About ME

I’m originally from Sussex but swapped the seaside and chalklands for Bristol just over seven years ago. Like a lot of people in the UK, I was raised on a diet of Attenborough programs and spent a lot of my childhood exploring the fields close to home and taking walks over the South Downs with my dad.

It wasn’t until around ten years ago that I properly caught the birding bug though, after a chance encounter with a peregrine falcon while exploring the coast just east of Brighton. It came out of nowhere. A javelin from the clouds, flipping an unsuspecting herring gull mid-air amid a lot of screeching and commotion. The peregrines were nesting on a nearby cliff, and the gull had strayed too close. My mind was blown – after seeing so much exotic wildlife on television I was maybe guilty of having a bit of a perception that British wildlife in comparison was mostly just pigeons. Pigeons are great, but seeing that falcon changed things - can we witness something like this so close to home? Wow.

As a freelance photographer, my work has mostly been in the hospitality, live music and charity sectors, and I’ve been lucky to work on commissions for the likes of the RSPB and Oxfam among others. My real passion is nature, however, and I’ve spent countless hours sitting in hides and ditches around the UK, watching and waiting for wildlife to appear. I’ve put some of my favourite shots on display in various venues around Bristol and was grateful to have a raven portrait included in the RWA’s 6-month-long Annual Open Exhibition last year.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

My role with the RSPB Bristol Local Group

Just under three years ago I met with three other volunteers to help found the RSPB Bristol Local Group. There are currently eight of us on the core committee, and I act as the group’s Publicity Officer. We’ve hosted some fun talks with guests such as Wild Isles producer Nick Gates, former RSPB President Miranda Krestovnikoff, Black2Nature founder Maya-Rose Craig and of course, a certain pair of photographers behind a brilliant ongoing project to document Bristol’s parks and green spaces.

We head out at least once a month too – our BioBlitz series ‘Citizen Science Sundays’ takes us on a tour of the city’s green spaces, visiting a different Bristol postcode each time. We encourage our participants to bring their smartphones and cameras, helping us to find and document the wildlife at each site via iNaturalist. This year we’ve begun turning those observations into data that we then send in to the Bristol Regional Environmental Records Centre, as well as the council’s conservation team. They’re really good beginner-friendly events, and hopefully, we’ve inspired a few more people to carry on documenting local wildlife in their own time!