This is what we saw on OUR FIRST DAY in Costa Rica today!

This was our first full day in the rain forest of Costa Rica and my guides and I took my guests out for a day of photography, and it turned out to be a great one! We saw all four species of monkeys and so much more. Check out what we captured just today!

Our morning started with a siting of a Roadside hawk here on the resort property. I took all of these photos with the Canon R1 camera with the Canon RF 100-500mm lens.

After a short drive we came across some adult Howler monkeys. Myself and many of my guests caught this monkey yawning high up in a tree. He looks fierce, but I think he was just tired.

For the first time in 15 trips down here, we spotted and got great shots of a Slaty-tailed trogon. 

During the late morning we spotted a group of Spider monkeys with their babies.

The babies are the cutest!

Later we caught another group of Spider monkeys grabbing some nearby fruit for a snack.

It is not often that we see Anteaters, but we saw one today, and this one was not afraid of us at all.

We had ample chances to photograph this Anteater as it walked around, climbed trees...

...and foraged for some food. 

When we got back to the resort this afternoon, we were ready to pack it in for the day when one of the guides spotted this Two-toed sloth right by our rooms. I showed everyone how we could use the nearby leaves as a frame for the sloth. What a way to end a great day!

And tomorrow we are doing macro photography with the Red-eyed tree frogs and more. So much fun!

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Alaska and more.

• You can purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Backing up 65GB of images to my NAS drive from a different country!

One of the most challenging things I deal with is the secure storage of my images. Well...I call them my images, but they are also the images for my clients, and I hate having them in only one place. This keeps me up at night.

In the past week I was crazy busy with photo shoots for a government client, another institution, and 2 personal events. After all of this, I had just enough time to get all 10,000 images onto my MacBook Pro before heading to the airport on Sunday morning. Just in case something happened to my laptop in transport, I duplicated all those RAW files onto a SSD back in California before heading out.

I then spent the 9 hours of travel going through all the images and purging the duplicates and rejects, and ranking the good ones. I renamed all the files, retouched my favorites and got each gallery ready to post to my clients. I posted one event from the airport in Houston and the remainder from here in Costa Rica.

BUT at this point I had all the curated images only on my laptop and that makes me nervous. In the past, I would back them up on one of my Crucial 4TB SSDs and keep that SSD in a different bag from my laptop as I traveled, but was not ideal. I also tried uploading to my NAS drive directly through the web app but every time there was a disconnect from the Internet, or I had to close my laptop to move it, the synch would have to start over and that was impossible.

A couple of months ago I was watching an online presentation from QNAP and they mentioned something about Dropbox integration and this peaked my interest. I was thinking "Can I create a Dropbox folder and have it automatically uploaded to my QNAP 8-Bay NAS drives back in California?"

I reached out to the support people at QNAP and they were nice enough to help me set this up and, even though I am jumping ahead of things, it works amazing!! 

Using the Hybrid Backup Sync application from QNAP, I was able to create a link to my Dropbox account.

I then told the HBS app which folder to monitor.

Before leaving for this trip, I created a test folder with a handful of images to see if it worked, and within seconds of me uploading the files to my Dropbox folder, they were on the NAS drive. When landing here in Costa Rica, I took the two folders (with approximately 30GB of images each) and moved them the "Upload to QNAP Server" Dropbox folder I had created.

I let the computer run all night while I attempted to catch up on some much needed sleep. When I woke up in the morning, I saw that there were only a few more files remaining to upload to Dropbox. After a quick shower I checked again and the process was complete.

At this point, I was happy to have them in the cloud but wanted to check and see if they really had made it to my NAS drive. I used the MyQNAPCloud web link to log into my server from this remote location.

I was happy to see that both of the new folders had transferred over..

I then opened the folders to make sure that the synch had happened correctly and that everything is in place, and as expected, all 65GB of images are safe and sound! I guess this means that the images are in 4 places right now. They are on my MacBook Pro, Dropbox (for now), my server and my backup server. Sweet!

I am really excited about this newfound data transfer method and look forward to using it for future trips and even from here in Costa Rica this week for all my favorite photos. And thanks to the support people at QNAP for helping me get this set up.

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Alaska and more.

• You can purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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The fun of photographing and meeting celebrities

Over the years, I’ve had the joy of photographing thousands of incredible people—families, individuals, and professionals—for everything from personal milestones to business portraits. Just a couple of weeks ago, someone asked me if I’d ever photographed any celebrities. As I started listing a few familiar names, it inspired me to dig through my archives. I thought it would be fun to share some of those moments with you.

Lets start with Steve Wozniak, as he is both a legend for inventing the Apple Computer and also a personal friend. I have photographed Woz numerous times, and this photo was taken at one of his surprise birthday parties.

Drew Carey is best known for his TV shows and comedy but also happens to be an avid photographer and friend of Steve Wozniak. I photographed him at the same birthday party and we had a good long talk about the passion of photography.

Of course, I have photographed countless Olympic athletes over the last 20 years, with too many to even count.

Here is a photo of Katie Ledecky showing off some of her medals from the Tokyo Olympics. She had just finished giving a press conference, and I asked her to hold up her medals for this shot.

And then there are the musicians... I have always loved music, and really enjoy going to concerts and photographing the artists. 

This is a photo I took many years ago of the amazing singer, songwriter and pianist, John Legend while he performed at a private event.

Kid Rock is a real "interesting" person and musician. I photographed him many years ago, back when he was known more for his music than his antics.

This photo was taken at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, TN as Charlie Daniels played his most famous song, "The Devil Goes Down to Georgia". Even at his older age, he could still belt it out.

I have a client who is from Florida, so naturally she had to have Flo Rida at her birthday party. I remember that he put on a great show, and I also remember one of his people spilling a drink on one of my Canon flashes. That flash was sent into Canon Professional Services for a major cleaning. :)

You might remember the hit songs by Christopher Cross. He was best known for "Sailing" and "Ride Like the Wind" from the 1970s. I photographed him as he performed at a private concert for one of my clients.

That same private concert featured the one and only Lionel Richie, who proved he can still perform at the highest level. 

He was gracious enough to let me photograph him on stage and let me have free reign wherever I wanted to go to get the best photos of this legend. 

Another client of mine hired Charlie Puth to perform at one of their private events. 

A couple of years later, that same client hired Meghan Trainor to perform at another personal event. 

In 2021, one of my clients had a party in their backyard and told me that they had hired a well known band for the event. As is usually the case, she wanted to surprise me and not tell me who it was until the last minute. When I got to their home, I had to ask and she told me that "Imagine Dragons" were performing that night. I had to ask, because when I capture these private concerts, I need to talk to the band manager to determine the best places for me to be on stage, without interfering with the band or technicians (as well as the placement of the pyro boxes).

They were absolutely fantastic and I had fun photographing them, and listening to the music as well. I have always enjoyed their music, so this was a real treat for me.

And even though I am much more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it, I still like getting my photo with these celebrities.

Me with Drew Carey and Steve Wozniak.

Me trying to be cool with Flo Rida (and probably not succeeding).

Laura and I with Lionel Richie.

Me with Meghan Trainor

Me hanging with the guys from Imagine Dragons.

Click on the image above to watch this funny video

Oh - and I almost forgot, I photographed for Jonathan Goldsmith and his family many times. But you would know him better as "The Most Interesting Man in the World".

I have these and many more on a new celebrities web page.

I have been very fortunate over the years to photograph some really unique and fun events, and even though not every one of them has famous people, they are all entertaining in their own way.

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Alaska and more.

• You can purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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The Next Olympics - Milan 2026 is less than 10 months from now!

It seems like yesterday that I was blogging from the Summer Olympics in Paris, and yet we are coming up really fast to the Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy. For most of you, February of 2026 and these Olympics are still far enough out that they have probably not even crossed your minds, but for those of us heading to the Games, we are already one year into the planning. And this Olympics is going to be VERY different from any that I have ever covered.

The biggest challenge of these Winter Olympics is that the sports are scattered across the country with no easy way to travel from one cluster to another.  If you look at the maps below, you will see that there are basically 5 clusters with different sporting competitions, and we have been told by the authorities that there will be almost no way to move from one cluster to another in a single day. They are telling us that the drive times can be 10 hours each way and that is if the weather is good. 

So...what does this mean to me? This means that for the first time ever, I will be covering only a small selection of the sporting activities that are located in the city of Milan.  You will also notice that the Opening Ceremony is in the city of Milan but even the Closing Ceremony is hours way in Verona.

Barring any unforeseen changes, I will be covering only Ice Hockey (as my primary sport for Team USA), Figure Skating, Short Track, and Speed Skating. I will very likely be at the Opening Ceremony but not sure if I will be at the Closing Ceremony (since it is hours from Milan, usually does not get over until after midnight, and it would likely take me hours to get transportation).

This is disappointing for me for the following reasons:

1. Even though ice hockey is my favorite sport, I love the challenge of covering as many different sports as I can at each Olympics.

2. I will miss the variety of sports photos as compared to all previous Winter Olympics.

3. I am sure that I will have FOMO (fear of missing out) when seeing all the other sports happening which I can not capture.

4. I will not be able to share as much variety with all of you.

With that said, I am already challenging myself to take this situation and turn it into a positive. Here are the advantages of the situation:

1. I can photograph more of the city and the Olympic fans from all over the world, capturing the Games from a different perspective (to share with all of you).

2. I will have more time to write blog posts (and check my spelling). :)

3. Maybe this will be my first and only Olympics where I do not have to run everywhere for 3 weeks.

In the mean time, I have completed the necessary credential process and been granted my EP (multi-sport) credentials for Milan. I have had access to the Extranet and been researching the logistics. I have also been in constant contact with the housing officials to get a press hotel near a train station. Like Paris, we will have to rely on the train system in Milan to get to the venues. 

As you can see, we are already past the accommodation deadlines and they are assigning housing to the press. 

This is the list of press hotels from which I could pick my top choices. I sent in my top 3 choices, but as often happens, I did not get any of those. Instead they put me in a place that was not ideal. After some back and forth with the accommodations team, I now have a hotel which is a 10 minute train ride from the main ice hockey venue and 50 minutes from the second venue.

Next on my list is to book flights, complete the contract with the team, and determine my schedule. I was recently notified by USA Hockey that the first women's game is the day BEFORE the Opening Ceremony, so I need to get there early enough to get time adjusted and be ready for press conferences and that game.

Regardless, I will be there with a smile on my face and ready to capture as much action as I can. After all, I get to be there on the glass, interact with so many amazing athletes, and see a lot of good on-ice action.

A good friend of mine has already purchased tickets to the men's gold medal game and the face value on those tickets are really high! See below.

As always, I will keep you all up-to-date with the Olympic plans, and I look forward to all of you following along once again.

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Alaska and more.

• You can purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Heading back to New York to speak at the B&H BILD show!

I know we are still a couple of months away from the middle of June but I wanted to let you all know about the upcoming B&H BILD Expo in New York City. B&H created this show a couple of years ago to celebrate their 50th anniversary, and the show was so successful that they have decided to do it again. 

The expected attendance is more than 10,000 people (making it the largest photography show in the US), What gets me most excited about this show is the energy and passion that it brings to our business, which frankly has been somewhat lacking in the last 10 years. I am hopeful that B&H will make this an annual or semi-annual event going forward. Not only am I excited about this show, but I am also honored that they asked me to speak at the expo this year. 

If you love photography and creativity, want to learn, and you want to see all your favorite camera suppliers in one location, I highly recommend you come to New York on June 17 and 18. And if you do make it, I would love to see you at my presentation. Come by and say hello!

You can see more about the show at the BILD web site HERE.

And you can register for free HERE.

Once I know my speaking times, I will let you all know those details.

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Alaska and more.

• You can purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Amazing one-of-a-kind Owl-eyed Sloth we saw on the last trip to Costa Rica!

For years, I had heard about this one sloth that had the eyes of an owl, but having lead more than 15 photo tours to Costa Rica, we have never once caught a glimpse of this amazing sloth. 

When I was leading another photo tour in the rain forest of Costa Rica back in November, we had a rare sighting of the one and only Owl-eyed Sloth and we all went crazy photographing this one-of-a-kind animal.

This was the best shot of the Owl-eyed Sloth when we had a really clear sighting of the amazing eyes. If you join me in Costa Rica, maybe we will see this amazing sloth once again!

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Alaska and more.
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Top 10 things you DON'T want to do with your digital camera!

This blog post is LONG OVERDUE and I have been meaning to write it for quite some time. As opposed to most of my other blog posts where I encourage all of you to DO or TRY certain things with your digital cameras, this blog post is just the opposite. I am going to cover the top 10 things that you should NOT do with your camera.

I have compiled this list from 20 years of being a full-time photographer, but also from many years of leading photo tours and teaching others. Some of these are absolutely imperative and can ruin your camera or images and others are precautionary tips to protect your gear. So without further ado, let's get right to the list.

DO NOT CHANGE LENSES WITH YOUR CAMERA UPSIDE DOWN!

If you have gone on a photo tour with me, you know that this is something I always caution people about on day 1. Any time I see someone changing a camera with the lens opening facing up I cringe. Doing this allows any dust in the air to fall into the camera and create nasty dust spots on your images. Do NOT do this! And do not leave your camera exposed (without a lens) for any prolonged period of time. Whenever I change lenses, I try to do so as quickly as I can and I never do this in a windy, dusty environment. (Note: I even used one of my older cameras to take this photo because I did not want to expose any of my current cameras to dust.)

DO NOT DELETE IMAGES IN YOUR CAMERA

I wrote a blog post about this way back in 2016 and it is one of my most read posts ever with almost 400k reads. Even though a lot has changed in 9 years, this tip still holds. I know many people who say "I delete images in my camera all the time and have not had a problem", but regardless, I never recommend doing this. It can cause corruption in your memory card and you can lose images. You can format the card in your camera, but don't delete individual images.

FORMAT MEMORY CARDS IN YOUR CAMERA AND NOT ON YOUR COMPUTER

It is a really good idea to format your memory cards whenever you are photographing a new event, but I always recommend doing this in your camera and not on your computer. The reason is this: your camera will format the card the way that it wants to, adding the appropriate data structure and folders. I even make sure to format my memory cards in the same camera model I am using it in. In other words, if I am using a CFexpress card in my Canon R1, I format it in that camera. If I use that same card in my Canon R5 Mark II, I format the card in that camera.

 
DO NOT USE YOUR CAMERAS BATTERY UNTIL THEY ARE COMPLETELY DRAINED

When I see that my battery indicator is blinking red, I almost always change batteries at that time. Will I push that a little bit? Sure. But I never shoot until the battery is dead. The reason that this is bad is because if you take a photo and the camera is in the middle of writing that image to your memory card when the battery dies, it can cause you to lose ALL of your images. I also do not fill my memory cards completely for the same reason. I don't want the camera to be writing part of the image and then the card fills. The newer cameras are basically computers as much as image capturing devices, but I don't want to leave anything to chance.


DON'T LET THE CAMERA DETERMINE YOUR FOCUS POINT

Many of the newer mirrorless camera have subject and face detection, but for any camera that does not, you want to determine where the focus is, and not leave that up to the camera. I can not tell you how many times I have helped a new camera owner with their settings and see this left as a default. Most consumer cameras (especially DSLRs) ship with all the focus points turned on, and defaulted to auto select. This means that when a novice picture taker hits the shutter button, the camera tries to determine the subject and what should be in focus. I really hate this! If you are using one of the older cameras, or if your camera randomly picks a focal point, I really encourage you to learn how to manually select that point. You will thank me for that at some point.





DO NOT LEAVE THE "RELEASE SHUTTER WITHOUT CARD" ON!

This is one of my biggest pet peeves and, for the life of me, I do not understand why the camera companies set this as a default. Why would you ever want to use your camera without a memory card??? As soon as you get your camera back in your hands, make sure this is turned off. I know several people who have gone out and photographed something like their kid's soccer game (Mike - you know who you are) to later find that they had no card in the camera and they have not one photo of the game. I have heard that the camera companies default this on so that the resellers can demonstrate the cameras without a card, but I do not like the fact that the reseller is prioritized over the user.





PUT YOUR LENS HOOD ON THE RIGHT WAY!


For all of you who have gone on photo tours with me, you have heard me push this point many times. Sure, the lens hoods ships to you in the reverse position (as seen above) because they fit better in the box, but that does not mean that you should leave them this way. Turn them around! Why? There are three reasons that you want your lens hood turned around:


1. It is good protection for the front element of your lens. If you drop your camera or bang the lens against something, you would much rather scratch or break a lens hood than break the lens.


2. The hood helps protect light from hitting the front element of your lens, which can ruin your photos (unless you are looking for that effect).


3. It is much easier to zoom or refocus a lens with the hood not in the way.





DO NOT THROW YOUR CAMERA INTO AN UNPROTECTED BACKPACK

You cameras and lenses are built to last but that does not mean that they like to be banged around. I always cringe when someone shows up to one of my photos tours with their camera equipment in a standard backpack with no separators. I use the ThinkTank bags for my camera gear and never put them in a situation where one piece of equipment might bang into another.

AVOID SALT WATER

This is one tip that I have added mainly because I have broken this rule more than once and paid the price for it. When photographing the image that you see above, I was on the front of a small boat in the ocean off the coast of Mexico. I was working hard to get this shot, but myself and my camera were getting drenched from the waves crashing against the front of the boat. A month later that camera was in for repair at Canon Professional Services and the body was corroded. It was an expensive mistake on my part. I highly recommend using a protective device over the camera or staying away from salt water altogether. Note: I have found that fresh water is much less of a hazard and I rarely ever use rain covers when shooting in the rain forest.


DON'T USE THE CAMERA STRAPS THAT COME WITH YOUR CAMERA


When I get a new camera, the camera strap stays in the box. I don't even bother to take it out. Spending more than 20 years of my life with a camera on my body, I have come to loathe any neck strap. I never recommend using the camera company straps because of the strain that it puts on your neck. I use the BlackRapid straps because they are well made, but mostly importantly they go across my body which is WAY more comfortable.


I hope that these tips help you in the future!


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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Alaska and more.
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