Admire an eye-catching array of British garden birds

From Town & Country

The internationally acclaimed wildlife photographer Mark Harvey has released a limited-edition collection of photographs celebrating avian life, all taken near his home in the Norfolk Broads during lockdown earlier this year.

Eight species, including blue tits, magpies, goldfinches and starlings, are captured in Harvey’s images. Renowned for using beautiful lighting, a technique honed over the past 15 years, he presents a detailed look at the movements of his subjects, whose graceful poses, sweeping feathers and split-second shapes would be lost in flight without a camera to capture them. The play of colour and texture in these images is so striking that even the most familiar birds take on an almost exotic quality.

Harvey, whose work is held in the National Portrait Gallery and has been published in National Geographic, is a mostly self-taught photographer, nurturing his passion after studying ecology at University. Best known for his equine and canine portraits, he has taken his work in a new direction with this avian series.

“There’s no doubt that the pandemic has forced us to adopt a much slower pace of life,” says Harvey, who, like many, found a new appreciation for nature during lockdown and is looking to bring more of the wildlife from his garden into his oeuvre in the future.

The photographs are available to buy in four sizes, starting from £700 for 20’’ by 20’’ print, at Mark Harvey.