Shetland has given drone pilot Nick McCaffrey the chance to film and photograph some of the UK’s most amazing wildlife.
His majestic black-and-white photograph of a humpback whale off Muckle Roe was recently shortlisted in the drone category at the British Photography Awards, and he’s filmed Shetland’s wildlife – especially fast-moving orca – for some of the UK’s top production companies. He worked on footage for Stormborn, the BBC wildlife series narrated by Ewan McGregor, most notably a sequence of orca chasing a pod of harbour porpoise, or neesics in Shetland dialect.
“I’m still blown away by how close you can get to orca in Shetland,” he says. “When they’re hunting inshore, you be just metres away, and time always stops for me. So many variables have to come together to get a good sequence, but when we get something like the orca chase in Stormborn, it feels amazing.”
Read more about Nick’s drone filming in this recent interview we did with him about his work on the BBC series Stormborn.