Chris has always had a keen interest in art and remains frustrated that his scientific course in education precluded him from the opportunity to practice with the many techniques which he admires in galleries around the world.
In the 80s with very little photographic experience he sold his punk rock guitar and bought a camera and one telephoto lens and then set off on a mission to try and infuse the world of wildlife photography with a little more artistic content. He considered that the bulk of the images championed at that time were subject led and that photographers were pre-eminently obsessed with pin sharp, wholly illustrative photographs and that the results were almost always unattractive to the eye. He felt that the overwhelming and simple beauty of nature was being wasted wholesale by photographers who never taxed their emotions or imaginations.
A Difficult Challenge
And perfection in photographic form remains a quest to this day for Chris. Not one that he ever thinks will be satisfied because he believes that all photographers should be hypercritical of their own work, ruthless in their pursuit of trying to combine all aspects of an instants reality into an image which is both personal and original to them and which reflects something entirely new about the subject. A very difficult challenge.
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Most of the money that he earned when he started work as a camera assistant he spent on film and fuel.
He travelled around the UK, sleeping in the back of his car, washing in nature reserve toilets and cleaning his teeth in streams - all to guarantee that he was on the spot to try and make a perfect picture. |
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So whilst never personally satisfied Chris has enjoyed notable success with his pictures which have won international competitions, illustrated his books and talks and seen him recognized as one of the world's most inventive wildlife photographers.
In recent years he has judged many competitions and has particularly enjoyed his work on the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition, the RSPCA ‘s Young Wildlife Photographer Competition and the BBC's Countryfile photographic competition.
These days his energy for picture making has been given a real boost by the interest and success that his little girl has shown in her own wildlife photography. He enjoys travelling with her in pursuit of the perfect picture and is excited by her seemingly innate ability to see a photograph of and then try and capture it. Recently armed with only one camera Chris paced in pure frustration as Megan confronted the subject. He could see a photograph and desperately wanted to snatch the camera to try and get it. Later when she downloaded her pictures onto the laptop he was overjoyed to see that she had taken image that he had imagined and early retirement surely beckons!
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Megan's Black-Winged Stilt,
Gambia - Feb 2007 |
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