WELL YOU DID CLICK ABOUT ME !
A self taught wildlife photographer and in these later years a budding wildlife cameraman. I left school at 16 after deciding the Catholic Church, that sadly had a strong influence on my school and my mind, was not something I was going to tolerate any longer, so starting the ball rolling towards getting a degree in marine biology/ Zoology would have to be put on hold, and sadly still is. I did however end up in the Peru jungles and Andes mountains a few months after informing my horrendous headmaster and the Chief Priest ( God's man in Kensington & Chelsea, obviously the best address after The Vatican itself of course ) at the the Brompton Oratory church that their presence in my life was over just before storming out of the school office with my lovely mother in tow.
The travel bug therefore bit me at an early age, and despite not returning to school and to study for a degree, I have learnt a lot along the way. Having had the privilege of spending holidays down at the Lizard in Cornwall as a youngster, I very quickly fell in love with the sea. I learnt to surf and become aware of its power and ferocity, but always dreaming to one days sail the big oceans. One day in late 1989, while loafing at a friends flat I received a phone call from my mother informing me of a round the world yacht race that was open to non professional sailors and was being launched at the Earls Court London Boat Show, about a 3 minute walk from my friends flat. I went along signed up and 3 years later, after training as a crew member of the yacht GROUP 4, one of the 10 identical yacht's built for the 1992/3 British Steel Challenge Around The World race, I found myself at the start line about to head off on the first leg of what was billed as the worlds toughest yacht race, my childhood dream was about to come true.
After living all over the world, my passion for the natural world has pushed me in the direction where I realized nothing could hold my attention anywhere near as much as wild animals could. I continue to photograph but in recent years efforts have veared towrds filming as opposed to stills, and it is as a wildlife cameraman, I believe my future lies, probably one without money, but hey, if you love what you do, and do what you love !!!!. The planet's ecosystems are in a terrible mess, were are wholly responsible, unless of course you are the current President of the USA, a Republican Senator or one of the poor deranged MAGA cult followers who believe the permanent stream of BS they are spewing on a daily basis as the world burns.I believe we need to educate and encourage as many people as possible that much more needs to be done, very rapidly, in order to hopefully slow down the avalanche of misery we as a species are merrily inflicting on the planet and the plethora of other species we share it with. Far too many of us have forgotten it is the only one we have, the only one we will ever need, and only a huge effort and radical rethink where everyone, more so in the affluent west can make changes no matter how small, and therefore a difference, a radical overhaul is needed and it is needed......NOW !!
It was not until 1997 that my interest in wildlife photography began in earnest. It was purely by chance when I was channel hopping the TV, and happened upon a wildlife documentary that had just was just starting, titled "Puma Lion Of The Andes" shot and edited by the veteran English cameraman Hugh Miles. Within a minute of watching the opening scenes, I sat transfixed, listening to his calm voice as he informs the viewer that this beautiful wild Patagonian Puma in his viewfinder, was probably a young female and how he hoped she would become the subject of this never before attempted goal, to follow and film a period in the life of a totally wild Mountian Lion.
I was, to put it mildly, blown away by what was unfurling on the screen, and before I was 5 minutes into the documentary, I had already made up my mind where I would soon be heading, Torres del Paine National Park. Only 5 weeks later I arrived in Patagonia where I set about walking around this jaw droppingly beautiful mountain massif covering over 500,000 acres. I was totally hooked, and 3 months later on my return to London, I set about selling my flat in Chelsea, filled my Land Rover defendeer full of gear, and set sail on the Grande America container ship, destination Buenos Aires, Argentina. A leisurely drive west to the Andes, whose spine forms the long long border with neighbouring Chile, where I rested up in Bariloche,climbed a few mountains, then turned left and headed south down route 40, all the way to heaven !! I would end up spending a total of 3 years in the park between 1998-2003, and am now planning to return in April 2018, when I will begin filming the winter sequences for my own film about the wildlife and scenery of this stunning mountain massif, with the main empahsis being a year in the life of the regions most elusive predator the Puma.
I am currently based in Dorset in south west England, prior to this I was happily based for 4 winters and the odd summer in the Chamonix Valley, in the shadow of Mt Blanc. Some of my free time was spent getting to know the regions wildlife including capturing footage of a pair of rare Bearded Vulture's or Lammergeier's, that over the last 25 years have sucessfuly been reintroduced to the Alps in France, Italy, Switzerland, and Austria, after they were wiped out by, yes you guessed correctly, us.
Between 2003 and 2015 I lived in Andalucia, Spain, which happens to be home to the world's rarest species of wild feline the Iberian Lynx ( Lynx pardel ) as well as huge amounts of birds of prey, so with this plethora of species virtually in my back garden, I began to practice and hone my filmmaking skills, as my desire to move into documentary film making grew. This included 14 weeks last summer in the region of Andujar NP, where the last viable population of the Iberian Lynx can be found, I slept on a matress in the seatless rear of my Toyota Previa, and managed to film the Lynx on 5 occasions, totalling about 12 minutes of rushes. It was never going to be easy as individuals without the backing of a production company are not able to gain access to the people who are in charge of the Lynx monitoring program, that have a number of the species collared and therefore trackable 24/7. I am currently approaching wildlife production companies in the hope of piqueing interest for a co-produced effort for the near future.
Some of my stills and video clips has been donated to Akive.org, which was set up as a not for profit initiative, to bring together under one roof audio, stills and film of the worlds endangered species, as a free resource to all, to be used for research and education and preservation for future generations. My wildlife footage is represented by the Nature Picture Library ( www.naturepicturelibrary.com ) located in the home of natural history filmmaking ,Bristol UK. My Youtube channel Wildaslife Nature Films has a number of clips online that show the making of some of the footage.
Recent Trips to film and photograph.
November / December 2024 / 5 weeks filming / photographing Andean Condors in southern Patagonia
In October /November 2025 I will be returning to some valleys in the French Alps to film new material of the Bearded Vultures or Lammergeiers
Please feel free to email or call me if you have any inquiries or questions about my images, my future filming projects as I am always happy to chat and help in anyway I can.
"If you live according to the dictates of nature,
you will never be poor; if according to the notions of man,
you will never be rich".