Andy Parkinson

When he was 27, Andy Parkinson was sitting with his uncle at a campsite near the gates of Denali National Park, Alaska, after another day of exploring North America’s greatest wilderness. This was the latest of several trips the pair had made together, including a three-month trek through South America.

In Andy’s words, his uncle, Rick Packwood, was a “roving semi-pro wildlife photographer, who would spend six months of the year being a pharmacist, and six months of the year travelling, mostly around East Africa.” Andy was at a crossroads in his life: he enjoyed his work – managing a resettlement project for adults with serious behavioural difficulties – but it wasn’t a job he wanted to spend the rest of his life doing. So, he asked himself, ‘what’s the alternative?’

“I just didn’t know what I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing,” he recalls. “I was sitting around the campfire in Denali and I’d already dismissed wildlife photography as folly, because my uncle had previously told me how much his lenses had cost!” But an examination of the affordable prices of secondhand lenses made Andy think again. “My uncle just looked at me and said, ‘I think you could do it.’ That was it. It was one of the most beautiful and compelling moments of my life. I knew with certainty that it didn’t matter if I succeeded or failed. What mattered was that