Biography

Neil Aldridge is a conservationist, photographer and filmmaker, as well as a professional wildlife guide, speaker and author.

His photography has won awards all over the world, including winning the World Press environment category, the overall title of European Wildlife Photographer of the Year and the NPPA's Best of Photojournalism award for environmental storytelling.

​His work has twice featured amongst the winners of the coveted Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest and he has twice been a winner of British Wildlife Photography Awards. You can see a full list of Neil's photo awards here.

Conservation work

Neil focuses his efforts on creating photographs and stories that increase our understanding and awareness of conservation issues and inspire change. His documentary photography has been published by National Geographic, BBC Wildlife magazine, Geo and other leading platforms.

He also uses his fine art wildlife photography to raise funds for conservation causes through exhibitions, events, direct sales from this site, and collaborative fundraising ventures such as Prints for Nature.

Neil has also worked for several leading NGOs in the wildlife and environment sector, affording him vital experience in how strong images can help campaigns and organisations to succeed.

Photography projects

His biggest projects to date include stories that have documented efforts to save Africa’s wild dogs, pangolins and rhinos, as well as stories from the British countryside about the controversial badger cull debate, pheasant shooting and our relationship with foxes. You can see galleries of these stories on the projects page.

His African wild dog book Underdogs spearheaded his efforts to raise funds and awareness for this endangered species. Photographs from this project featured in Wildlife Photographer of the Year and the International Conservation Photography Awards, as well as the iLCP's Extinction exhibition in Colorado in 2010. Through sales of Underdogs, Neil donated funds to wild dog projects in Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Filming work

As a freelance camera operator, Neil has experience of filming on the frontline of conservation, capturing natural history sequences for broadcast TV, and producing and editing short films for NGOs.

In 2019, Neil was commissioned by Wildscreen to create 21 films for the innovative Back from the Brink project about England's most threatened wildlife. In 2020 he created a short film making the case for the vaccination of badgers against TB  to combat the government's controversial culling policy. Then, in 2021 he formed Slygas, which aims to support frontline conservation projects and charities to make an impact with their communications.

Rhino conservation & anti-poaching advocate

Neil began using his photography and video work to support Rhino Conservation Botswana in 2016. He helped the charity to promote its work and secure funds for the movement of rhinos to Botswana, as well as their subsequent monitoring and protection.

He has also served as a trustee of the charities Poaching Prevention and Animals Saving Animals, both of which were established to carry out vital security and anti-poaching work around the world.

Neil has contributed to a number of collaborative projects, including the influential Photographers Against Wildlife Crime books and the successful Remembering Rhinos fundraising project. In 2021, his image was used on the cover of the Remembering African Wild Dogs book and sales of three limited edition fine art prints of the image raised further funds for frontline conservation efforts.

Photo competition judge, festival producer & technical consultant

In 2019, Neil joined the main jury of the World Press Photo contest and served as the Chair of the environment and nature juries. He has judged the British Wildlife Photography Awards, Italy's BioPhoto Contest and, in 2018, he worked with the charity Wildscreen to develop the first Photo Story Panda Award for storytelling. He served as the competition's technical consultant, a role he also carried out in 2015 for the landmark Por el Planeta contest.

Once again in 2018 he worked in partnership with Wildscreen as a Producer on the internationally renowned Wildscreen Festival, managing the festival's photography element.

Lecturer & speaker

As a speaker, Neil shares his experiences at events and talks around the world. He has been a speaker at London's Natural History Museum, Seattle's Burke Museum, South Africa’s WildShots photography festival, Germany's GDT photography festival, the British Birdfair, Spain's MontPhoto Festival, Belgium's Lowland Festival and Italy's BioPhoto Festival.

As well as talks and events, Neil is a regular media contributor, appearing as an in-studio guest on radio and television.

Wildlife guide & international athlete

Having studied at the Antares Field Guide Training Centre in South Africa, Neil is a FGASA (Field Guides Association of Southern Africa) qualified guide and ethical field skills and an intimate knowledge of wildlife play a central role in his photography. He runs private tuition workshops and leads tours for Wildlife Worldwide. Neil is also a guest tour leader for C4 Photo Safaris.

Neil also holds a Masters degree in photojournalism from the University of the Arts London and is a contributor to leading wildlife photography and film agencies Nature Picture Library and NatureFootage.

He is a former South African international rower, having competed at a World Cup, African Championships and two World Junior Championships.