I cannot quite remember how I came across Michael. It may have been in the mid-2000s when I had left Getty Images and was doing consultancy work transitioning photographers from film to digital. I met Mike through his wonderful sister Sue.

What struck me most about Michael (apart from his gentle, intelligent and old fashioned English ways) was that he was excited to learn new things. Photographers half his age struggled to get used to digital cameras and he just jumped right in with no fear.

I taught him to make his own CMYK files for his books so that he could control the colour better, I would not have trusted this to anyone else except Michael.

He told me of standing for hours waiting for a bird to return to a branch. I know that in the days of film that holding a camera with a long manual focus lens was no easy feat, he was head and shoulders above others because he took the time and loved his subjects.

Faced with the loss of a leg and no chance to travel he created a book on insects he shot in his own garden, he would never give up.

Michael, Im sorry I could not follow through with my request to film an interview about you. I talked about how valuable it might be to do an hour long talking head with some samples of your work so that some of your stories could be seen by a wider audience. We are all poorer that this did not happen.

It’s been an honour to know you and you are missed.

Stephen