Welcome to my bird photography website!

I was brought up in a small village in Wiltshire surrounded by nature. I still have my first bird identification book given to me for Christmas 1967 with all the birds we spotted on our long countryside walks ticked. In the early part of my career as an academic physicist I was fortunate enough to have access to excellent darkroom facilities at my university. I was mainly focused on landscape photography. Then a career in high tech industry coupled with the arrival of my 3 children gave me a different focus to my life for many years. I was very fortunate to be able to retire early from my main career at the ripe old age of 57 and now only work part time. This has given me the opportunity to rekindle my love of photography and birds resulting in the photos on my website.

My main equipment of choice is a Cannon 1DX with an 800m f5.6 lens.  Other equipment used to take photos on this website includes Cannon 1D mark 4 and 7D mark one cameras and 150-600 zoom and 500mm f4 lenses. I rarely use converters for two reasons. Firstly, they are simply unmanageable on the 800mm lens. Secondly, I have found that even with micro focus adjustment the image digitally zoomed from the 800mm prime is better than the equivalent obtained with the converter. I use Lightroom for post-shot development.

The current challenge I have set myself is to see 250 UK birds this year. As I write this in the middle of June 2017 I’m on 210 but the next 40 are going to be a real challenge!

All my photographs are free to use for non-commercial/profit purposes as long as you acknowledge my copyright. For high resolution files or use for commercial purposes please contact me at [email protected].

I hope enjoy looking at my photographs as much as I have enjoyed taking them!

Cheers

Jim