Stuart has been interested in photography since a very early age. Stuart accompanied his good friend and superb wildlife artist David Hyde www.davidhyde.org.uk on many trips starting in the early 1980’s photographing butterflies and insects at some of Britain’s premier nature reserves. Sites included Martin Down, Hampshire; Hickling Broad, Norfolk; South Stack, Anglesey; The Lake District; Bass Rock, Lothian; Bempton Cliffs, Yorkshire and The Farne Islands in Northumberland. Of course this was all in 35mm format, a far less flexible method of photography than today’s high quality digital revolution.

Stuart attained his City & Guilds Qualification in Photography in 1987 at Huntingdon Regional College and his final portfolio, ‘Mobile Incident’ a study of Cambridgeshire Fire & Rescue Service in action, shot in black and white and using Mamiya 645 Medium Format cameras, gained him a distinction.

Due to an increasing amount of foreign birding and other time-pressures, Stuart largely gave up photography until 2005 when his good friend and ace bird photographer Chris Turner www.christurnerbirds.co.uk accompanied him on the Sunbird Tour of Poland. After returning from the field every day Chris showed Stuart what he had taken and he was very impressed with the excellent quality of Chris’ images. So much so that when he returned home he decided to bite the bullet and invest in a Canon DSLR and a 100-400mm image stabilized lens. Since then Stuart has used and continues to use most of the big Canon Telephoto lenses including the awesome EF 500mm f/4 L IS USM as shown above during a birding tour of The Gambia and the compact EF 300mm f/2.8 L IS USM. These superb lenses are often considered the best lenses for bird photography and both have certainly helped to produce many of Stuart’s best images.

Stuart uses Canon Digital equipment and his current camera of choice is the Canon EOS 7D. More up-to-the-minute information on Canon Cameras can be found by visiting Bryan Canarthan’s superbly informative website www.the-digital-picture.com.

Since 2005 over 130 of Stuart’s images have appeared in ornithological publications, and a selection of these books, magazines, bird reports and CD Rom guides are shown in the ‘Published Work’ gallery. His client list is worldwide with images commissioned by World Birdwatch; Birding World; Aragon Tourist Office - Spain; RSPB; Birdlife International; A & C Black; Birdwatch; British Birds; Cotinga; US Fish & Wildlife Service; Bialowieza National Park - Poland; Natura 2000; Birds of Alaska; WINGS Birdwatching Tours; Sunbird Birdwatching Tours; Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, Neotropical Birding and American Bird Conservancy.

Stuart’s images are also represented worldwide by VIREO (Visual Resource for Ornithology). Based in Philadelphia, USA, this is the largest collection of high quality bird photographs in the world with over 140,000 images on their database. Please visit www.anatsci.org and follow the links to view his portfolio.

In 2007 Stuart’s image entitled ‘Little Egret landing amongst Knot’ came third in the Birdguides Photograph of the Year competition. He also received a ‘highly commended’ for his image of a Green-headed Tanager in the Brazilian Photo Competition ‘Concurso Avistar Itaú BBA de Fotografias’.

Stuart is available for private commisisions, social events and for 1:1 tuition. He has access to hand printing facilities, can offer a bespoke framing service including high quality canvas prints and offers competitive royalty free options on all of his images. To contact Stuart for more information on any of the above, please use the ‘Contact’ link on the home page.