My Background in Wildlife Filmmaking

I’m a wildlife filmmaker and cinematographer based in Bristol, UK, although my love for the natural world began when I was growing up in Devon. My Dad was the person who first ignited that passion. He would always take the time to tell me what we were looking at and why it was there. He'd get excited by the return of the first swallow each spring, and explain why the sea looked different every day and how the wind and tides were constantly shaping the ocean.

I've often wondered whether I'd even care about wildlife if my dad hadn't introduced me to it as a child.

Photography has always been a huge interest of mine and I’ve had a camera in my hand for as long as I can remember, so when I realised I could combine two of my favourite things, wildlife and photography, wildlife photography was always going to be something I took a huge amount of interest in!

Through my teen years and early twenties, I spent huge amounts of time out with my camera, learning about all of the different animals on our doorstep, how to approach them and discovering new ways to photograph them. As my interest in wildlife grew, so did my curiosity about the wider environmental issues affecting it. I spent a lot of time reading and learning about the pressures facing our natural world, particularly climate change and the impact it was having on wildlife and the places I cared about.

I felt increasingly compelled to raise awareness of these issues through my work, but I kept coming back to the same questions: how do I get as many people as possible to care about the wildlife we live alongside, and ultimately, the planet we live on? How do people discover a love for wildlife if they haven't had someone in their lives to introduce them to it? Not everyone grows up with a parent or relative pointing out birds in the garden, taking them rockpooling or teaching them about the animals around them. So how does that door get opened?

For millions of people, wildlife documentaries are what sparked their love for the natural world. They can make us feel something for an animal we've never seen and leave us wanting to learn more about the wildlife we've just watched. I wanted to create films that could bring people closer to the natural world in the same way that my Dad did for me.

I began as an assistant camera operator, gradually gaining experience and working my way into wildlife filmmaking. Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to film some incredible wildlife behaviour, from travelling to Canada to film orca and black bears, to documenting the astonishing comeback of bluefin tuna in Devon. I’ve also had the opportunity to film sequences for the likes of the BBC and Netflix, and I feel incredibly fortunate that my passion has become my career.