Hi friends,

I got home from Taiwan a few days ago. The short version: The trip was beautiful… and frustrating in almost equal measure.

The trip with the Taiwan Tourism Administration was one of those experiences where the destination completely exceeded my expectations while the logistics tested me more than once.

The Lantern Festival didn’t end up happening because of some scheduling issues, and there were stretches where I had to actively redirect my energy away from being frustrated and toward finding something worth shooting.

That's honestly one of the harder skills in travel photography. It's easy to make great work when everything lines up perfectly. The real test is what you do when it doesn't.

The highlights ended up being Sun Moon Lake and Alishan Forest, and both absolutely blew me away. I'm still sorting through shots, but I'll be sharing a lot more from Taiwan in the coming weeks.

I'm also working on a new whiteboard video breaking down focal lengths that I'm hoping to finish and post soon. It's one of the questions I get asked most, and I wanted to explain it in a way that actually clicks visually.

Alright, let me share a tip that's directly connected to what I was shooting in Taiwan.

Forests are deceptive. You walk into one, it feels magical, and then every photo you take looks like a cluttered mess of branches with no clear subject. Shooting in Alishan Forest in Taiwan last week was a solid reminder that forest photography requires a completely different mindset than wide-open landscapes.

Simplify aggressively. The biggest mistake in forest photography is trying to capture the entire scene. Your eye naturally filters out visual clutter, but your camera captures all of it. Look for one strong element: a single tree trunk, a beam of light, a patch of moss. Build your composition around that.

Use light as your subject. On overcast days, forests look beautiful because the soft light eliminates harsh shadows and lets the greens really pop. But when sun breaks through the canopy, those light beams become the photograph. Don't fight mixed lighting conditions in a forest. Work with them.

Go tighter than you think. Wide-angle lenses in forests often create chaos. Try going to 50mm, 70mm, even 100mm. The compression isolates elements and creates a sense of layered depth through the trees that a wide lens just can't achieve.

Look up. And down. Some of the best forest compositions come from tilting up through the canopy or finding low ground elements - a trail, a tree stump, something to help organize the chaos in front of you. Test breaking the habit of always shooting at eye level and you'll find things nobody else sees.

Nikon's patent fight is shaking up the third-party lens world. Nikon's lawsuit against Viltrox over Z-mount patents went to court on March 2, and within the same day, both Sirui and Meike pulled their Z-mount autofocus lenses from Chinese retailers. Licensed manufacturers like Sigma and Tamron are unaffected. The real question for Nikon shooters: does this end with royalty agreements, or are we heading toward a Canon RF-style lockdown where budget third-party glass largely disappears?

British Wildlife Photography Awards 2026 winners just dropped. The overall winner is Paul Hobson's black-and-white image of a toad swimming across a woodland pond. The backstory: he built a glass box, sank it to the pond floor with ballast and old tripod legs, and triggered the shutter remotely while sitting on the bank for hours. Most toads sat on top of the glass instead of swimming over it. Over 12,000 images submitted. Patience wins again.

Zanele Muholi wins the 2026 Hasselblad Award. The Hasselblad Award is widely considered photography's most prestigious prize, and this year it went to South African visual activist Zanele Muholi. The prize carries about $218,000, a gold medal, and a Hasselblad camera. Muholi uses portraiture to document and celebrate Black LGBTQIA+ communities through images that are both formally striking and deeply intentional. Previous winners include Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin.

This week's creator highlight connects directly to that BWPA story above. Paul Hobson is a UK-based wildlife photographer whose approach to the craft is about as far from content-creation speed as you can get. No quick turnarounds or posting schedules. Just deep observation, creative problem-solving, and a willingness to spend months on a single image.

His winning toad photograph is a perfect example. He built the underwater housing himself, figured out the depth and focus distance manually, and then waited on the riverbank triggering a remote shutter until a toad finally cooperated. That kind of patience isn't glamorous, but it's often what separates a good photograph from one that wins international competitions.

His broader body of work with British wildlife is worth exploring. There's a quietness to it that I really admire. Check out his work if you appreciate photographers who let the subject set the timeline instead of the other way around.

This is the tripod I'd recommend for anyone who films with a small action camera or phone. There are so many moments that I don’t have time to set up a camera tripod but I can quickly pull this out and set my phone on it.

It extends tall enough to use as a standing tripod, collapses small enough for a carry-on, doubles as a selfie stick for video, and costs a fraction of what the premium options run.

The ball head is surprisingly smooth for the price. It's not going to replace a serious landscape tripod for long exposures, a heavy camera, or wind - but for quick phone moments while you travel, it punches well above its weight.

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I'm still deep in editing from Taiwan, and the Nat Geo Creator Cohort has some things coming up that I'm looking forward to sharing with you soon. Next week I'll hopefully have more Taiwan content ready to show.

This week's question: What's a trip that didn't go as planned but still gave you some of your favorite photos? I'd love to hear about it. Hit reply and let me know.

See you next week,
Paige

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P.S. Curious how I edit my photos? These are the exact presets I use for almost every travel & landscape shoot (designed for both mobile and desktop).