CHARLIE HAMILTON JAMES

Film

Charlie is a film maker specializing in ‘blue chip’ natural history films. His films have won critical acclaim in the industry for their innovations in style and filming technique. He started his career at 16 – working on David Attenborough’s ‘Trails of Life’ – before moving on to become a cameraman working on the BBC’s most prestigious Natural History series – ‘Life of Mammals’, ‘Wildlife on One’, ‘Andes to Amazon’, ‘Big Cat Diary’ and more recently ‘Life’.

At 26, Charlie and his wife Philippa Forrester produced their first film – ‘My Halcyon River’ – part of the BBC’s Natural World series. The film was an instant hit with the audience, eliciting more requests for repeat than any other film in the BBC’s history. It went on to win numerous international awards. They subsequently went on to form Halcyon Media Ltd. Since then Halcyon Media have shot, produced and directed numerous films for the BBC and Animal Planet.

Photography

Charlie works predominantly as a wildlife photographer with a particular interest in kingfishers. His work on kingfishers features as an article in November 2009 issue of National Geographic Magazine. The pictures for the article have recently been turned into a coffee table book – ‘Kingfisher- Tales from the Halcyon river’ published by EM Books (released May 2009) which tells the life of two pairs of kingfishers on the river where he lives. Photographs have also appeared in The Sunday Times Spectrum Supplement and in the Guardian Eye Witness pages.

As well as kingfishers Charlie also photographs a wide range of other subjects from wildlife to weddings. His work has been published in numerous magazines and newspapers across the world. He also regularly shoots travel articles for the Sunday Mail Travel supplement.

Writing

Charlie has written four books. ‘Kingfishers’ published by Colin Baxter Photography was his first book written in 1995. It is a monograph of kingfishers. ‘The Matewix’ published by Harper Collins in 2005 was a satirical look at the Matrix film trilogy – it sold over 40,000 copies. He is currently in the completing stages of writing the ‘Halcyon River Diaries’ book to accompany the series with his wife to be published by Preface Publishing. He also writes articles for magazines, particularly BBC Wildlife Magazine.