Lens of Hope: A Second Chance Through Nature Photography

Back in spring 2018, as I walked up Cadair Idris, I kept assuming my extreme tiredness was due to the long trek and carrying heavy camera gear. As we reached the summit, sitting down to boil tea and wait for the stars to appear, I struggled with my breath.

As the Milky Way unfolded above the summit, how could I know that another constellation was slowly expanding in my gut?

After a diagnosis of IBS, one of the doctors in our surgery commented that I looked quite pale. Suddenly, I was fast-tracked for scans and further imaging tests.

The sort of macro work you would not wish on your worst enemy soon revealed my golf ball-sized tumor in perfect focus. Here was my future being framed, my own body exposed by the push and pull of highlights and shadow detail.

I was fearful and exhausted while waiting for surgery. All my work trips were cancelled, and the furthest I could go was into my garden, which became a place of comfort and sanctuary.

That late summer was warm. Small copper and Painted lady butterflies had no concept of the coming winter. It was their job to feed, mate, lay eggs, and then give way to the next generation.

At the turning of the year, in the uncertainty of my future, a new photography idea began knocking at the door of my heart.

The beginnings of the butterflies

If the word ‘butterfly’ had aerial intention within its name, why were there so few photos of these creatures in flight?

Suddenly, instead of thinking about the possible outcomes of my own situation, I found I had a way to focus on the present.

I began to look at the tech in my possession and decided it was time to take it for a workout. I knew that high speed was very important and that freezing butterfly motion would take all of my talent and passion to pull off.

I also had plenty of time to study butterfly behaviour, to read the signs as they were about to take off (though they could, of course, leap in any direction), and there were a lot of failures before I finally started to get some decent captures.

It helped that my Olympus EM1 Mark II had an amazing Pro Capture mode which buffered 60 raw frames per second continuously and when the shutter button was fully depressed, those frames were saved.

It was like time travel – up to a second of frames were saved before I fully pressed down, which meant that both bird and butterfly take-off were no longer beyond my slow reactions.

It is interesting that most brands now incorporate a version of this tech in their cameras; it was a game changer.

Right before my operation, I was spending time in my garden when suddenly, using Verbena Bonariensis as a launch pad, a Painted lady fluttered by.

I captured the fleeting sequence as it took off and then began reading up on how to layer mask several action images together in Photoshop, a skill used for snowboarding and BMX but not so much for butterflies.

When this is done well, it shows a time-lapse within a single frame; movement within stillness, the intention and flight of the butterfly in a blink of an eye.

I felt a death-defying joy in witnessing this image come to life after dreaming of it in my mind’s eye – and later this sequence came second in the Butterfly Category of Close Up Photographer of the Year.

Finding purpose

This butterfly image became a catalyst for change for me. I felt so moved by it, as though suddenly I had something, alongside my wife and children, to live for.

As I came through surgery and gritted my teeth through debilitating chemo, as I battled with the fear that all this would soon be over and yet that I still had so much to do, I kept working on this passion project, and the butterfly pictures kept coming.

I had a new press agency, and the response from magazines and national newspapers was so positive. Soon after, I was approached by a publisher to create a book of UK butterflies.

When Butterfly Safari came out, the media was supportive, from cover features and photo stories in BBC Wildlife Mag, Country Life, and Amateur Photographer, to newspaper articles and a spread in the Guardian Saturday magazine.

How photography can heal

I am so grateful to the doctors, surgeons, and colo-rectal nurses who saved my life, and to the NHS for literally carrying me through my trauma.

But photography also helped with healing. I carried on striving for new images; the desire to create something with my camera and to keep capturing these moments changed the way I felt about my situation, as I began to realize I had a role to play.

I knew that by sharing the sheer beauty of the natural world, I could carry a strong conservation message. I realised that if people were moved by my work, perhaps they would, in time, begin to think and act in ways that might aid in protecting our wild spaces and the creatures that call them home.

I began to feel that even in a dark world, we could still hope for change.

My experience with cancer matured me as a photographer. It hastened me in the pursuit of perfection, but, perhaps more importantly, opened my eyes to the way that images can move people.

I began to really pay attention to my surroundings and the photography opportunities they presented.

I also realised that all this wildlife in our yards, parks, and gardens – our woodpeckers and firecrests, glowworms and greenfinches – were as worthy of study as the great beasts of Africa.

There should be no hierarchy or snobbishness about wildlife, and having now had an all-clear for my cancer, I approached my publisher who did Butterfly Safari and suggested that garden species should be my next project.

I was offered a contract on the spot, and my next book comes out in spring 2025.

After years of photographing the birds coming to my feeders, suddenly on a perfect morning, the light fell on a pair of dueling goldfinches, and on another winter day, the sparring siskins were yellow jewels in a green glade.

It was not just butterflies that my lens aimed at but birds, dragonflies, and ruby-tailed wasps.

My intention had deepened as a photographer. Alongside it came an overwhelming interest in light and the way it can affect the mood and scene of a composition, such as a sumptuous orange dusk behind the roosting black darter dragonfly.

Expecting the unexpected

I realised the importance of putting the hours in, understanding there are no shortcuts, and put more effort into my photography than ever before.

But I also learned to expect the unexpected, and that while we can plan and pre-visualize an image as much as we like, once in a while, a ‘miracle image’ can come out of nowhere.

We lost a close friend to cancer that had come as a sudden tsunami; one week she was out walking with my wife, the next, she was gone. On the morning of her funeral, I was shooting garden birds through my kitchen window. The winter sun had just risen behind the feeders.

As a very common blue tit took off, I captured the moment and checked the back of my screen but then wondered if my camera had gone wonky.

The bird appeared to have translucent rainbow wings.

I was later to find out this was the rarely captured effect of diffraction on the small hairy barbules that made up the wing structure. No Photoshop, straight from the raw file, the raw beauty of nature showing her best.

The pictures went viral worldwide, and I felt hopeful through this, despite my illness. It was a reminder that life carries on.

A kind of gift

I feel in some way that I have been given something — this dark gift of nearly losing my life. I do not know if or when the stranger will knock at my door one night under a clouded sky.

But here, where I live in Shropshire, there is a wonderful wildlife safari worth going on.

At sunset, great white egrets preen under the last rays of low light, and at the farm among tractors and tools, the barn swallow is framed by an ancient black door and a perfectly placed padlock. In the farmyard stone wall, a vulnerability of orange flickers as the robin brings new life.

Recently, I was reminded once more of the fleeting beauty of the natural world. We were heading to the theatre when my aurora app pinged, and I could see it might be the event of a lifetime.

I was itching to cancel the theatre trip, but that way divorce lies, and the staging of The Life of Pi was set to be extraordinary, so to the theatre I went.

On the way home, there was no time to head out to memorable landscapes, so I surrendered to the domestic. I climbed into my neighbor’s garden, and suddenly the rays of the Northern Lights were dancing above our converted chapel.

Here, briefly, death holds no sway, and the sky is singing. If there is one lesson I can share, it is to take risks with your photography.

Think of something new and fresh, work out how to do it, and then fail and fail and fail again until that one special moment comes to you when the gods of nature are smiling, and persistence and passion pay off in helping you to make something utterly new.