Rob Read - WildArt Founder and Competition Coordinator

I’m a professional photographer and author, specialising in wildlife across the taxa groups and the habitats in which they are found. My images have been used in countless newspapers, magazines, books and websites across the world. I have written numerous magazine articles and have authored, co-authored and collaborated on many books on natural history including Life-Size Birds published by HarperCollins, Collins Complete Guide to Butterflies and Moths and a Naturalist’s Guide Insects of Britain & Northern Europe published by John Beaufoy Publishing.

I am perhaps best known as one of the founding directors, competition co-ordinator and face of Bird Photographer of the Year, having taken the competition from conception through to the major international brand it has become. I oversaw five competition cycles and was instrumental in the production of the five competition books published by HarperCollins, the most recent of which was published in August 2020. Following the competition’s recent sale, I resigned from my roles with the competition. 

I’ve never been one to sit still for very long and am currently working on several new projects including WildArt Photographer of the Year which will run for the first time in 2021, details of which are available on this website. In the spring of 2020 I also established Purple Crow, a website and email subscription service delivering entertaining and informative wildlife facts written by experts in their field and illustrated with fabulous wildlife photography – this has now become A Wild Read, the blog that is now annexed to the competition and is hosted on this website. WildArt will also create a series of natural history eBooks and oversee the publication of the WildArt Photographer of the Year competition book.

I hope that you will all love WildArt Photographer of the Year, a competition designed by wildlife photographers for wildlife photographers. If you’d like to get in touch then do email me at wildartpoty@gmail.com.

Examples of some of my own work are displayed below. You can follow me on Instagram at @robreadphotos