Well, it’s been a busy start to the year – and hard to believe its already February. I just thought I’d put up a brief blog post this month, as facebook is proving popular for updates (and a bit easier to keep on top of when on the road!) and I’m out and about quite a bit at the moment.
The year started well with a couple of talks at Ardingly College in January, and I would like to thank the staff and students for being such an enthusiastic audience last month as we waded through a couple of hours of presentations! If time permits, I hope to be back helping with the Arts Fest in the summer. For all those other associations, clubs and charities that have booked talks for this year, you’ll certainly have a hard act to follow in terms of audience participation!
As I write this, I’ve just finished the first day of Destinations, the travel show at Olympia, and it was great to meet so many of you and discuss photography in general, and the upcoming tours I’ll be leading. I can now add that I will be working with the UK’s biggest wildlife operator – Naturetrek – on a couple of tours this September, to Brazil and Zambia. For more details please feel free to get in touch with me, or drop Naturetrek a line directly.
The walking with polar bears tour is full for this year, but if you’re interested in 2017, then do drop me a line and let me know. Space on all these tours is really limited, so the earlier you can make the commitment, the better. Perhaps, some of you were amongst the 120 or so that came along to listen to my talk at Olympia this afternoon about meeting these icons of the Arctic on foot? If you were – thanks for your support, and I hope you’re suitably inspired to join me next year!
On the cold front, I’m now gearing myself for a protracted stay in Manitoba and Baffin Island, and leave the UK on the 16th February and getting back on April 9th. It’s a real privilege to think I’m going to be the first photographer ever to visit three different denning sites scattered across the Canadian Arctic, and I hope I’m going to do all three locations justice. I’ll try and post a few images as I go, and as BBC Wildlife have commissioned me to take the pictures, you should certainly get to see a good portfolio of shots through their magazine in a couple of months’ time.
Of course the practicalities of packing for that long in a region where we will have no running water are a little perplexing to say the least, but I’m sure shares in wet wipes are about to go through the roof J
Finally, I just wanted to make a quick comment about the pic – entitled “Looks like rain…” – at the top of this post – namely that of a chimpanzee from Kibale that I took last year. This image is now going to be on display on my stand at the Parallax Art Fair in Kings Road, Chelsea, London from 12-14 February (next weekend basically!). I’ve literally just received the actual chromaluxe image back from my friends at Genesis Imaging in Putney , and, as usual, they have done an amazing job. If you’re at a loose end next weekend, then do come by and say hello at the Fair…and if you’re not doing much for the next 3 days, then come round and say “Hi” at Destinations, where I’ll be on stand AF7.
I look forward to seeing some of you in the next week or so, and if not, keep safe, keep healthy, keep smiling….and keep checking back to this page and facebook where I’ll try and keep you as posted as I can on the adventures in the Arctic!