I grew up on Bird Island in the Seychelles, an island with a small handful of humans and several million nesting seabirds, where owning binoculars was less a hobby and more a condition of residence. My parents were keen birdwatchers and so were most of their friends, and I could tell a noddy from a […]
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Best Cameras and Lenses for Bird Photography: Complete Kits by Budget
I’ve spent a lot of years pointing a camera at birds. The most memorable have been on trips: shoebill storks in Uganda, seabird colonies in the Seychelles and the Galapagos, and puffins in Iceland. The most frequent, by a distance, are the hummingbirds, woodpeckers and cardinals on our garden feeders most mornings, which is where […]
My Actual Travel Photography Kit (by Trip Type)
I’ve been a professional travel photographer since 2010, and in that time my camera bag has been on African safaris, out in the Arctic night in Finland and Iceland waiting for the northern lights, and around more European cities than I could sensibly list. I’ve also been a Vanguard ambassador for a number of years […]
The Best Binoculars for Safari in 2026: What We Actually Use and Recommend
I grew up on a small island in the Seychelles called Bird Island, which was home to a handful of people and several million nesting seabirds. Just about every adult I knew had a pair of binoculars within reach, and a decent chunk of my childhood was spent having the finer points of noddies and […]
Road Trip Essentials: What to Pack for a US Road Trip (And What to Skip)
I spent years as a visiting driver in the USA on my UK licence before I moved here, became a resident, and passed a state driving test. So I’ve packed for a US road trip from both sides of the rental counter, and I can tell you the packing list looks different depending on which […]
How to Read a Histogram in Photography (And What to Change When You Do)
I’ve been taking photos professionally for over thirty years, and for as long as my cameras have had a histogram, it’s been the one camera readout I check on almost every shoot. It has saved more of my photos than any other feature on any camera I’ve owned, and it’s also, by some distance, the […]
The Best Travel Tripods in 2026: A Photographer’s Buying Guide
I’ve been a professional travel photographer since 2010, and I’ve owned around eight travel tripods over the years, which is enough to know what matters and what doesn’t. I don’t buy or ask for new ones just to have them. I bring one in to test when a design does something new, the way Peak […]
The Best Camera Straps in 2026: A Travel Photographer’s Picks
The best camera strap for most photographers is the Peak Design Slide. I’ve been a professional travel photographer since 2010, I bought my first Slide back in 2015, and I haven’t used another strap system on my main cameras since. Of course, the Slide isn’t the right strap for everyone. The strap that suits an […]
2 Days in Naples, Italy: Is It Worth It? (Full Itinerary)
I’ve been travelling to Italy for over thirty years, and for most of them I treated Naples as a place you pass through rather than stay. The station, the port, a quick espresso, and onwards to somewhere tidier. Then Jess and I gave the city four nights, ate our way down Via dei Tribunali, climbed […]
The Best Packing Cubes for Travel: Our 2026 Picks and Buying Guide
We’ve been travelling and writing about it full time since 2010, and for the past four years most of our clothes have crossed borders inside a set of cheap Amazon packing cubes we bought when we were living in the UK. Jess, meanwhile, has been packing with the same Eagle Creek cubes for over twelve […]