SNAP-CHAT

Nick Garbutt is loving lemurs and big cats, but midges? No thanks

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How did your career start?

While at university, I went on an expedition to Borneo to study proboscis monkeys. None of the team had any photography experience, so I borrowed a camera from my grandparents and became the ‘expedition photographer’. I read an Idiot’s Guide to photography on the plane and spent three months taking terrible pictures. But I was hooked.

Which of your images is most important to you?

A photo of a tiger walking away, taken in Kanha National Park in India. It won the Gerald Durrell Endangered Wildlife category in the 2000 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. It really helped to raise my profile.

What's been your most memorable experience with wildlife?

The first time I saw a tiger in the wild, in 1985, in Kaziranga National Park in Assam. I can still remember seeing a tiger for the first time in a safari park when I was five or six years old, and being captivated. No other animal combines such beauty, aura and majesty. Even now, the hairs on the back of my neck bristle at the prospect of catching a glimpse of one in the wild.

What's been your hairiest shoot?