Call me naïve. I grew up with a fantastic, albeit distorted, ideal of what nature photography was. As a young boy I would sit and pore over the pages of nature photography books, National Geographic and Outdoor Photographer Magazine, enchanted at times more by the thought of what the photographer had to endure in order to capture the photographs, than I was at the images themselves. I guess you could say that to me being a nature photographer was akin to being a hero of sorts. Though my experiences in the world of nature photography have changed my perception of the ways in which certain images are created, I still hold onto my childhood ideal as the standard by which I measure the authenticity of an image. I had my ‘Walter Mitty moment’ at the beginning of 2012 when I was blessed with the opportunity to leave my day job and embrace my career as a nature photographer full time. The longer I’ve been in this field of photography, the more aware I have become of a number of glaring conflicts of ethics that I’d been largely insulated from up until the past decade or so. I’ve listed a few of them below.