Jonathan Grey
A childhood spent as a wildlife photographer’s apprentice led to a fascination with aquatic ecology
Jonathan Grey had the kind of upbringing most can only dream of: his father was a professional photographer whose passion was shooting wildlife, and the young Grey acted as assistant from the earliest times he can remember.
“We never went on a family holiday, we always went somewhere for a specific purpose, for him to photograph something,” says Jonathan. “Before [I was] the age of five they were all relatively local: northern Scotland and places like that. Then we started going a bit further afield.”
Jonathan discovered his lifelong passion for angling in Scotland, but “further afield” soon took them to Mallorca, Norway and Africa. He remembers standing in airport queues with holidaymakers, and being stopped by customs because he was carrying containers full of nuts and bolts to construct bird hides, so his dad could photograph wading birds on the Mallorcan saltpans.
Jonathan was never tempted to follow in his father’s footsteps; it was the science of wildlife that captured his imagination.
“It never entered my mind that I would be a photographer. I was always fascinated by how animals interacted,” says Jonathan. “Once I got interested in fishing, about the age of seven, it was always that aspect of the surface of the water... trying to work out what was going on beneath.”
His science career began with 18 months in Antarctica where he studied food-webs for his PhD – work he has continued throughout his academic career. But a 10-year stint in London ended with him “falling out of love” with academia and opting for a complete change of pace, taking up a parttime professor-in-practice role at Lancaster University combined with part-time work at the Wild Trout Trust. Now based in the Yorkshire Dales, Jonathan strives to improve the lot of Yorkshire’s becks through his work with the trust.
“It is good from the perspective of the university that they have got people who are not totally enshrined within an ivory tower, but who are doing the ‘muck and bullets’ work as well.”