My love of nature goes right back to my childhood, to the times when I stayed on the armed forces, so we were always moving and did not have a home base for any length of time, but I loved going there. I think it was my grandmother who encouraged me more than anyone; she taught me the names of wildflowers and got me interested in looking at the countryside, so it seemed obvious to go on to do Zoology at university.
I did not get my first camera until after I had graduated, when I was due to go diving in Norway, and needed a method of recording the sea creatures, which I would find there. My father did not know anything about photography, but he bought me an Exacta, which was really quite a good camera for the time, and I went off to take my first pictures of sea anemones and starfish. I became keen very quickly, and learned how to develop and print; obviously I did not have much money in those days, so I did more black-and-white photography than color, but it was all still using the camera very much as a tool to record what I found both by diving and on the shore. I had no ambition at all to be photographer then, or even for some years afterwards.
Unlike many of the wildlife photographers of the time, I was trained as a scientist and therefore my way of expressing myself is verydifferent. I have tried from the beginning to produce pictures which are always biologically correct. There are people who will alter things deliberately; you do not pick up sea creatures from the middle of the shore and take them down to attractive pools at the bottom of the shore without knowing you are doing it. In so doing you are actually falsifying the sort of seaweeds they live on and so on, which may seem unimportant but it is actually changing the natural surroundings to make them prettier. Unfortunately, many of the people who select pictures are looking for attractive images and, at the end of the day, whether it is truthful or not does not really matter to them.
It is important to think about the animal first, and there are many occasions when I have not taken a picture because it would have been too disturbing. Nothing is so important that you have to get that shot; of course, there are cases when it would be very sad if you did not, but it is not the end of the world. There can be a lot of ignorance in people's behavior towards wild animals and it is a problem that more and more people are going to wild places; while some animals may get used to cars, they will not get used to people suddenly rushing up to them. The sheer pressure of people, coupled with the fact that there are increasingly few places where no-one else has photographed, means that over the years, life has become much more difficult for the professional wildlife photographer.
Nevertheless, wildlife photographs play a very important part in educating people about what is out there and what needs conserving. Although photography can be an enjoyable pastime, as it is to many people, it is also something that plays a very important part in educating young and old alike. Of photographer, patience is perhaps the most obvious.
You just have to be prepared to sit it out. I am actually more patient now because I write more than ever before, and as long as I have got a bit of paper and a pencil, I do not feel that I am wasting my time. And because I photograph such a wide range of things, even if the main target does not appear, I can probably find something else to concentrate on, instead.
Wildlife photography is important because it can make people realize that ____________.
photography is an enjoyable hobby
we learn little about wildlife at school
it is worthwhile visiting the countryside
it is important to look after wild animals