The Photographer Behind the Lens

Alice — Field Notes from the Wild

My Story

It started, as many obsessions do, with patience and mud. I was nineteen, on a university field trip to the Scottish Highlands, watching a red squirrel at the edge of a pine forest for two hours with a borrowed camera that I barely knew how to use. When I finally got the shot — the animal frozen mid-leap, autumn light filtering through the trees — something irreversible happened.

That was twelve years ago. I'm based in Maida Vale, London, which puts me at the heart of some surprisingly rich wildlife territory — the canal networks, ancient parks and Thames corridor hold more than most people realise. From London I travel regularly to the Black Forest, the Algarve, and Cyprus, each with their own extraordinary cast of creatures.

Cyprus was an unexpected discovery — a friend's wedding led me to the Troodos Mountains, where I encountered mouflon for the first time. I've been back every spring since.

The Other Side of My Work

Alongside photography, I'm a practising psychotherapist — and the two disciplines are more intertwined than they might appear. I've long been drawn to the ideas of Carl Jung, particularly his sense that the natural world speaks a language the psyche understands before the rational mind does. Animals, in Jungian thought, often carry archetypal weight: the solitary heron, the watchful fox, the wolf at the edge of the treeline.

Animal-assisted and nature-based therapies draw on this deeply — the idea that encounters with the non-human world can open doors that conversation alone cannot. When I photograph wildlife, I'm not simply documenting animals. I'm recording moments when the boundary between the human and non-human world thins. Those moments matter psychologically, not just aesthetically.

A barn owl hunting at dusk tells you something about patience and instinct. A herd of mouflon navigating a ridge tells you something about collective intelligence and trust. Jung wrote that the animal in us is not something to be suppressed, but something to be heard. I find that true in the field every single day.

Kit & Craft

📷 Full-frame mirrorless body — weather-sealed, shoots silently in the field to avoid disturbing subjects

🔭 400mm f/2.8 telephoto — primary lens for birds and shy mammals at distance

🌿 100–500mm zoom — versatile reach for action sequences and unpredictable subjects

🏕️ Portable hide — canvas structure deployed the day before to allow subjects to habituate

🌅 Dawn & dusk specialist — the magic hours when light is warm and behaviour is most revealing

Why Wildlife?

Wildlife photography is, at its core, an act of attention. You cannot fake it. You cannot pose a hare or direct a kingfisher. You can only know your subjects well enough to predict them, position yourself ahead of the moment, and hold very, very still.

I hold a strict ethical code in the field: no baiting, no flushing, no nest disturbance. If an animal shows signs of stress, I withdraw. The photographs I'm proud of are the ones the animal never knew were taken.

I'm also interested in what wildlife photographs do to the people who look at them. Something in us recognises the aliveness of another creature. That recognition is ancient, pre-verbal, and — I believe — genuinely therapeutic. It's one of the reasons I make these images, and one of the reasons I think they belong on walls, not just screens.