A wild affair: develop a passion for photography and nature

Catching wildlife on film has taken our science editor from Shetland to Kazakhstan, but his photograph of a woodpecker in the garden of his London home gave him as big a thrill

Henri Cartier-Bresson had a simple maxim about the craft that he had mastered so completely. “Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst,” he would tell fledgling snappers. And as the years roll on, I have begun to find comfort in his advice. I began wielding a camera a very long time ago and I reckon I am now approaching Cartier-Bresson’s magic quota. By his arithmetic, I will soon step off the lowest rung in the ladder of photography and progress to the next-to-worst ranking. Things can only get better.

And I cannot deny I have taken many badly focused, clumsily framed images in my time. The blurred negatives in my files confirm that sad fact. However, as the years have passed, I have also managed a few decent photographs that have brought me a sense of fulfilment and, occasionally, the satisfaction of seeing my efforts in print. Mastering an acceptable image is a pleasing business, I have found.

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