About Robert Thompson

Robert Thompson was born in Northern Ireland where he lived for most of his early life. His interest in natural history began during his childhood explorations of a large parkland estate where he grew up. After initially pursuing a hospital career in the dental profession in London, he returned to Ireland and became involved with environmental recording projects associated with insects, for local conservation and government organisations before developing his natural history photographic career.

He is an accomplished natural history photographer, entomologist, and acclaimed specialist in close-up and macro photography and has been involved in several high-profile recording projects in Ireland. He was the national recorder in Ireland for Dragonflies; co-ordinator for the highly successful DragonflyIreland Project; regional recorder for moths on behalf of Butterfly Conservation Northern Ireland and has written numerous books on various natural history topics and nature photography. He has also been a major photographic contributor to many other high profile natural history publications and is one of Ireland's leading nature photographers.

As an active conservationist, he promotes the welfare and preservation of his subjects through his photography and writing. He has a particular interest in dragonflies, butterflies and moths for which he has specialist scientific knowledge.

His work is widely published in the UK, Ireland and internationally, with numerous photographic credits in a wide variety of books, magazines, calenders and various other media sources through his own library and agencies. He is a frequent writer and contributor to the photographic press and other natural history publications; had several solo exhibitions; the most recent entitled the Natural History of Ulster, which ran for 5 months at the Ulster Museum.  He has appeared on television and radio as a photographer and entomologist and contributed to other programs relating to natural history and photography. Although now a convert to digital, he was a longtime user and advocate of medium format; his images frequently illustrated Mamiya’s Medium Format cameras, both in the UK and Japan. His work has also been featured in Nikon Pro magazine and Nikon UK.

His photographs are represented by a number of agencies including, Natural History Photographic Agency (NHPA) and Nature Picture Library (NPL) in the UK. He also has his own picture library in Ireland, runs workshops and tours in some of Ireland’s most picturesque locations. With over twenty years experience as a natural history photographer he has explored many of Ireland’s beauty spots and travelled widely in Europe photographing its flora and fauna with particular attention to its threatened and declining wild orchid populations.