We are very excited to announce that as part of the Creative Wiltshire & Swindon HLF funded Collecting Cultures Project we have been able to acquire some beautiful photographs from the talented wildlife photographer Nick Upton.

Nick has lived in Box for 21 years and the photographs we have acquired can be seen as a record of his worldwide travels, and of Wiltshire’s flora and fauna. They are a fantastic record of the creativity of an individual working in our county, and we feel honoured to include them in our Wiltshire Print and Photograph Collection, stored safely for perpetuity with free access for all.

Nick notes that during the time the photographs were taken; “I was writing/producing and directing wildlife films through an independent company and then as a freelancer for the BBC (6 Natural World films), US public service TV and a number of public service broadcasters In Europe and Taiwan, all the time taking a lot of stills images on a film camera. From 2005-2012 I wrote/directed a culture/wildlife film in Taiwan, and worked for the RSPB Film Unit and increased my stills output hugely once I switched to digital photography.”

Since 2012 Nick has concentrated on shooting stills and digital video, contributing text and images to a book on Cranes in Norfolk and writing many photo articles for magazines including Wiltshire Life, also providing images for BBC Wildlife magazine. His films have won Best of Festival awards in eight countries, gaining him over 100 awards in total, and as a stills photographer he won the documentary category of the British Wildlife Photography Awards 2014, having also won a major prize in the European Nature Images Awards in 2012 and has been highly commended in other photography competitions such as the IGPOTY awards in recent years.

His Wiltshire home has proved to be the perfect rural base to come back to between busy international filming trips, and the county’s varied landscape has provided many productive locations for his UK wildlife photography.

The project Creative Wiltshire & Swindon is proving a wonderful way to celebrate Nick’s work. You can view all of Nick’s images acquired as part of this project at our Pinterest site at https://uk.pinterest.com/heritagewshc/creative-wiltshire-Swindon/