It is with great pleasure that I am going to return to the Outdoor Show to give 4 talks this year. This event, which is held at the amazing Excel on London Docklands from the 17th-20th January, has grown from strength to strength. It’s now a combination of 4 shows - The Outdoor Show, the Active Travel Show, the Boat Show and The London Bike Show.

This year I will be partnering with Outdoor Photography magazine in the PhotoBox Theatre and will be giving two very different talks per day on Friday 18th and Saturday 19th. The timings are as follows for each day:

13.30 - 14.30 - Technical Q&A (analysing my work, gear etc)
15.30 - 16.30 - Life of a Professional Wildlife Photographer Q&A

As you will see they are both Q&A’s, in other words they will be interactive! Steve Watkins, the editor of OP, will be hosting my Q&A and he promises to ask me some very searching questions. I am always at my best at events like this that are interactive and I am sure that you will learn a lot from the talks. Oh I will be showing some new work too and some of my favourite images, which will be analysed, discussed and generally mulled over. As always I will do my best to entertain and inspire you.

You can get details of the event and purchase advance tickets by clicking here.

Svalbard Update 2013

Hello everyone, just a quick update on the status of the Svalbard Explorer cruise on the Quest in June 2013. To remind you next June we have an exclusive charter of this ship, for a relaxing 7 day cruise to see the highlights of this amazing wilderness. Yes we will look for polar bears and other wildlife (hopefully including the bird cliffs too), but we will also immerse ourselves in the incredible landscapes. This will be a very relaxed pace compared to my other more expedition focused Svalbard trips. Further information on this trip can be found using the links below.


Welcoming Eddie Ephraums to the team!

First though some top news, Eddie Ephraums, will be joining my team on board to provide mentoring and critiques throughout the cruise for all photographers. Eddie is my mentor, my designer and my business partner for the new iPad Apps (coming very soon). We plan to have a full photographic program on the cruise so that all photographers will get real benefit from it and I know that Eddie will be a vital component of this. There will be mentoring, critiques, fun competitions for all levels and much much more.

Cabin Availability

Recently we have had a lot of enquiries for the remaining cabins so I thought that it would be best to put the current status here. We have a few cabins tentatively reserved so please do use the contact link at the bottom of this update if you’d like to come along asap. Right here goes:

• 2 females needed to share at triple (currently 1 person booked) - £3600 per person + £698 flights, hotel, transfers etc
  
  
• 1 male to share a triple (currently 2 persons booked) - £3600 per person plus flights, hotel, transfers etc.
  
  
• 1 male to share a Twin cabin - £4050 per person plus flights etc.
  
  
• 5 Twin cabins - £4050 per person plus flights etc.

Further Information

To download the brochure please click here

To see the safari page for this trip please click here

To contact Wildlife & Wilderness to enquire about a booking please click here

It’s gonna be a wonderful trip so if you’ve wanted to come along to see this incredible place then now is the perfect time!

Wow check the one above out, hanging down from the canopy and shot with the all new 24-70 razor sharp lens. A great experience to do it, predictably I got completely soaked but the kit is fine and to do this with lemurs is always such a pleasure....

This morning the storm hit but a few of us ventured out into the forest to do some macro work as the rain added a fun element to the shots. I am not a macro specialist by any means, it’s alien to me, but photography is about having fun and trying new things so armed with a 100mm macro, 14mm wide angle and something called a "ring flash" I set out to show the world my art!! Anyway it was a fun few hours, the gear and yours truly got a real drenching, but the 1DX I know will survive as it really seems to be built to withstand the elements. All the Canon gear is performing superbly at the hands of a bedraggled photographer!!

Hello everyone and welcome to the first Madagascar BLOG. Internet here is very patchy at best so updates will likely be every few days. The start to this trip has been a tough one, with an early morning arrival followed by an onward flight a few hours later. Still everyone on this trip has been with me several times before so all know that eventually we will get to some cool wildlife....and so we did!!

When you work in Madagascar it is really divided into several different ecosystems. Right now we are in the deep south, so are working with species such as ring tailed lemurs and verreaux sifaka. On the first afternoon, after a much welcome lunch, our first lemur sighting was a sifaka dancing along the path towards us. A wonderful way to kick off the trip and over the following afternoon and morning session we all took some wonderful images with smiles on our faces. Lemurs are like that, so cool. Anyway here are a few images taken so far, hope that you like, please do take 10 seconds to comment back on FB / Twitter as this is a time consuming thing to do. So here goes:

Beautiful lemurs, all close I know, will post a lot of more atmospherics tomorrow. Hope you enjoy, the bar is calling now for what promises to be a heavy celebration night before the 5am start again tomorrow!

Apologies for the silence but I have been a bit busy this week with workshops and getting the business ready for my absence over the next few weeks. I’m about to leave for Madagascar, where I will be taking two very excited groups around this wonderful country on a Lemur fest! I have been several times before and know the country well, but not in recent years so it’s my first time with all the digital gear. Here’s a few favourite images from my past trips......











The little black chap is a baby Indri, my favourite lemur species and one that I am really looking forward to trekking with. Actually all lemurs are incredible, they are friendly, photogenic and just completely different from anything else. The same can be said for Madagascar, it is VERY different and the trick is knowing when and where to go to get the best shots.

Madagascar is still a developing country but I am hoping that my dongle (had to be careful how I typed that this morning) will allow me to update the BLOG on a regular basis. I’ll certainly do my best to post some pictures anyway, so we will have Madagascar Live!!!

Packing for this trip is quite easy as I don’t need a lot of big lenses, here’s the current status on the bed:



I took it in funky x-ray on Tadaa! So two 1DX bodies, 300 2.8 is the biggest lens, 70-200, 24-70, 14, fisheye and a macro. Yes that is right, Rouse is shooting macro! For this I have two Speedlites plus a ring flash, lots of other gubbins like diffusers, but I am noticing the difference without a big lens, so will my back! Oh yes and before you say it, I know I have to take some clothes too!!!! I am really trying to travel light for this one but when you add in a tripod, heads, satellite phone for emergencies and all that stuff all the extra 1 kg kit bags soon add up to the 20kg allowance.

So there you go, now it’s time to pack and say adios for a while, I will be in touch soon!!