The Camera Cafe Show

A photograph can win an award. It can tell a story. And sometimes, it can change what happens to the person in the frame. Photojournalist Carolyn van Houten has seen all three.

Carolyn spent almost nine years as a staff photographer at The Washington Post, until the entire photography staff was laid off earlier this year. It seemed like a good moment to finally sit down and hear the story behind the photographer.

And what a story i...

Where were you on 9/11?🕊️ Twenty-five years ago, our next guest lived it alongside President George W. Bush.

It was supposed to be a fairly ordinary morning. Eric Draper, the Chief White House Photographer to President George W. Bush, was travelling with the President to a school in Sarasota, Florida. Then, somewhere in the motorcade, came the words: “Oh my God, a plane hit the World Trade Center.”

From that moment, Er...

A bear covered in ice. A salmon flying into your face. And a camera trap that decides to take a trip down a mountain. Just another day in the Yukon 😄🐻📸 

If you thought we had some wild stories in Part One, wait until you hear what happens next! In Part Two of my conversation with wildlife photographer Peter Mather, we head even deeper into the Yukon, from ice-covered bears and salmon to camera traps, filmmaking, conservatio...

Wolverines. The Yukon. Lots of snow. And a wildlife photographer who once happened to be a math teacher. Welcome to the wild world of Peter Mather! 🐺❄️📸

In Part One of my conversation with Peter, we head north to the Yukon and follow the story of how he turned a love of the wilderness into a life photographing some of Canada's most elusive wildlife.

Peter has spent years chasing stories rather than simply chasing pictures, and hi...

Welcome to the Adventure Emporium. Antarctica? Penguins? Michael Palin? Shackleton's Hut? We seem to have the lot. Sadly, we're completely sold out of comfy couches 😄 

If Part One was the story of how photographer Sue Flood found her way into the BBC, Part Two is where things get seriously wild! We follow the next chapter of her extraordinary life, building a career around photography, conservation and some of the most remote...

Sir David Attenborough. Sir Michael Palin. And a beluga whale. No, this isn't a Monty Python sketch... it's the amazing life adventure of our next guest 🐋😂

In Part One of my conversation with nature photographer Sue Flood, we go back to the very beginning of a career that eventually took her from a small village in North Wales to the BBC Natural History Unit and some of the world's most extraordinary wildlife productions over the...

George H.W. Bush became President of the United States. He didn't become any less competitive 😄🎣

In Part Two of my conversation with David Valdez, we follow David as he becomes Chief Official White House Photographer, documenting four extraordinary years inside the White House and witnessing history from just a few feet away. But as always on The Camera Café Show, it's the stories between the photographs that make this journey so...

When President George H.W. Bush told him to “jump”, he of course did... which seems like a perfectly good way to start another episode of The Camera Café Show 😄📸

In Part One of my conversation with former Chief Official White House Photographer David Valdez, we travel back to where his remarkable journey began—from discovering photography almost by accident in the U.S. Air Force to eventually finding himself beh...

What happens when you strap a camera to the tail of a jumbo jet?😅📸

In Part Two of my conversation with former National Geographic photographer Bruce Dale, we continue our conversation by uncovering the stories behind some of his most iconic National Geographic photographs. It turns out getting the shot was only half the story. Long before the shutter clicked, Bruce was designing, building, testing, and refining entirely new ways ...

Did you read National Geographic magazine as a kid in your bedroom, dreaming about all those faraway places? The only difference is that some end up spending thirty years travelling the world and photographing those very places—all because they never stopped exploring 🌍📸

In this first part of my conversation with former National Geographic staff photographer Bruce Dale, we travel back to his childhood in Ohio and follow the...

As a teenager, Ian Berry left England to see the world. A few years later, he had joined Magnum Photos and would go on to spend more than six decades documenting people, places, and some of history's defining moments with his Leica.

Together we travel across continents and through more than sixty years of photography, talking about his encounters with Henri Cartier-Bresson, joining Magnum, Ian's books, the people he met along the w...

Retirement usually means less work, fewer surprises, and a cleaner attic. Unless, of course, you're a photographer with a lifetime of negatives waiting upstairs. And that's exactly where we continue our conversation today 😊

In Part 2 of my conversation with photographer Meryl Meisler, we move beyond the disco dance floors and into the remarkable second chapter of her life. After spending more than thirty years as an art teacher, M...

Remember the wild hairstyles, the fancy dance moves, and the nights when Studio 54 ruled New York? Well, today's guest was there... camera in hand, and thankfully she kept the negatives!

In this first part of my conversation with Meryl Meisler, we travel back to the beginning of a remarkable photographic journey. Best known today for her street photography and photographs of the '70s disco era, Meryl spent decades documenting the p...

Most people look at bird migrations on maps. A photographer and a biologist decided to follow one on bicycles...for 2,500 miles!

When I first reached out to Mike Forsberg, the plan was to talk about his remarkable photography career and decades of conservation storytelling. Then I discovered that Mike and his friend Andy Caven were about to set off on a bicycle journey from the Texas Gulf Coast to central Saskatchewan, following th...

War doesn't end when the photograph is taken. For many people, that's where the story begins.

In Part 2 of this special two-part conversation, I once again sit down with Ukrainian photojournalists Oksana Parafeniuk and Iva Sidash. While Part 1 focused on home, and their personal journeys in photography, this second conversation moves deeper into the lasting impact of war on individuals, families, and communities. Together, we talk ...

For most photojournalists, war is something they travel to. For others, it's the reality of the place they call home. 

In Part 1 of this special two-part conversation, I sit down with Ukrainian photojournalists Oksana Parafeniuk and Iva Sidash. Iva was on our show in 2023, one year after the Russian invasion, but since then her photography journey has taken her further, studying at the International Center of Photography (ICP)...

Crossing the Afghanistan border in disguise at night was once just part of the job 🌍📸

In this episode I sit down with legendary French photojournalist Pascal Maitre — whose work over the last four decades has taken him to places such as Afghanistan, Somalia, Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan ,more than forty countries throughout Africa, and worked in South America, Russia, the Middle East, Latin America and numerous other regions over...

Style is easy to imitate. Voice is something else entirely.

In this second part of my conversation with David duChemin, we move deeper into creativity, artistic identity, social media, fear, and the challenge of making work that actually feels honest in a world full of comparison and noise.

We talk about the difference between style and voice, the pressure to imitate what everyone else is doing, wildlife photography, curiosity, ins...

“Elvis has left the building…” — and somewhere after the stage lights went dark, a camera slowly took the place of the rabbit and the magician’s hat.

In this first part of my conversation with David duChemin, we explore the unusual path that took him from performing comedy shows, juggling bananas, and entertaining crowds… to becoming one of photography’s most thoughtful voices on creativi...