David Tipling

David Tipling is a professional wildlife photographer. He has won the documentary award for the European Nature Photographer of the Year for his work on emperor penguins.

He is the author or commissioned photographer for more than 30 books that include Collins Top Birding Spots in Britain & Ireland, The National Parks and Other Wild Places of Britain & Ireland, Attracting Wildlife to your Garden, and most recently The RSPB Guide to Digital Wildlife Photography.

Background and education Born in Hove Sussex, David Tipling was educated at the Wildernesse School in Sevenoaks. A keen birdwatcher from an early age, his parents bought him his first camera in his teens.

Themes and interests Tipling's photography is influenced by the Swedish painter Bruno Liljefors,

Published work Tipling's work has been published in magazines such as British Birds, Birds Illustrated, Birdwatch, Dutch Birding and Birding World; as well as being used in national newspapers.

Tipling's has also worked with the ornithologist Jonathan Elphick, together they published GREAT BIRDS: 200 Star Species of Britain.

Tipling is a photographic consultant for British Birds. From 1994 to 2003, he had a monthly quizbird column in Bird Watching Magazine. Picture credits include over 500 book covers for example Pecked to Death by Ducks by Tim Cahill, various Lonely Planet guides including Antarctica and the Secret Life of Birds by Dominic Couzens.

Books completely illustrated by Tipling include Collins Gem Guide to Garden Birds, Understanding Bird Behaviour by Stephen Moss, Bird Identification and Fieldcraft by Mark Ward.

Tipling has also undertaken major advertising work, for clients including Pedigree Chum and Fuji Film, who ran an advertising campaign using his emperor penguins from 2001 to 2003. Tipling's emperor penguins were also used in the Walmart ad campaign in the United States in 2002.

Birds and People Tipling's latest project with author and naturalist Mark Cocker and natural history researcher Jonathan Elphick, is Birds and People. Birds and People is a ten-year-long collaboration between the publishers Random House and BirdLife International, to survey and document worldwide, the cultural significance of birds,

Tipling's role within the Birds and People project, as photographer and editor, is both to photograph and find images that illustrate the connection between man and bird as depicted in the stories recorded and covered by the project.