When Josiah was seven, he started becoming more and more interested in photographing wildlife like his big sister (Jenaya) and dad (John), and always wanted to tag along on outings into the Alberta wilderness and have his own system in tow. John’s philosophy of teaching photographic skills to his kids is to give them the basics and turn them loose to develop their own eye and style, and learn through trial and error with lots of encouraging but constructive feedback. That means after learning the foundation of exposure, composition and field techniques, Josiah has been “on his own” to find the camera angle that he likes best of a chosen subject, the lens he wants to use, and even the camera settings he thinks would best capture the image he has in mind.

In 2012 Josiah captured an incredible image of a bald eagle banking in flight that was nearly exceptional…his only mistake was not bumping up to a sufficiently-fast shutter speed to freeze the eagle’s head as it accelerated on the pivot. John still remembers Josiah looking through his pictures on the drive home and asking, “what do I have to do so that never happens again?” And so began a young photographer’s quest to truly learn his craft and return from the field with the best images his growing skill-set could capture. This year, Josiah had six of the seven images he submitted to the prestigious NHM/BBC Wildlife Photography of the Year competition selected as finalists. Although he did not win an award in 2014, it was a remarkable accomplishment for his very first photographic competition!

Now ten, Josiah is obviously early into his life as a nature photographer, but is growing in his vision and abilities constantly. We selected these five images to represent our favourites from Josiah from 2014. We hope you enjoy! Click either the preview image or thumbnail to view larger.

Don’t forget you can follow Josiah’s (along with Jenaya and John’s) photography through our Twitter account and, coming in early 2015, on our blog right here at launsteinimagery.com.

Be sure to check out John’s favourites of 2014 as well (Jenaya’s fav’s coming Dec 31!).