Ian McCarthy's World of Wildlife

From the islands of Antarctica to the north cliffs of Cornwall, BAFTA winning wildlife photographer and filmmaker Ian McCarthy has seen 30 years worth of wildlife. Here, he speaks to myCornwall about his long standing career with the natural world and what he loves about photographing Cornwall’s wildlife.

As a boy, Ian McCarthy had dreams of a life far beyond the suburban rows of his North London home. Be it in the rolling Sahara Desert of Africa or the vast mountainous reaches of Canada, he wanted somewhere with plenty of space, and plenty of wildlife. 

“I used to watch the wildlife films on TV and dreamt of being out in the wild,” he recalls. “One Christmas Day, I watched a film made by husband and wife filmmakers Des and Jen Bartlet called: ‘The Flight Of the Snow Geese’. The filmmakers followed the migration of hundreds of thousands of Snow Geese from their arctic breeding grounds all the way south through Canada and down to their Wintering grounds in southern USA, and then the journey back in the Spring. I was so moved by the drama of their great journey, the beauty of the geese and the way they were so loyal to their mates and families as they travelled together across such vast distances. The film ended with some shots of how the film was made and I suddenly realised that there were people behind the cameras filming. From then on, all I wanted to do was to be one of those people behind the camera making wildlife films.” 

Today, nearly 40 years later, Ian is an Emmy and Bafta award winning photographer with a host of achievements under his belt, having worked on well known wildlife documentaries such as Blue Planet, Planet Earth and Frozen Planet.