The son of an aviation engineer, John was born in the foothills of the Derbyshire Peak District in 1951. John spent his childhood exploring the outdoors, building tree houses, scrambling to birds’ nests in local quarries, or roaming across the peakland moors, and later venturing on school expeditions to the crags and wildness of Wales. John’s early trips away soon developed into a thirst for travel to more remote regions and the desire to bring back stories of his adventures.

As a young athlete, John cultivated a passion for rock climbing in Britain and the Alps and became a competitive fell-runner concentrating his interest in ultra marathon events in mountains. His early career as a teacher of physical education developed into outdoor pursuits when he worked for some years in a residential centre helping young people develop confidence and direction through the medium of mountain activities and water-sports.

A deeper wilderness experience beckoned, and John accepted a contract as a safety officer attached to the British Antarctic Survey in Antarctica. In 1981 he embarked on a seven month expedition to Antarctica that drew him closer to a life of nature and adventure photography. His first ever commercial picture sale found its way onto the front cover of The Times. This was followed by an audacious expedition to cross the central ice-cap of Greenland without radio communications or sophisticated navigation. Soon John was in Washington DC in discussion with National Geographic editors who were captivated by his photographs.

 Huskies in Lapland

Photography became John’s way of life and during a four month photography and climbing trip in the USA, John made a chance encounter with a travelling photographer whose work was to inspire his photography and fully commit him to a lifelong quest of exploring the wonders of natural world with his camera.

Over the last 27 years, John has adventured to 38 countries always returning with stories of his experiences of the wilderness which few have encountered. He has been to the Himalayas, the Pacific Islands, East Africa, the American Deserts, the Galapagos Islands and the Andes, Namibia, Alaska, the European Alps and has photographed almost all the wild land locations in Britain from the windswept tors of Cornwall to white strands of the Outer Hebrides. He has enthralled audiences at international film festivals with his multimedia presentations receiving accolades from the media, the public and from leading brands in the photographic industry.

Bamford Edge, Peak District National Park

Today John is one of the leading nature and adventure photographers in the world. He spent 4 years working as a stills photographer with David Bellamy and has worked with such companies as Adidas, Boots, Toyota, Midlands Power, BBC Television, and United Utilities, and in the outdoor design & manufacturing sector Karrimor, Helly Hansen, Brasher, Lowe Alpine, Rohan and Sprayway. John works closely with his London agent, Getty Images, to whom he supplies photographs for worldwide corporate advertising and features.

In multi-media, John has produced four programs for public presentations; the award-winning Touch the Earth - which toured the UK and USA in 1987; Pure Land, and Earthborn followed, both touring in the UK. More recently, ‘Wild’ Spirit in the Land premiered at Banff Mountainfilm in Canada, Telluride Mountainfilm in Colorado, and was shown in the UK at Kendal Mountainfilm in the same year. His commercial programs include Wilderness and Water for United Utilities, and A Living Landscape - for the Peak District National Park Planning Board’s 40th Anniversary.

John also consults in the travel industry, managing extraordinary expeditions into wilderness regions. Every year John designs and publishes a 58 image desk-diary of natural world subjects for the John Muir Trust. He lives in the Peak District with his family, in a small village beneath a skyline of windswept rocks and wild heather moors.

To read more, please visit John's website.

Follow this link for details of John's Wild Vision Tour.