I am a New Forest based photographer living in the village of Ashurst on the south coast of the UK. My interest in photography started at a very young age when I used to follow my father around on his photographic trips and be fascinated by watching him produce black and white prints in his darkroom. I bought my first serious camera in 1970, a 35mm Zorki 4 rangefinder with interchangeable lenses. It was basically a cheap Russian copy of a Leica but nevertheless turned out reasonable images and helped me to improve my knowledge of photography. Now that I am retired from a full time career of nearly forty years in the IT industry, I am concentrating on my love of travel and landscape photography. I am fortunate to live in the New Forest National Park and, when not travelling abroad, I spend time photographing the diverse landscape and wildlife that is on offer. I shoot in ‘Raw’ and my photographs go through a 'post-production' process using various software packages including Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop and Capture One Pro. In recent years I have been fortunate enough to travel a number of times to Australia and hence now have a large collection of images from that country. Why Australia? Well Australia is a country that has fascinated me for most of my life and one that I had wanted to visit and photograph for many years. My grandfather, who was a World War One Anzac veteran, would captivate me as a child with tales of his experiences in the goldfields of Western Australia and the early pioneering days in Melbourne. To a photographer, the country has a great deal to offer, from the vast outback wildernesses where the air is pollution free and crystal clear, to the modern cities with their mixture of gleaming new architecture interspersed with magnificent restored Victorian buildings from the gold rush days. Despite being a young nation there is a surprising amount of beautifully preserved Victorian history, not only in the major cities but also in the surrounding townships. There is a huge variety of flora and fauna to be found in the countryside along with amazing wildlife and birdlife. All this combined with beautiful landscapes and Victorian architecture makes this, in my mind, a very photogenic country. Since the onset of the global pandemic, and the resulting travel bans in early 2020, my photography was obviously restricted to our local environment. I have always been interested in wildlife and the natural environment generally, so living in the New Forest National Park brings with it huge advantages to pursue wildlife imaging without the need to travel far from home. As a result of the travel restrictions I have turned my attention more towards bird photography and am now building a portfolio of bird images from within the New Forest National Park. When photographing birds I endeavour to capture them in their natural setting without the use of any baiting to attract them to my camera. I know that some photographers will set up a bird shoot by placing bird seed, fat balls, etc. on a strategically positioned log but, in my opinion, the resulting images invariably appear unnatural. There are some parts of the New Forest that are popular with bird photographers who use baiting and props but unfortunately this has resulted in a degradation of those local environments. I have very little expertise in ornithology and do not pretend to be an expert on birds. However, by reading books on the subject and watching birds in my local woods and heathlands, I have gained an understanding of their behaviour and feeding habits. This has helped me to capture natural bird images and, importantly, without causing any disturbance to the birds themselves or their natural environment. This is something that I am passionate about as the New Forest environment is of national importance and home to some of our rarer birds.