As a child I always had a strong interest in wildlife spending my days each summer collecting animals in jars to draw and write about them. My interest in photography began in 2000 whilst studying at the Silwood Park campus at Imperial College, which has over 250 acres of woodland and meadows with a fantastic diversity of wildlife.

Following the final year of my degree at Cardiff, Richard and I went to South Africa and joined Adam in the Kalahari where he was working on a meerkat study project. The whole trip rekindled my desire to take photographs and gave many opportunities in a range of environments.

Since returning to the UK I have been studying for a PhD at the University of Wales, Bangor and around my other hobbies of SCUBA diving and hiking I have tried to further improve my pictures. Visits to Skomer Island Nature Reserve, the Isle of Mull and various sites around Wales have produced a mixed bag throughout the last few years, teaching me what works, what does not and where I can improve. In time I would like to try my hand at underwater photography but that requires some serious investment!

I have had pictures published in Amateur Photographer Magazine in 2004 and 2005. My picture of an Atlantic puffin emerging from its burrow on Skomer Island beneath sea campions won me the Student Category of the relatively new 'Celebrating Ecology' photographic competition run by the British Ecological Society, beating off over 200 other photographs. The winning photographs can be seen on the BES website (www.britishecologicalsociety.org) and will be printed in Geographical magazine in due course.

I like to try to take pictures that other people find pleasure in looking at. It is my aim for the future to begin to attach messages to my photographs to make people more aware of environmental issues.

Equipment

After a brief affair with a Pentax *ist DS I sold almost everything and underwent a major equipment change. My new toy is a Canon EOS 3 with a 100-400 IS L zoom lens. I have kept my Pentax MZ-5n and a 50mm prime lens. I shoot using Fuji film and when required, a Manfrotto tripod or a beanbag
for support.