Wildlife has fascinated me since early childhood. My mother used to say I watched birds from my pram. I was fortunate to have been brought up on the side of the South Downs in West Sussex where I spent a great deal of time exploring the downs as a boy. School was followed by a Biology degree, and my first employment was with the British Trust for Ornithology in the 1960's organising census work. As a teenager I used to paint and draw birds , and the truth was that I was more interested in an artistic approach to wildlife than a scientific one. I am sure that this is why I took up photographing wildlife.
I first partly backed up my binoculars for a camera in the late 1970's. I started by concentrating on birds at the nest using medium format cameras. Just before 1985 I had become more interested in the potential of long telephoto lens on 35mm cameras, and for me everything changed in 1985 when Minolta were the first to innovate real autofocus cameras I grabbed this advantage with both hands, and for the next 8-10 years worked a great deal with the Minolta 600mm f4 lens. Today, things have advanced so far that I am now using the lightweight micro four thirds camera, the Panasonic DCM-GH2. I have always worked mainly in the UK because the British wildlife is my first love. I particularly like Scandanavia too, and have also worked on occasions in some of the southern European countries.
I was granted a fellowship in the Royal Photographic Society in 1992. I have submitted pictures to wildlife libraries for over 30 years, but my interest in wildlife photography is more a passion than a commercial enterprise.