Mark has been Chairman of the Judging Panel of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition – the biggest and most prestigious competition of its kind in the world – since 2005. Working with the two owners, BBC Wildlife magazine and the Natural History Museum, he is very active in developing, promoting and steering the competition.

He also wrote the foreword for the current Wildlife Photographer of the Year book (Portfolio 19), published by BBC Books.

An accomplished and well-published photographer in his own right, Mark has an extensive collection of wildlife and conservation photographs, taken in more than 100 countries, which are sold through picture agencies around the world. His work covers everything from great white sharks and gaboon vipers to killer whales and komodo dragons. He has one of the largest collections of whale and dolphin pictures taken by a single photographer and has extremely rare images of many extinct and critically endangered species. He spends more than half the year travelling the world in search of wildlife and exploring wild places and is continually adding to his image collection.

Mark is one of 58 European nature photographers chosen to contribute to Wild Wonders of Europe - a massive photographic project designed to share Europe’s wildlife and natural wonders with more than 700 million people, through books and exhibitions. Mark's mission, which he completed in July 2009, was to photograph whales from the air in Iceland.

In 2007, he completed a world tour to photograph endangered-mammal projects in no fewer than 13 different countries for the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation.

Mark also wrote the monthly four-page Photo Masterclass in BBC Wildlife magazine, which ran throughout 2006 to October 2007 (cick on 'columns & articles' above to see all the masterclasses). Each masterclass - packed with advice on a different specialised field of wildlife photography - included an interview with a world-renowned photographer.