Ray of RAKPhotographic was born in London in 1957. Growing up in the northwest of London offered at that time little opportunity to connect to nature.

From a young age he always had an interest in wildlife starting out with a keen interest in all things aquatic. Moving to Bedfordshire twenty plus years ago he extended his thirst for knowledge and began to study wildlife in greater detail, and from there photography was born.His photography concentrates on the natural world and is motivated by a desire to capture its beauty in camera. Ray`s favorite photographs are often those which record a 'decisive moment' and show wild creatures in the context of their natural habitat, sometimes with an element of minimalist.

To hone his computer skills, Ray has spent many years at a local college in the evenings, managing to obtain the following qualifications:

NCTE in Telematics (intermediate)
ONC in digital photography
City & Guilds in Multimedia
City & Guilds in Adobe Photoshop – levels 1/2 & 3

Moving on from that, he sat the Adobe "ACA" exam, which was passed, this gave the ACA - Adobe Certified Associate in Photoshop .

Recently, he achieved a catagory Semi Finalist place in Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year with a shot of a Leopard, this shot can be seen in the slide show in the Big Cats section, it`s the seventh slide.

Ray is also a member of the the Society of Nature and Wildlife Photographers, this organization welcomes into membership pro and enthusiast photographers who have a love for the natural world.

For wildlife photography he uses Canon 1 series EOS cameras. This kind of camera allows you to see what the lens is “seeing” and ensures that you get exactly what you want in focus. You can also change lenses on these cameras which give you the flexibility to use wide, prime, medium and telephoto lenses. Many people assume that wildlife photographers use ultra-telephoto lenses all the time, but this is not the case. Many wildlife pictures can be shot on wide or medium focal length lenses – it is all a matter of where you can get the camera in relation to the subject. Head for a seabird colony like the Farne Islands and you’ll find that you can shoot good wildlife images all day with a standard lens. I use zoom lenses which give a range of focal lengths within the one lens – this reduces the amount of time that you spend changing lenses and it gives you more options. Nowadays these lenses are optically excellent and can be reasonably priced. In fact, with a camera body, a 28-135mm lens and a 70-200mm lens you have a portable kit that provides everything you need to start photographing wildlife. And most zoom lenses have a “macro” facility so you can get close-up images as well. All that said, a number of the bird shots have been taken with a 500 F4.5 lens.

No-one likes carrying a tripod but no serious wildlife photographer is going to survive without one. A tripod is just one of the burdens of the job! So why is this piece of kit so essential. Primarily because it provides a steady support for the camera. This allows the use of long shutter speeds without camera shake, thus keeping the image sharp during exposures of several seconds, minutes .
A tripod is particularly important when using telephoto or large prime lenses. The use of a Gimbal type head when using long lenses to pan with a moving subject is also effective in reducing camera shake.

For the filing of images, Adobe Bridge is used, whilst Adobe Photoshop is used for post production, this is achieved with two matched 19" colour managed monitors. All images are backed up three times over a network to different drives for safety and security.

For output, a Canon A3+ Canon PIXMA Pro9500 Mark II produces gallery-quality, long-lasting prints on a wide range of media, mainly printed on either Permajet or Hahnemuehle, the use of these fine quality papers, together with Canon`s own ink`s, ensure a professional and constant output.