I've been obsessive about nature photography for a very long time. It all started about forty years ago when I was an avid fisherman and bought a simple camera to photograph the fish that I caught. To cut a long story short, within a couple of months I had sold most of my fishing gear in order to buy a better, more sophisticated SLR camera. In other words I was well and truly hooked!

As a young lad I was fascinated by the natural world and went through all the usual schoolboy phases of collecting birds' eggs, butterflies and moths, wildflowers, fossils - and indeed anything else that might feed my appetite for all that nature had to offer. The realisation gradually dawned that collecting the things I enjoyed looking at and reading about was destructive, to say the least, and was far from being the best way of doing things. The acquisition of a decent camera proved to be a really enlightening catalyst, and I went on my way in a much more environmentally friendly manner. There was, however, a very useful legacy from my youthful depredations in the form of a reasonably good knowledge of local natural history which has stood me in very good stead ever since and which has broadened out somewhat now to cover more distant horizons. I soon joined a local camera club and also The Royal Photographic Society (www.rps.org), one or two of whose distinctions I hoped I might gain in due course. Soon after I joined the RPS, its Nature Group (www.thenaturegroup.org ) was formed, and I have enjoyed taking part in its many activities ever since. I did my stint as Chairman and was a Committee member for almost longer than I care to remember. Over the last fifteen years or so I have been a member of the RPS Nature Distinctions Panel which meets twice yearly to consider applications for the Associateship and Fellowship of the Society in the Nature category. My membership of the Smethwick Photographic Society (www.theoldschoolhouse.com) has given me great satisfaction and pleasure over the years and I am still very much involved with its prestigious International Exhibition, which is held annually in January. Since I took early retirement from teaching modern languages, I have tutored many courses in nature photography on a freelance basis at field study centres around the UK and, over a period of twenty years or so, have led groups of photographers on trips abroad to places like Africa, India, the Falkland Islands, Antarctica and the Swiss Alps, to name but a few, most of these being for Photo Travellers (www.photo-travellers.co.uk) of Godalming in Surrey.

My obsession with wildlife photography has not, I'm pleased to say, precluded my developing an interest in other kinds of photography, which I hope the following gallery pages will demonstrate. This is not a complicated or extravagant website, but merely one which provides me with an opportunity to share a few of my pictures with you. I intend to change at least some of them regularly, so do look in again.

 

* Click on gallery pictures to enlarge them.

 

The photographs on this website are all of low resolution.  They are, nevertheless, protected by copyright laws and must not be downloaded or reproduced in any form without the written permission of their owner, Tony Wharton, FRPS.