About Richard

My name is Richard Patrick Fray, and I was born in Leicester, England in April 1973

It was no great surprise that I became interested in wildlife at an early age, as my dad, Mic, ran the local Young Ornithologist Club, and the fledgling Fray boys were inevitably in tow. When my older brother, Rob, got his first car, my birding and wildlife trips were extended from the fields behind the house to all over the UK, and overseas trips weren't far behind.

I became involved with the local bird club, the Leicestershire & Rutland Ornithological Society, and in a decade as a committee member I served as editor of the monthly newsletter, assistant editor of the annual bird report and convener of the conservation and census sub-committee. Along with wildlife artist Andy Mackay, I designed the society's website and maintained it for three years.

In 2002 I was approached about dragonfly recording, and within a few months the Leicestershire & Rutland Dragonfly Group was formed. I was again assigned website duties, and I still maintain the website today.

I wasn't serious about wildlife photography until the mid 1990s, but slowly I caught the bug. With a few notable (and published) exceptions, I didn't do that well with the SLR equipment I had - I was on a tight budget, and the decent lenses were out of reach. But all this changed with the digital revolution. I bought a digital camcorder in January 2001, and by holding it up to the eyepiece of my telescope I was able to take some shaky, close up footage. With practice, an ingenious flip-over bracket designed by an engineer friend, and a lot of time on the computer I was able to turn this into a wide selection of reasonably fuzzy record shots. In September 2002 I upgraded to a digital still camera, a Nikon Coolpix 4500, and my "digiscoping" really started in earnest.