Peter McGrath : Photographer and Writer

Brief Biographical Notes

i.e Who I am. Where I've been. What I've done. And what I do now.

Early Days

I grew up in Crosby on the northern edge of Liverpool and spent my formative years (when I wasn't playing football) exploring the area's wildlife. The local ditches provided many a frog and water-boatman to be brought home, much to my mother's annoyance. The Mersey estuary, despite the oil slicks, thronged with birds, and the 'squirrel reserve' at Formby was always a favourite. I also managed to spend a lot of summers working on a local farm - picking potatoes (by hand in those days!) and chucking bales of straw around.

Education

In 1984 I graduated from Glasgow University with a B.Sc. (Honours) degree in Agricultural Zoology. I could now put names to all the beasts and bugs I'd found in my earlier explorations, especially those that fed on crops or parasitised farm animals. My mother-in-law now gets the full benefit of this, as I try and persuade her not to spray what I think are beautiful aphids (often complete with a population of parasitoid wasps) feeding on her petunias.

Next I went to the University of Leeds to do a Ph.D. I believe the title was: "Vector relationships and disease epidemiology of barley yellow dwarf virus in northern England."

Essentially this meant crawling around in mud looking for aphids (the vectors of barley yellow dwarf virus) and trying to figure out which species of aphid was responsible for the spreading the virus in the Vale of York, and deciding what could be done to control it.

Scientific research

What can I say? I spent ten years as a post-doctoral researcher in four different laboratories under ten different contracts. It makes the job-security of my current self-employment as a freelance writer / photographer sound rock-solid!

Anyway, among jobs at the Scottish Crop Research Institute near Dundee, Purdue University in Indiana and the University of Arizona in Tucson, I was able to develop my interest in insects and the viruses they transmit to crop plants. Apart from aphids and 'BYDV', I also studied whiteflies (Aleyrodidae) and the Geminiviruses they transmit to a whole range of tropical and sub-tropical crops such as cassava, okra, tomatoes, cotton etc. A full list of my scientific publications is available on this link.

One good thing about having to switch contracts so often was the opportunity to travel. I really enjoyed living in Arizona, for example. Also, during these various contracts, I was lucky enough to be paid to visit Mexico (briefly), Nigeria, Uganda, Malawi, Pakistan and India. Needless to say, I was taking photographs as I travelled.

Pan Photographics

On returning to the UK in 1997, I decided to try something different. I set up my own business as a freelance photographer / journalist. I was soon using my knowledge of agriculture to produce articles (text and pictures) for the Grower, a magazine for professional horticulturalists in the UK, as well as other farming publications. With my scientific background, I was also able to cover the developing controversy over genetically modified crops, as well as organic production.

From horticulture I branched out into gardening magazines, and have had articles and pictures published in Organic Gardening and Essential Water Garden, among others. Check out some of these articles and other writings on the ever-changing Essays and Articles link.

I was also commissioned by WWF-Scotland to take the photographs for their 'Wild Rivers' project, and have stock photographs on file with two picture agencies in the UK, Ecoscene and Scotland in Focus.

I now live and work in Vico Equense in the south of Italy - mainly because my wife is now a peripatetic post-doc. Maybe I'll get to fulfil a life-long dream - to pick grapes and stop in the heat of the day to eat fresh bread and cheese, washed down with a bottle of local wine. It certainly beats picking potatoes out of a wet soil and being given stale tea from a flask! Hopefully I'll also get to photograph the moment.

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Peter McGrath, January 2001