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The Callof the Wild with Trev Wilson

by Mike McNamee

Mike McNamee talks to The Societies' Nature and Wildlife Photographer of the Year for 2014 Trev Wilson won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year with a much-praised image of a male kingfisher stunning its prey. The image also took third spot in the overall Photographer of the Year competition.

Trev also recently passed his Associateship as an ASINWP, to add to his Licentiateship of the SWPP and so it has been quite a 12-months for him. McNamee was despatched to find out more!

Trev has been interested in watching wildlife since it was nurtured as a youngster growing up in the north-east and close to places such as the Farne Islands. Nine years ago observing converted to photographing, partly to act as a stress reliever from a busy day job. Gradually his nature photography has become a consuming passion and when talking to Trev that youthful enthusiasm for nature remains very much undiminished. He started, though, with social photography and spent fours years under the guidance of Damian McGilicuddy in the Mentor Me programme. During these years, Trev also had a studio and a busy wedding schedule which was taking up many weekends. Recently he has decided to cut back on social photography, dropped the studio and reduced his wedding commitments so that he can devote more of his time to wildlife. His progress has thus been rapid.

The Winning Shot
This male kingfisher was resident on a small stream on private land in the midlands. The perch was a regular stopping point to stun recently caught prey, before delivery back to the sitting female, although the bird only made four visits during a 12-hour stint in the hide. Waiting, watching and understanding the bird's behaviour are vital; the male would gulp a fish to nourish itself straight down in the blink of an eye, but a fish for delivery to the female would first be stunned on this favourite perch. It was during one such incident that the single motor drive burst yielded the winning shot with blood, fish eggs and water flying across the image in a large arc and a violent smashing of the minnow into submission. The shutter speed of 1/2,500 was enough to grab some detail from the action, while retaining a great sense of movement; it was this and the vibrancy of the colours which attracted the attention of the non-specialist judges whose approval is vital in the final judging for the overall competition.

The male bird was particularly busy at this time with a second brood to feed and a single male from the first brood trying to muscle in on the parent's territory - kingfishers are particularly aggressive in defending their patch! Despite the infrequent opportunities, Trev also managed to grab a winning shot for the Societies' All Things Great and Small competition from the same bird! His award for third place was an Adobe subscription to Creative Cloud which has enabled Trev to expand his software base to include things such as video. For the record, the winning shot was processed in Lightroom, with a final clean-up in Photoshop; the Raw file was made on a Canon 5D MkIII at ISO 1250, a Canon EF500mm f/4L IS USM at f5.6 and 1/2,500s. It was shot in vertical format although the entry for PoY was cropped to landscape format.

The Associateship Panel
Trev went for a panel which displayed a mixture of species both mammal and bird. It was a digital submission and therefore cropping was carried out on a per-image basis rather than the more constraining requirements of a printed panel. Judging by his enthusiasm when talking, little owls are Trev's current favourites along with his hares (which are locals) and his grouse (which are very much not local!). The dawn grouse shot required an overnight car sleep for a dawn rise to catch the early sun.

The Future
Our conversation drifted naturally to the topic of a Fellowship panel and the practical differences of approach needed for the step up to this higher level. Wildlife photography has developed significantly over the last 5-10 years as the advances in digital have been exploited. Today's successful panel has to really stand out from the crowd either by artistic content (see Lesley Wood FSINWP in this issue) or by heart-stopping action, or significant behavioural interest - when it was fiendishly difficult to get sharp, clean shots, technical expertise carried a lot of weight; today that is taken as a given. The project is exercising Trev's mind in the spare moments he has to ponder these matters, we await developments in the outlook period!



Updated 27/04/2026 16:44:22 Last Modified: Monday, 27 April 2026