because they do not have the investment to build capacity.

My pictures are a spark, not the engine. The people on the ground do the heavy work. If a forest is still standing, it is standing because they chose to keep it, not because a photographer arrived.

One job

That limit is the model, not a flaw in it. A lot of conservation photography tries to do everything: shoot, fundraise, speak for the community, sell prints, and claim the outcome.

I do one job. I make the work. I give it to the people who need it for their own place. I publish the location so more eyes land on that place. Eyes are the point. A person who sees a named forest and thinks they could go there, or protect the trees where they live, is the result I am after.

In the field

The named places

A record of some of the places in the stories, in Colombia and Honduras, dated by when each photograph was taken.

1. June 2017

   Río Blanco reserve, near Manizales, Caldas, Colombia

   Brown-banded Antpitta, Vulnerable

2. June 2017

   Otún Quimbaya Fauna and Flora Sanctuary, near Pereira, Risaralda, Colombia

   Cauca Guan, Vulnerable

3. June 2019

   Ukuku Rural Lodge, Juntas, Tolima, Colombia

   Tolima Dove, Near Threatened

4. February 2020

   El Caraño, Florencia, Caquetá, Colombia

   Flame-faced Tanager

5. February 2021

   La Minga Ecolodge, Dapa, Valle del Cauca, Colombia

   Multicolored Tanager, Near Threatened

6. January 2022

   Hostal Monte Verde and Hacienda Montecristo, Copán; near Tierra Blanca, Gracias, Lempira, Honduras

   Turquoise-browed Motmot, Painted Bunting, Honduran Emerald (Vulnerable)

7. August–September 2022

   Veracruz and Hacienda Montecristo, Copán; Hummingbird Garden Celaque, Villa Verde, Lempira, Honduras

   Gartered Violaceous Trogon, Lesson’s Motmot, Sparkling-tailed Hummingbird

8. May 2023

   Mocagua Indigenous community, Amazonas, Colombia

   Roadside Hawk, White-winged Swallow

9. July 2024

   Mirador de Las Palmas lookout, Roncesvalles, Tolima, Colombia

   Yellow-eared Parrot, Vulnerable

10. September 2025

    Caracolí Bird House, Villavicencio, Meta, Colombia

    Golden-bellied Euphonia

Answering the critics

Other photographers have criticized this, mostly not to my face. The charge is that I work for free, that I take clients who would have paid, that I take freebies from the places I photograph.

I understand the fear. If you make your living licensing images, someone giving work away looks like a threat to the rate. I am not interested in spending my energy answering that. The people I work with were not, in most cases, about to hire a commercial shooter. A rural lodge trying to keep a forest does not have a stock budget. Giving them the files is not taking a client from someone else. It is creating a use that did not exist.

Whose benefit it is

I also do not accept the idea that the locals are being used. They ask. They use the images to present their own destination. They keep whatever visitors and attention follow. I am not the middleman for their money. I am the person they call when they need pictures of what they are trying not to lose.

The part I want to be known for is the model, not the highlight reel. The photographs matter because they are evidence of a living place. The practice matters more. A photographer can be useful without being a vendor, and without standing between a community and the benefit of its own landscape.

Teaching

I teach photography in remote communities and at conferences and fairs, so other people can do this too. Not everyone who takes a class goes out and gives work away. Some do. That is enough.

A model only one person can run is a hobby. A model a few other photographers can run, in their own regions, with their own relationships, is how the idea travels.

Student work stays off my main feed. On a fast scroll, mixed credit gets read as mine, and that blurs the point. If you see a photograph on my main channels, it is mine. A student doing this work gets their name on it, on their own page. The classes are part of the mission. They are not a disguise for my portfolio.

An invitation

If you live near a forest that someone wants to clear, look at what is already there before you accept that agriculture is the only way people survive. Birds, understory, a named place that could host a visitor: those are arguments for keeping vegetation. The same choice shows up in a backyard, a woodlot, a city edge and a remote valley. Saving a tree instead of taking it down is the whole idea.

If you run a lodge, a guide service or a community project in a wild place and you need images to show what you are protecting, you can ask. The license to you is at no cost. The location gets named. You do the rest.

If you photograph, and you have been told that giving work away makes you a fool, you can still decide what the work is for. I decided it is for the forest staying up, and for the people who stay with it.

Ask for photos of your place