Mark Smith Photography

The Grand Tetons, one of the coolest places in the country for every type of photography. You have those incredibly beautiful mountain peaks to the east and an amazing array of wildlife pretty much everywhere you look. I was fortunate enough to spend a very […]

I arrive at first light. The air is cool and thick with moisture. Standing among a small group of flowers I take in my surroundings. Sandwiched between the famous city of Seattle and the massive towering trees of the Olympic National Forest lies the Hood […]

Sunrise is always the perfect time for bird photography and this location has something very special. I’m looking for a nesting pair of Sandhill Cranes. They have been sitting on one egg for about a month. It should hatch any day now and I want […]

Welcome to the wild world of the wetlands right before sunrise. In order to get the full effect of this wild awakening, watch the video below. Now I can show you why we came here so early in the morning. We came here to see […]

It didn’t take long to find my first two subjects for the day. This first bird is a Northern Parula and these birds are tiny. This bird stayed in the shade of a larger tree so I lowered my shutter speed to get more light […]

In May of 2017, I used a really cool strategy that made for an incredible day of bird photography. I talk about this strategy and quite a few other ones in my book: Bird Photography: A Beginner’s Guide to Mastering the Art of Capturing Stunning […]

In the spring of 2017, I was lucky enough to find myself in the Florida Keys during Spring Migration. The really cool thing about this is the fact that there are thousands of birds who migrate from all over the world and end up resting […]

If you know your way around a Nikon camera body, then you might not find this post useful. However, If you are new to Nikon, and you find that the focus points you see through the viewfinder are frozen or stuck, DON’T PANIC! Your camera […]

I was recently thinking about how I could help every single new photographer on the planet. This required lots of thinking….I realized my brain power wasn’t quite enough to accomplish this task so I got together with some of my photographer friends and asked them […]

I take my Nikon D500 and my new Nikkor 200mm-500mm to the Stickmarsh and test performance on birds in flight. How did this combo perform? Unbelievable good!