Biography

I have always had a passionate interest in all aspects of the natural world, although, as you have probably guessed by looking through the photos on this website, I am ever so slightly biased towards birds!

My interest in photography started in the early 90's when I decided I would like to keep a pictorial record of all the rare birds I encountered on my travels around Britain. I still have the first bird photo I took: a pathetically tiny Red-breasted Goose among a huge flock of Barnacle Geese at Caerlaverock in October 1992 with my dad's old Practika MTL3 and cheap Russian-made 400mm lens on severely out-of-date film that I had found in a kitchen drawer...definitely too embarrassingly awful to post here!

Thankfully the quality of my photos improved quite rapidly from that rather inauspicious start, and I have since had my work published in over one hundred books from all 6 inhabited continents and most of the major wildlife magazines, including National Geographic.

Prior to turning to full-time photography, I used earn my living as a research scientist. After obtaining a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Wales in 1997, I worked in various laboratories in Europe and in the USA, mostly studying the molecular interactions between insect vectors and the parasites transmitted by them that cause tropical diseases such as malaria, African Sleeping Sickness and Leishmaniasis.  My last position was at the University of Nottingham where I helped to run the Genomic Sequencing Facility.

Currently, I work as a freelance wildlife photographer, and enjoy sharing my knowledge and experience with others through my wildlife photography tours at numerous exotic locations thoughout the world.