In this film I share my journey from a boyhood obsessed with nature to globally recognised wildlife documentary maker and artist.
As a boy I spent most of my time observing wildlife and documenting it in paintings and drawings and by my mid-twenties my dream of owning my own gallery was a reality. I prefer a detailed, realistic style and to achieve this I spent most of my time watching, photographing and filming the animals around me. From mallard ducks to kingfishers and puffins at the coast, my focus at first was local.
My garden
To make this possible I turned my home into a wildlife haven, planting wildflower meadows and putting up nest boxes to attract owls and kestrels. I even built a badger sett to watch these animals underground.
Kingfishers
One of my biggest projects was to watch kingfishers inside their nests. I made an artificial nesting bank rigged with hidden camera and over the course of six years I filmed every stage of the breeding process, from egg laying to the chicks' first flights. Following the lives of individual animals It wasn't long before I had cameras in all the nest boxes in my garden and soon I was following the daily lives of tawny owls, barn owls and kestrels - getting to know their individual characters.
Wildlife characters & sharing the stories
From a tawny owl named Luna, who adopted two chicks when her own eggs failed, to a male kestrel who surprised wildlife experts everywhere by raising his chicks alone, the stories kept on coming. I began sharing these stories on social media in 2010 and shortly afterwards caught the eye of the BBC who invited me to co-present short films for The One Show. A few years later, I my observations of stoats and weasels were filmed for a worldwide program co-produced by PBS in America, and the BBC Natural World. By February of 2020, we nearly had 100,000 people following our social media, but after the UK went into lockdown in March this soared. I began livestreaming the wildlife cameras and the audience grew so fast we had to employ a group of moderators to monitor the community. Online community People from around the world got really involved, even voting to name the owls and kestrels and the emails of appreciation began pouring in.
Media storm
When Niels, a bartender from the Netherlands who shared the livestreams on the big screen behind his bar instead of sports, the news went global. The interest led to collaborations with companies I admired like Sony, DJI and Swarovski Optik. I also began a new partnership with a UK based tour operator, Wildfoot Travel.
Travel
With the support of Wildfoot Travel I began to watch wildlife further afield. Filming sloths in Panama, polar bears in Svalbard in the Arctic and lions in Zimbabwe.
