JOHN MUIR

Since his outstanding audio-visual debut in 1984 with the slow dissolve choreography of Touch the Earth. A Celebration of Wild Places, John Beatty has been widely acclaimed as one of the most exciting and stimulating nature, travel and adventure photographers to have emerged in recent years.

John's work is chiefly concerned with the timeless rhythms of the natural environment, its beauty and simplicity, and man's place within it.

Each year he edits and publishes this John Muir Trust Wild Nature Diary that showcases the work of some of the finest nature photographers in Britain.

Contact John Beatty

Niall Benvie, who runs Images from the Edge, has published three books and over 220 articles; he is one of the UK's most prolific writers on nature photography. The scope of his writing extends into issues of land management and the polarisation of nature and culture as well as travelogues, book reviews and commentaries on subjects as diverse as species re-establishment programmes and eco-tourism. He does not follow the international honey-pot trail instead preferring to seek out stories in relatively under-worked, though biologically rich, areas.

"In light of the unfolding environmental catastrophe of the 21st century, I feel it's a bit frivolous - not to say misleading - to continue to focus only on pristine environments and charismatic fauna without taking into account the state of the wider environment and people's relationship with it. So long as landscape and wildlife photographers continue to do this, we can't expect to be taken seriously as contributors to the debate on how we should balance the needs of nature and culture."

Laurie Campbell is one of Scotland's leading natural history and landscape photographers, and his own picture library of over 120,000 images is the most extensive of its kind by any single photographer working in Scotland. He also contributes to three other libraries: NHPA, RSPB IMAGES and GETTY IMAGES. His award winning photographs regularly feature in magazines, books, exhibitions, displays and company reports, and are distributed in a wide range of products from calendars and postcards to mouse-mats and prints

Laurie was born in 1958 and developed an interest in natural history at an early age. He began photographing wildlife in 1972, initially from a desire to share his experiences and observations of the natural world. He later studied photography at Napier University in Edinburgh (1977-81), and has since worked almost exclusively in Scotland, travelling from his Borders home to all parts of the country.

www.lauriecampbell.com

"I have always had an overwhelming passion for photography particularly when it concerns representing the beauty of my adopted home, Scotland.

The essence of good landscape photography seems to boil down to three things composition, timing and light and it is my belief that this final ingredient, light, its colour, quality and strength is the biggest single infuence on the success of the final image.

Scotland more than any other country I have tackled, challenges the photographer's patience and skill. It has always seemed to me like trying to land a feisty salmon on a thin fishing line. In photographic terms if the timing, elements, lighting and subject material are not persuaded into coherency, then, as with fishing, the hook is slipped, the line breaks and the moment of triumph passes.

Transient light perfectly describes these extraordinary moments that pass all too rapidly and subside back to the mundane."

Karen is a professional landscape photographer and writer living in the Peak District National Park. With her ever growing collection of around 12,000 images, 7,000 of which are of the Peak District, she is one of the leading landscape photographers covering this area. Other areas covered in her library range from Patagonia to Pakistan, Philippines and across to Corsica, Spain and the Italian Dolomites.

An initial career as a research chemist financed her real passion for travel, the outdoors and landscape photography. With a move back to her native Derbyshire in 1993 and inspired by the beautiful scenery of the Peak District, her landscape photography skills, instilled into her by her father at an early age, were developed further. At the age of 12 she had been given her first SLR camera and loved to follow her father onto the hills and back to the darkroom to watch the pictures magically reappear onto paper. In 1996 following the success of many picture sales both to the public and publishers, she gave up her work in chemistry and started a full time career in landscape photography.

"My aim has always been to capture arresting images of nature using a careful combination of lighting and composition. A simplistic approach but one that does not exclude the realities of the modern world in which we live and the pressures that we as the most dominant species on the planet have brought to bare on the world's fragile ecosystems.

Through the use of sensitive and stimulating images of nature I would like to think that wildlife photographers the world over have a crucial role to play in both portraying the beauty and vibrancy of the natural world and equally importantly in raising awareness and changing opinions on issues that affect us all."

www.markhamblin.com

"I like to think that many of the images I make are not simply 'landscapes'. I would prefer to call them 'lightscapes'. For me, the term 'landscape' ties an image too closely to the 'land' , a psychological weighting of the work that draws the mind towards what we know, what we can feel. Earth.

Lightscapes are an attempt to capture that space above earth, the void between land and sky where light is transient and evocative. Surfaces that reflect attract me also - their ability to distort and reflect light to create wonderful abstract patterns. Or to simply reflect the ordinary, but in a way that gives depth to their flat and anchored surfaces, and, perhaps, forces the viewer to question the reality of what they perceive.

My pictures are an attempt to capture some of these magical effects. I watch light. I think about light a great deal. And occasionally I am able to capture it."

"Well, this was not the career I had intended! With a lifelong passion for the natural world it had always been my goal to work in nature conservation. I spent four years training for this before I discovered that everyone had the same idea.. Fortunately I was lucky to be offered a place on a photography degree course at one of the UK’s top media colleges. I turned professional five years ago and, thankfully, I’m as enthusiastic as ever about my photography. Shooting a variety of subjects from birds and mammals to wildflowers and landscapes certainly helps maintain that passion. The fact that I’m always striving for new ideas, concepts and techniques means that any repetition in the work that I do never leads to monotony. I think it’s vital that photographers retain a passion for their work if they’re to continue to improve upon it. I’m now represented by The Image Bank, The Natural History Photographic Agency, and Woodfall Wild Images I also market images from my own library to calendar and postcard clients in the UK and abroad. "

www.guyedwardes.com

Born and brought up in one of Britain's most outstanding regions of natural beauty Northumberland. Geoff's devotion to his art has made him one of the world's top professional natural history photographers. His creations are way beyond documentary images but capture emotionally and artistically the essence of his subject. Today, Geoff resides in the Peak District National Park, Derbyshire with magnificent views of Dark Peak massif, Kinder Scout from his office. An outstanding field naturalist, Geoff is driven by expressing the beauty and intricacy of Britain's wildlife, wild nature and wild places that inspire him and he so cares about.

www.geoffsimpsonphotography.com

"Inspired by my Late Grandfather's tall tales of close encounters with Tigers in the Jungles of Burma, I have had a deep passion for the Natural World since. My first attempts at Photography were in my late teens and over the past Sixteen years I have travelled to many parts of the world in search of images. I feel my best work is achieved in my local area where I can work on subjects for long periods of time, therefore gaining knowledge and understanding the behaviour of the species I am photographing which certainly helps me in my goals. I am represented by RSPB Images and have had worked published in some of the leading magazines in the UK. In 2005 I was highly commended in the Animal Portraits Category in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. I live in Leicestershire with my wife Liz and children Thomas and Megan. "

www.dannygreenphotography.com