Meet Will

The cornerstone of William's photography is a desire to depict wild animals entirely on their own terms. "My presence should have no great influence on their behaviour, for in doing so the image will no longer be what I strive for: Natural." It's a philosophy that has shaped not just how he works in the field, but the instantly recognisable quality that runs through everything he produces.

William's internationally acclaimed work is represented by multiple leading art galleries, sold at art fairs throughout Europe, awarded in the industry's most prestigious competitions and by the age of thirty he had completed his second solo exhibition in London.

While it was sport photography that first prompted William to pick up a camera in his early teens, his life in the safari industry began at just 18 as an intern at Governors' Camp Collection in the Maasai Mara. The role covered everything from cleaning shower heads to running monthly stock checks for the spare parts of fifty-seven Land Rovers, but it also meant managing their Private Camp and producing all the marketing content the Collection needed, and it was here that his love for wildlife photography took hold.

Following two years in Kenya he returned to the UK, completed a first-class degree in Marine and Natural History Photography and went back to Governors' in 2019 as their full-time resident photographer. The shower heads were someone else's problem from that point on.

Two years into living in the Maasai Mara, William was signed by his first London art gallery and simultaneously launched Armstrong Fortescue, a dedicated photo tour company offering guests the chance to photograph wildlife the way William does - up close, unhurried, and without compromise. With trips quickly selling out, prints leaving the gallery walls at pace and the small matter of Covid-19 he left Governors' in 2021 to focus on guided safaris and his growing print collection, becoming the youngest wildlife photographer to hold a solo London gallery show and featuring in a range of global fundraisers along the way.

William has always been clear that work so focused on wildlife should give something back to the species he photographs. His prints are a regular feature in London charity auctions, with an edition of Rumble in the Jungle raising a record £30,000 for the Zoological Society of London in 2022 - the highest auction result they have ever achieved for a single artwork. To date, William's work has raised over £145,000 for a wide range of conservation causes.

"For me photography has always been a form of expression - an attempt to explain to everyone how you see the world around you. Even now, eleven years after I first picked up a camera, the buzz I get when everything's fallen into place and I get 'the' shot of a wild animal is unbeatable. Hopefully that remains the case for as long as I have a camera in my hand."

William's first book, The Last Stand, was released in October 2022 alongside his debut solo exhibition The Art of Survival. Containing over a hundred of his finest images from the preceding three years and limited to just one thousand editions, it stands as a genuine collector's document of his earliest work.

His images had been regularly awarded in major international competitions, but 2024 brought his biggest recognition yet - Romance is Dead was not only highly commended at Wildlife Photographer of the Year, the most respected award in the industry, but selected as the cover image of their annual publication. It remains the high point of his photography career so far.

Having decided with his former business partner to bring Armstrong Fortescue to a close and move in their own directions, William's focus is now entirely on Fortescue Safaris and the next decade of photography and travel. The safari landscape is shifting, and he's shifting with it.

"The days of seven or ten-day driven safaris are steadily morphing into something more active — e-biking, horseback riding, helicopter safaris, all of which I've been able to enjoy in the last eighteen months. 

As guests look for ever more exciting options and ways to get away from the crowds, every itinerary I plan seems to become more adventurous than the last. Alongside this, photography is exploding. 

Social media and the increasingly rapid advance in camera technology is creating more photographers every year, and the quality of images produced on the photo safaris I lead keeps improving - my guests won a host of awards in 2024, which was a real moment of pride."

Now based in Cheltenham, William's conviction that the best safari is always the one that hasn't been done before remains as strong as ever - and his contacts book, accumulated over thirteen years and four continents, gives him every means to keep proving it.