Health and safety

Former industrial sites can be very dangerous locations, with many unseen hazards, and extreme care should be exercised when and if you decide to photograph around them. I am currently working on a long-term photography project documenting how nature has taken over a former industrial site close to my home. In this image you can see a wild mountain goat amongst the rubble. On this project, I am working with an organization that has been granted access to the site by the landowner. By working with this organization, I have gained not only an insight into the history of the site but also the dangers that exist within it.

be very rewarding. You do not need to travel far to find a suitable project; a local nature reserve, or even your garden, can provide sufficient subjects to work with. By spending time over the changing seasons, you will witness the full life cycle of the animals that are the focus of your project. This will not only give you a far greater understanding of your subjects, but it will give you a much greater range of photographic opportunities as the seasons change whilst life goes on around you.

Badgers

There is no secret that I have a real soft spot for badgers! With their black-and-white facial markings, they are not only one of our most iconic and recognizable wild animals, but also one that most people have never seen. I have lost count of the hours I have spent watching and waiting, hoping to photograph the badgers that have built their setts in the fields around my home. I have been incredibly privileged to spend time with these beautiful sentient animals and the fact that badgers are currently being culled in an attempt to prevent bovine tuberculosis in cattle is, in my opinion, heartbreaking. This summer, I was fortunate to be able to photograph badgers that visit the gardens of two lovely couples that live not far from my home. Both couples share a love of badgers and actively welcome them into their gardens, both of which have a sett at their far end. These urban badgers have given me a very different set of images than the ones I have of their country cousins.

God’s acre

I have received some very strange looks when I tell people that I spend a lot of time in cemeteries and graveyards, but the fact is that they are important habitats for nature and contain a whole heap of plants and fungi, some of which are nationally rare. They, and the buildings in them, are also home to an expansive range of animals including insects, bats, owls, foxes and badgers.

Wherever you live, there will be a churchyard nearby where you can spend time communing with nature and enjoying some wildlife photography. As part of this long-term project on ‘God’s Acre’, I have spent time, over the past couple of years, photographing a family of roe deer that live in an old English cemetery. By shooting over the various seasons, I have created an expansive range of images. One set includes these roe deer in bracken as it changed colour from green in the summer, through yellow to red in autumn. I also photographed the roe deer in winter with snow falling, which made for some different images amongst the gravestones.

Wherever you live, there will be churchyard nearby where you can spend time communing with nature and enjoying some wildlife

Above: The silent shooting mode on the Nikon Z 6II is ideal for photographing sensitive animals, like this badger Andrew photographed in a friend’s garden.

Above right: Cameras may struggle to focus in falling snow, if this happens, switching to manual focus may help.