Tim Wilkinson, is a 35 year old semi professional, freelance, Sports photographer, based in Nottinghamshire. Specialising in Equine Sports.

Tim has been taking photographs of sport for over 15 years, but for the past 10 years this has been nearly 100% concentrated on the photographing of Equine sports in particular Eventing (better known as Horse Trials).

In 2007 Tim was questioning his ability and the desire he had to pursue photography more seriously, it was at this point that he decided he needed to challenge himself and his photography to prevent his passion from fading, as result of this Tim took a serious interest in the world of Equine Sports and the fascinating discipline known as Eventing and in particular the Cross Country element, this is a sport he had enjoyed as youngster with annual trips to the Burghley International Horse Trials, but during his teens he had lost interest in it as his focus shifted from natural horse power to mechanical horse power and the adrenaline fueled worlds of Superbikes, Touring Cars, Formula One and Rallying.

However, whilst looking for opportunities to expand his portfolio and progress his photography Tim decided to take another look at Horse Trials having noticed a couple of fences scattered around the grounds of Chatsworth and wondered what they were all about, a quick Google search soon answered his curiosity and then with a bit more searching Tim discovered that locally there were several events of differing levels.

Tim was now intrigued and headed out to investigate what these events were all about.  And in next to no time he was hooked, hooked on a sport that’s both fast and adrenaline fueled whilst maintaining an element of elegance.    The past couple of years has seen Tim expanded the number of events he attends and his overall involvement in this Sport, and is now a regular attendee of events across most of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Norfolk, with annual trips to the bigger events including Badminton, Bramham, Burghley, and Blenheim.

However, it was the advancement in social media that catapulted Tim in to the limelight.   Facebook has enabled Tim to reach a vast new audience and through the support he has received from Riders, Owner and Corporate sponsors this has enabled him too really make a mark in what is a very competitive area of sports photographers and figures amongst some of the best Eventing Photographers on the circuit which has led him to establishing an agreement with a local magazine Equestrian Life, and also expanding on to the International circuit through a working collaboration with Swedish Eventing for whom he is the UK based photographer capturing the Swedish riders in action.

In 2009 Tim decided he wanted to get more involved with the sport of Eventing, he wanted to really understand what this sport was about, and what made the riders really tick.  It was at this point he made the decision to approach a couple of riders with a view to working with them throughout the season offering them his support, while promoting them through the following he was building via social media, and with a couple of young ambitious riders in agreement Team Eventing Images was born, now in it’s 10th year, Tim has a Team of 8 riders aged 21 years old to 30 years old from across the UK with International representation from Norway and Sweden too and competing from grassroots through CCI4*,

How I got started…
Tim got his first ‘real’ camera a Canon SLR EOS 300 35mm body and kit lens for his eighteenth birthday and hasn’t looked back.  Having the camera and tickets to the Formula One British Grand Prix at Silverstone Tim had the perfect excuse he needed to start taking photos of a sport he had come to love, as the years have gone by he has attended a variety of motor sport and other sporting events as his passion for speed and adrenaline has grown, and during this time he has taken thousands of photos across a varied array of different sports.

Whilst using film, developing costs limited what Tim could afford to do, however, with the introduction of digital cameras all this changed, and he was in a position to take loads more photos and as a result the quality of Tim’s photography quickly improved.  Today Tim is totally digital.  Tim is a Canon man and the proud owner of two of Canon’s flagship Professional camera body the 1Dx and two 7D mark II (Canon’s Semi-Professional camera body targeted at the Sports Photographer market).  When it comes to lenses (commonly referred to as the ‘glass’) Tim is predominately using Canon lens with his work horse being the new Canon 70-200m f2.8 L (a superb lens, and one that Tim uses for 95% of his photography) and a Canon 300mm f2.8 L, and he’s recently added the Canon 24-105mm f4 to his arsenal plus a set of Pocket WIzard remote triggers .

This equipment has enabled Tim to achieve his aim of capturing an image that is sharp whilst maintaining the motion, emotion, speed and adrenalin of that ‘moment’.  Hopeful this comes across in his work.