How did you get your start in photography?

I honestly never saw myself being a photographer, it was never the plan. I wanted to be a painter and studied art history at Cambridge. I first picked up a camera travelling and found that I couldn’t capture the emotion of the amazing things I was seeing and it dawned on me for the first time how much skill there was in constructing a photograph. From there I taught myself and obsessed over mistakes and how to improve but it was always just for me. I was encouraged to enter my first competition, which was Nat Geo photographer of the year, and I came runner up and I thought perhaps there was something here for me. But it was when I received a letter from Sir David Attenborough with praise for my work that I really decided this had to be my future.

What are the aspects that, in your opinion, make a great photo? 

There is so much that goes on in making a truly great photograph that it’s difficult to boil these down, particularly as a lot of it is intuitive. However, I always think that successful fine art photographs share one key fundamental and that’s that they are clean. Few or no distractions to take your focus off the subject and narrative. This can be incredibly difficult with wildlife photography, given the subjects are often in busy settings (grass, twigs etc). That’s where the skill of the photographer comes in, finding an angle that allows the subject to do the talking.

If you could go back in time and tell yourself something you wish you knew at the beginning of your photography practice, what would it be?

I think it’s really important that people find their own voice. Take criticism on board but ultimately don’t just do what everyone else does. This goes for the so called ‘rules’ of photography as much as anything else - these are great rules of thumb but are written by someone else, meaning you’ll take someone else’s photo. If we all play from the same place it is very difficult to stand out. Instead break any rule you think holds you back from telling your story, don’t conform if it limits you, believe in the way you see and show the world. Constantly ask yourself how you’re doing things and why, and why it matters.