We wanted to take some time to look at our 4th year of operations for Visual Wilderness. In many ways, this has been a defining year and one marked with change in the direction of our business. Here are some of the highlights from 2018…
Awesome Blog Posts
Our contributing photographers continued to create some fantastic blog posts. Below are some of the most popular ones from 2018 (in no particular order).
Photo Stacking for Night Photography – By Joshua Snow
6 Ridiculously Simple Tricks for Sunrise Photography – By Chrissy Donadi
4 Post-Processing Mistakes Made by Beginners – By Anne McKinnell
A Beginners Guide to Organizing your Photos – By Varina Patel
Understanding White Balance in Photography – By Lace Andersen
How to Set White Balance for Wildlife Photography – By Rahul Sachdev
Newsletter and Web App Notifications
We have over 42,000 subscribers for our InFocus newsletter and over 7,000 subscribers get educational content via notifications from Visual Wilderness on their mobile and desktop devices. Not surprisingly, both of these free resources have superb engagement and a worldwide audience. Here is what some of the readers have to say…
Great stuff!
I’m enjoying your Creating Impact Course video tutorials and case studies. They’ve really helped clarify a number of areas that have always been a big vague for me – like hyperfocal distance! I’ve also really appreciated seeing your thought process when deciding how to photograph a location and the steps you work through in post processing. Great stuff! :)
Ruth Smith
Tasmania, Australia
You guys do a fabulous job teaching
You guys do a fabulous job teaching the Essential Filters Course in a fairly easy and straightforward manner that we can comprehend quickly. I have already learned a lot about different tips and tricks just by watching some of your video courses. Kudos to both of you and I deeply appreciate it.
Jeffery Wong
California
Excellent Class for a New Student
The Creative Sharpening Class by Jay Patel enlightened me as to the different approaches to sharpening various aspects of a landscape scene. It would be an excellent class for a new student of Lightroom as well as someone experienced who can be reminded by the very good illustrations of the various tools and the interactive potential of these tools in Lightroom. I went back over part of this tutorial several time. It is excellent.
Larry Wilkinson
Michigan, United States
I can confidently say excellent job!
This (Visual Wilderness video courses) is exactly what I didn’t realize I’ve been looking for over the past few years: the videos, case studies, raw files, and explanations are what set this so far apart from anything else I’ve found. I have just started the course, but I can confidently say excellent job!
Mark Petry
Downingtown, Pennsylvania
You have solved a huge mystery for me
Varina – this is EXACTLY what I have been studying these days and you have solved a huge mystery for me with this explanation of hyperfocal distance. I’m going to put your chart in my iPhone so I have it with me when I’m out in the field.
Catherine Martin
Palm Desert, California
I really enjoyed the Behind the Lens course.
I really enjoyed the Behind the Lens course. It is the best of all the courses you’ve made. I own every one of your webinars and courses and this one was as intuitive as any of them.
Frankie Leyro
Fort Belvoir, VA, USA
The material is presented in easy-to-digest
I have been using filters for many years and still learned a number of helpful tidbits of information I didn’t already know or hadn’t thought about from the Essential Filters Course. The material is presented in easy-to-digest segments of video that you can sit down and watch all of back-to-back, or if you only have a few minutes you can watch them one at a time. The way the segments are divided makes it easy to go back and find specifics you want to review.
Jennifer Wolf
Cardiff, California
I’m successfully using Hyperfocal Distance all the time now!
I spent gobs of time trying to wrap my head around Hyperfocal Distance, but for whatever reason, I just never found the right teachers until I saw your class on the subject. I’ve watched it twice now, and guess what? I’m successfully using Hyperfocal Distance all the time now! It’s literally like you guys opened a curtain and let the sun in.
Kirk Peterson
Tennessee, USA
Varina is an exceptional teacher
Varina is an exceptional teacher (I’ve experienced hundreds over the years and she is among the very best, if not at the top). These case studies are an exceptional complement to the fieldwork teachings where both Varina and Jay excel with their skills and explanations. The Ultimate Landscape Photography Course is a MUST HAVE EXPERIENCE for anyone wanting to get into or improve their skills in this field.
Ron Brit
Manitoba, Canada
You do a terrific job of explaining things clearly
I just wanted to let you know that I’m working my way through the Ultimate Landscape Photography Course and loving it! You do a terrific job of explaining things clearly, and you have a great onscreen presence and rapport with each other. Really enjoying it – looks like I’ll have to get Behind the Lens next… And I look forward to more after that!
Jack Johnson
Beloit, WI, USA
VW Streaming Service
This was the first full year of a streaming service offering for our customers. We have an excellent subscriber retention rate and continue to provide new content throughout the year. In addition, we introduced more than eight new nature photography video tutorials that were available for free for streaming subscribers. Here are the last three video courses...
In 2018, we expanded our video tutorial offering by becoming a multi-vendor marketplace for nature photographers. We now offer video courses from several contributing photographers on all aspects of landscape photography. Here are some of the most popular video courses from this past year...
Our latest video courses were based on fine-tuning your start-to-finish workflow for some of the most important aspects of photography. For example, we created Illuminated & Working with Light which focuses on giving landscape photographers a complete workflow for capturing and processing different types of light.
These video courses, with a razor-sharp focus on different aspects of photography, were our best sellers in 2018.
What is Coming in 2019?
In the first half of 2019, Visual Wilderness celebrates its 5th birthday. Throughout this coming year, we plan to create more in-depth video courses on several aspects of landscape photography. In addition, producing more on-location video courses that feature workshop-style lessons is also part of our 2019 plan.
We also have a few secret projects in works. Psst... keep this last one to yourself.
I could startoff like this – “Seeds of Jay Patel’s appreciation for beautiful places were planted early in his childhood….” but it would get boring really fast. I will just sum it up and say that I am a Landscape and Wilderness Photographer who loves to capture dramatic light. My photographs have been published in various magazines, calendars and advertising materials throughout the world. Patience is a virtue...unless you are chasing your dreams
We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.
Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.
Essential Website Cookies
These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.
Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.
We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.
We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.
Other external services
We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.
Google Webfont Settings:
Google Map Settings:
Google reCaptcha Settings:
Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:
Privacy Policy
You can read about our cookies and privacy settings in detail on our Privacy Policy Page.