Welcome to Depth of Field

Photography resources and behind-the-scenes stories from a wild photographic life.

Greetings, dear reader, I wrote, from inside a shipping container strapped to the bow of a boat off Alaska’s Katmai Coast. Wind shrieked past the vessel at eighty miles per hour, lashing the ocean outside to a froth. I was supposed to be on shore, photographing brown bears on assignment, and instead I was trapped in my bunk, surrounded by cameras and salt-crusted raingear.

In a decade as a professional photographer, I’ve spent a lot of time in the field, including seven years working aboard ships in the Arctic and Antarctica. I’ve been lucky to build a freelance career working for publications like National Geographic, the New York Times, TIME, and others. But as the digital landscape shifts, with social media becoming algorithm-driven and increasingly reactionary, I’ve often yearned for an outlet for more substantial personal expression than Instagram. What is the point of all this field experience, I’ve often wondered, if it never gets shared?

As the storm howled and the boat listed and I was forced for the first time in months to stop, the idea for this newsletter sparked. I wanted a place to write freely. I also wanted a place to answer the countless questions I receive from aspiring photographers. Career questions can be tough to answer in a short message—but the degree to which photography can be a force for good, I think, depends in part on the people who continue to do it. With space to go into depth, perhaps I could help even one person out there to tell their story, take their pictures, to keep going.

Out on the boat, the storm began to dissipate. Dappled light raced across the landscape through the breaks in the storm clouds, and on shore a few hours later, I watched a glossy brown bear snatch a salmon from a web of intertidal rivers. The photograph would go on to be published in the September 2024 print issue of National Geographic Magazine. And in the year that would follow, the newsletter would remain the creative idea that excited me the most.

This after-the-storm lighting was definitely worth waiting for.

So welcome, friends, to Depth of Field. Here, I’ll share personal essays and behind-the-scenes stories from this strange and fascinating photographic life. Every month, I’ll publish a piece about what goes into a meaningful photography career—the kind of resources and insight that I wish had been available to me at an earlier stage in my journey. (Nothing too technical, I promise). I’ll also share what I’m working on, what inspires me, and fill you in on updates you won’t find anywhere else.

A novelist friend cautioned me that calling this newsletter Depth of Field might suggest I’m promising depth here, and that might be a lot to live up to. But to me, it’s a suggestion of all that is behind the pictures. In photography, depth of field controls what we look at. It tells us what the image is about. And there’s field: a landscape, an image, a vocation. It’s all the places we go to do our work. A field of all possibilities.

Who Am I? I’m Acacia, a professional photographer from Alaska. I have a BFA in Photography, a former life as a polar expedition guide, and a career in magazine photography that I somehow developed through sheer trial and error.

I’m also a real person. I live in my hometown of Anchorage, Alaska, which while not exactly a booming metropolis, is at the center of many things I love. I always seem to be packing or unpacking my bags, but when left to my own devices, you’ll find me roaming the tundra or cross-country skiing in the boreal forest behind my house. I’ve spent years learning how to keep myself in a state of regular, generative creativity, and believe that the ways that we spend our time not working are often, in a sense, part of the work.

Oh, I’m also a writer. I have an MFA in Creative Writing and have taught writing at the college level, but for some reason, I don’t seem to write a whole lot without an audience. I may be rusty, but I’m starting now.

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Paid subscribers will get access to more detailed, in-depth posts about photography, as well as voiceovers I record especially for you in my living room. You’ll also get the ability to comment and ask questions on all posts. Thank you so much for your support!

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Life updates: This year, I traveled to Antarctica, gave a TEDx talk, launched a 2-year photo project in the Canadian Arctic, and got married. Yes, it was a lot. I am now in a much-needed recalibration phase, working through three unpublished photo stories while dreaming up my next big project.

Publication updates: The story about brown bear tourism in Alaska’s Katmai National Park came out in the September print issue of National Geographic Magazine. A digital version is available too, but it looks especially great on paper.

What I keep looking at: Cig Harvey’s latest series Feast. The way she works with intense color in her immediate environment has always inspired me, and this series is no exception.

A photo resource: aPhotoEditor on Instagram. Rob Haggart is a former magazine photo editor who has been writing about the photo industry for 17 years, and his Instagram feed offers one of the most transparent looks at the photo industry I’ve seen. If you work in photography or aspire to, this one is worth spending time with.