Wildlife Photographer of the year 2014

I am pleased to announce that I was awarded the Finalist award in this years Wildlife Photographer of the year. It was a real surprise and I was over the moon when I got the email to say that I was through to the awards. I am extremely grateful to say that this is the second year that I have had an award in the competition and  it was a real pleasure to catch up with everyone that I had met at the previous award ceremony. The competition hosted a wealth of incredibly evocative images which told a variety of stories. Next I had a week full of exiting experiences including a media preview and a young wildlife photography academy for which I am extremely thankful to Rosie and the rest of the Wildlife Photographer of the year team for putting on. In the years that I have been at the awards I have to say that the academy was truly one of the best experiences that the competition has put on. On the Friday I had a talk on my photography at the Natural History Museum where I had the great fortune to meet the public and answer any of their questions. This is probably my favorite thing to do as I love to hear the thoughts and feelings of the public and find out what they think of my work . I decided that after my talk I would visit the exhibition and see the public and then quite by chance I was able to have a conversation with the first Lady of Singapore, it was an honor to meet her and to discuss my image. Then at the weekend was WildPhotos which was truly inspiring and really opened my eyes to certain aspects of wildlife photography such as shooting wildlife at night. This was made powerful by Alexander Badyaev who really gave me inspiration for my own projects and was enormously selfless in giving advice to young wildlife photographers. The same can be said to Kathy Moran who is such an amazing woman and is incredibly support of up and coming photographers and her advice and expertise is so useful. Thank you Kathy for all you wise words. So all in all it was an amazing weekend and I hope that I may be fortunate to visit the competition next year.