I started this website, started writing this blog in 2012. It’s now 2020. I’ve only just realised what a long time ago 2012 is! I always tell people I’ve been blogging for three or four years, but it’s actually been eight. Crazy.

Posts have tailed off recently because I’ve been finding it a bit harder to balance the rigours of my PhD work (and skiving off to have adventures) with scheduled writing time. It’s not that I’m not out taking photos and doing science, I’ve just had no time to process it and post things like I used to!

It’s made me think a lot about what I write on this blog, and how it’s changed over the years. I started off as a photographer, chasing light, landscapes, animals, delving into portraiture and post-processing, smartphone photography and stage-shows. A Bachelors, Postgraduate diploma and Master of Science later and I’m now a seabird scientist and conservation photographer (a mouthful, I know), trying to figure out how to bring those two things together to tell stories about the work I feel so lucky to do.

A few catastrophic computer crashes in the time of having this website means I don’t have any old screenshots of how it used to look. I wish I did! It would be so neat to look back at how this has evolved, because it has been so pivotal in how I’ve gotten to where I am now. But this post is peppered with photos from through the years (thanks Dad), and they’re perhaps a better picture of those changes.

I would like to write more, so it’s one of my goals for this year. I need to get back into the groove of blogging because consistency is key! One of my main drivers is that without communication, science is a bit pointless. So I’d like to share more of my research, not just my photography.

For those who have just arrived in this little corner of the internet – this is me! After a roundabout route including musical theatre and a year at art-school, I’ve found my niche doing a PhD on shearwaters and prions. I’ve just published a book about Aotearoa’s birds. Sometimes I run away from the office and spend weeks on ships or remote islands because I’m built for wild places and I hate staring at screens. And I’d like to share the stories of the seabirds that I get to work with, the islands that we adventure to, and the research that makes it all possible with you. If that sounds like a bit of alright, pop your email in the sidebar, and (hopefully!) stories will fly straight into your email inbox soon.