Wildlife photographer Tom Murphy’s work has appeared everywhere from Nat Geo to on a postage stamp. But his biggest advice boils down to just three words

Wildlife photographer and workshop leader Tom Murphy’s work has appeared everywhere from National Geographic to Time Magazine, but one of his photographs is about to be printed on 15 million tiny pieces of art: a postage stamp.

Tom Murphy’s career as a wildlife photographer spans nearly fifty years. Much of that time was spent in what’s often referred to as America’s Serengeti: Yellowstone National Park. While only around eight percent of Yellowstone is visible from the road, the photographer estimates that he’s seen around 65 percent of the national park that is larger than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that I’ve spent 5,000 days in Yellowstone in all seasons,” he said.

One of Murphy’s shots from his decades of photographing Yellowstone bison is about to be printed on a US postage stamp. The image, which comes from Murphy’s archives and was captured in the early 2000s with a Nikon DSLR, is superimposed with a historic stamp from 1923.

The original 1923 stamp was made from a drawing of a bison at the zoo – a strikingly opposite process from how Murphy works with the animals in the wild. His decades of observing the animals in the wild have taught the photographer a number of things, including timing photographs with the rut. That’s how Murphy captured the image on the stamp with the bison’s head in the air – an unusual position since most of the time, the animals are grazing on grass.

“What I'm after is not ‘what is a bison’ but ‘who is a bison.’” Murphy said. “In other words, their behavior, their interaction with each other, and their interaction with the landscape. How do they make a living? I spend a lot of time just watching and trying to learn as much as I can about them.”

Watching the wildlife in the wild is key to Murphy’s work – and tied to the biggest advice that he offers for novice wildlife photographers as one of the first instructors licensed to lead photography workshops in Yellowstone: “Know your subject.”

“My analogy is if you want to consistently make good photographs of a baseball game, you need to know the rules of baseball. Otherwise, you have no idea what they're doing running around out there.” Murphy said. “Basically, that drives my photography in every way, not just around bison. I try to know as much as I can about my subject so I know what to expect.”

“The technical stuff, learning about depth of field and shutter speeds, and how do you manage the digital files? That's pretty easy to learn,” he added. “But the most important thing is knowing where to stand, and that comes from spending a lot of time out there.”

Murphy’s drive to understand the animals in front of his lens has led the photographer to spend around 100 days in Yellowstone every year, translating to hiking – and skiing – thousands of miles in the national park over the years.

His toughest journey in Yellowstone? He once skied through Yellowstone on a 14-day solo winter trip across 175 miles. That was in the early days of his photography career, and the amount of film he needed to bring along made his backpack weigh about 70 pounds, including photo and survival gear.

Murphy notes that maintaining a safe distance from wildlife is key, adding that bison can outrun most horses. “I am a guest in their living room, and I need to behave respectably to them,” he said. “How would I feel if some bison walked into my living room? Keep your distance. Understand their behavior.”

Using long lenses helps, but so does telling a story in photographs that show how the animal interacts with the environment. Murphy has four key lenses in his kit: a 400mm f/4.5, a 180-400mm with a built-in 1.4x teleconverter, a 70-200mm, and a 14-24mm. He splits these lenses between a Nikon Z9 and the Nikon D850 as he transitions his kit from DSLR to mirrorless.

While Murphy started on film, the shift from film to digital was a key transition in his career, as the photographer says he now tries to spend just 15 seconds in Lightroom on each photograph, a steep change from the darkroom time when creating images with the Nikon F.

Another key tech change? When mirrorless introduced subject detection. “If you can find the bird, it'll find the eye of the bird,” he says.

The photographer estimates that he’s now probably spent 700-800 miles hiking or skiing through Yellowstone in the winter and 3,000-4,000 miles hiking in the other three seasons in order to access some of the more remote regions of the national park.

“I'm not done yet,” the photographer said. “There's some more I got to see. And there's some spectacular stuff back there that, to be really honest with you, I'm glad there aren't roads to it. Because, to me, it is more valuable because of the solitude and the effort it takes to get there. The reward is even more dear because of the effort it takes to get there. You kind of have to earn it.”

Murphy’s bison image is among the USPS stamps to be released in 2026, expected to be out sometime at the end of May.

Browse more of Murphy's images at his website.

You may also like

Browse the best cameras for wildlife photography or the best lenses for photographing birds.