I am a full time British wildlife photographer who travels with my wildlife photographer husband to Africa and Asia photographing primates in the wild.
I am interested in portraiture in general - I love looking at portraits created by David Bailey and Avedon and the like - and this has hopefully given me a broad base from which to come to grips with finding my own style in my photography of primates. Each primate to me is a character with a distinct personality. As such I want to treat them as if they were a person being photographed in a studio, the objective being to bring out the essence of each individual. This approach is radically different from the way wildlife photography is traditionally presented. I try to break away from a documentary style, to something that makes a viewer think and feel when looking at my work. I would like to think that the subjects have been given a voice through the pictures. I also like to work towards a long term project. For instance, my husband and I committed ourselves to photographing the world famous Gombe Chimpanzees over a number of years. To this end, while I take great care over each individual picture, I try for a series of pictures. The depth reflected by such an approach has been rewarded by full length articles and portfolios published in BBC Wildlife Magazine, Geo, Smithsonian Magazine, National Wildlife Magazine, and most recently, National Geographic Magazine. The culmination of our Gombe Chimpanzee project has resulted in our book called Tales from Gombe.