Life-Saving Safety Tips and Equipment for Wildlife and Nature Photographers

Most outdoor photography tutorials are focused on getting the shot: what equipment to use, how to set up your camera, and how to edit your shots. But in his latest video, Danish photographer and former special forces soldier Morten Hilmer takes some time to address an even more important topic: how to stay alive.

If you’re a landscape, wildlife or nature photographer who wants to wander off the beaten path to capture your images, this video should be required watching (in addition to reading some outdoor survival guides and taking at least an introductory first aid course). In it, Hilmer—who was a member of the elite Danish special forces unit known as the “Sirius Dog Sled Patrol“—demonstrates some of the equipment he finds most useful when he’s on his “photo adventures and expeditions.”

If you want to skip straight to the survival portion of the program, that starts around the 6:25 mark. From there, Morten shares some tips and talks about some of the most critical equipment he caries on trips—equipment that can legitimately save your life if something were to go wrong in the wild. The items he demos include:

  • GPS
  • Satellite communicator
  • Rescue beacon
  • Smoke grenade
  • Hand-held flare
  • Signal gun
  • Light sticks
  • A small mirror
  • Rifle

Note: Hilmer demonstrated all of this gear at a shooting range where he was cleared to test all of this equipment.

Check out the full video for a breakdown of all of this gear, demos on how to use it, and safety tips born out of real outdoor experience and survival training. As Morten explains in the video, this might be more “boring” than talking about the latest lenses, but this information and gear could save your life… and you can’t say that about a lens.

To see some of the incredible nature photography that Morten captures on his adventures, read this guest post he published on PetaPixel, visit his website, give him a follow on Instagram, or subscribe to his channel on YouTube.

(via Fstoppers)

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