Yes, after many years (all my life?), I finally decided to go on, buy me a decent camera gear, and start with wildlife photography. In fact, the reason why I started guiding, more than 15 years ago, was to save money to buy me a camera with which I could start a career on professional wildlife photography... or that's what I thought at the time. It didn't take long until I realized that becoming a professional birding guide was indeed what I wanted to do, and I used the money that I earned while guiding, to buy newer and better birding gear, better binoculars, my first spotting scope, then even better binoculars, plus my second and third (and fourth, and it kept going) spotting scopes... Until the idea of getting into serious photography became more of a "retirement hobby". Something it was not going to happen any time soon.
And then came September 2025. Together with a mid-life crisis, and after guiding a long tour in Brazil, it was there, trying to take photos of birds in the dark Amazon Forest of Cristalino Lodge, where it became clear to me that I just wanted to throw away my bridge camera (which did an acceptable job in the Pantanal though) and get something better. I asked my friend and top wildlife photographer (and a Nikon content creator) Steve Sánchez for advise on which camera and lens should I get, having in mind that I wanted something as lightweight as possible, and I bought a Nikkor Z 400mm f/4.5 and an entry level APS-C camera body, the new Nikon Z 50 II (this last one was not my friend's recommendation, but I couldn't afford buying a full frame together with that relatively expensive lens, and this one was well rated online). So, it was 6 months ago, in September 2025, when I started learning manual photography from scratch, because I always used my bridge camera on automatic mode. With October came the Austral summer high season, and I spent 4 months leading long tours in different parts of Argentina and Chile, taking the opportunity to try photographing different birds and wildlife in very different environmental conditions, as long as it didn't interfere with the guiding (rule number one of any serious professional guide).
February 2026 (as I type these words in my computer), although still being high season, came very quiet for me because of a long tour that I had almost confirmed but didn't in the end, and I decided to leave it free of long tours (I'm only guiding a few short tours around Buenos Aires), so I'm only now starting to learn how to process photos. I started with Lightroom Classic because it looks (and is) easy, but in the near future I would like to learn how to use Photoshop.
Anyways, today I realized that I can just upload my photos here in my seldom used blog, so I can see them in better resolution than in Instagram or Facebook. So, here I am.
When I say "all my life" (go read the first sentence of the first paragraph in this post) I really mean it. I have always had an interest in birds and wildlife photography. My father's hobbie was photography (not wildlife, but general artistic photography) and he was pretty good at it. I remember having his compact camera borrowed when I was 10 years old, together with an expensive roll of film, and going to my hometown club, to try taking photos of birds in the forest. I remember some of the birds I photographed that day, including a Tropical Screech-Owl in a roosting site, but I also remember the huge disapointment when I saw the photos after they were developed: the birds on them didn't cover even 5% of the entire image... it was a (fairly cheap) compact camera. Then I learned about the existence of reflex cameras, and that with a 300mm or more, I would be able to reach these birds. And then I learned about their price... and that was the end of it (I was 10 years old, and my family could not afford such an expensive hobby for one of its members). And the issue was forgotten for a long time, but it came back when I was 23 years old, and spent half year attending an internship in Israel. My father again lent me a camera, this time a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8, with a 12x optical zoom, which provided a much better reach than the no-zoom compact camera I used in the 90's. With this camera I re-discovered bird and wildlife (and landscape, and people) photography, and in fact, thanks to this I got reconnected with birding, which at the time was a hobby that I wasn't giving priority. Probably this is what triggered, three years after it, my desire to become a professional wildlife photographer.
I don't know how far I will make it, but here I'm sharing with you my first few photos, shot in the last week of September and the first of October 2025, and developed last week, in my first ever approach to photo processing (so, don't be too rough please!). I will make a new blog entry with a selection of my photos, as I develop them.
My very first ones:
