Wedge-tailed eagle, Kangaroo island, South Australia
I watched a falcon take a starling once.
It happened in seconds — a stoop from height, a collision, a brief tumble, and then stillness. The falcon landed, mantled its wings over the kill, and began to feed. No hesitation. No apology. The rest of the murmuration closed its wound and moved on, a liquid black ribbon reshaping itself against the grey sky as if nothing had happened.
Nature did not pause to consider the starling’s feelings. It did not schedule a meeting to discuss the timing. It did not send a polite message saying, perhaps another day would be more convenient. The falcon had one job. It did it with complete, unsentimental precision.
I thought about that for a long time afterwards.
The natural world is not cruel in the way we sometimes use the word — with malice, with intent to wound. It is simply indifferent. The blizzard that buries the weakened elk does not choose its victim. The drought does not spare the seedling that had potential. What cannot sustain itself does not survive. What is not fit for its environment is quietly, inexorably removed. There is no committee. There is no appeal.
This is not tragedy. This is the engine of everything alive.
I left a corporate career to become a wildlife photographer. I made that choice deliberately, with eyes open, because I understood — or thought I understood — that creative work requires space, silence, and concentrated time. What I did not fully anticipate was how many forces would immediately begin filling that space the moment I created it. Other people’s timelines. Requests that arrived as opportunities but functioned as obligations. Collaborations that fed someone else’s project at the cost of my own. The slow, pleasant drift of mornings spent responding to things instead of making things.
The predator that does not hunt loses its edge. Not suddenly — gradually. The reflexes soften. The eye grows less sharp. The kill becomes harder, then harder still. By the time the decline is visible, it has been happening for months.
I had to learn to be a predator about my time.
- This means mornings are not negotiable. From the first hour of daylight until noon, I am either in the field or at the editing desk. That time belongs to the work. Not to inbox management, not to social media, not to the interesting idea someone else wants me to develop with them. The work comes first, with the same blunt priority that a hunting animal gives to hunting.
- It also means I have learned to say no without elaborate justification. The wolf does not explain to the caribou why it has chosen this particular moment, this particular angle of approach. It simply acts in accordance with its own survival. When I decline a project that would consume three weeks of creative time for someone else’s gain, I do not owe a detailed account of my reasoning. I am working is sufficient. My time is committed is sufficient. The rest is courtesy, not obligation.
- And it means editing the calendar with the same ruthlessness that natural selection applies to a gene pool. The commitments that do not serve the work — the meetings that could be emails, the appearances that offer visibility but cost focus, the social obligations that accumulate like sediment — these are the weak, and they will crowd out the strong if you let them. Review them. Remove what cannot justify itself. What remains will be stronger for the culling.
Nature has no interest in your intentions. It measures only what you actually do, what you actually make, what you leave behind that can survive without you.
Your creative time is not a luxury to be rationed out after everything else has been served. It is the thing. It is the hunt, the territory, the survival condition. Protect it accordingly.
Be the falcon. Be the blizzard.
Be, if you must, the cruel mistress — because the alternative is to be the starling.
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