Peter Cavanagh is a Pacific Northwest wildlife photographer and author who can usually be found pointing his lens towards birds. He has been taking photographs since he was a boy of five growing up in England. He was inspired and instructed by his mother who left school when she was 15 years old to coax portraits from dishes of pungent chemicals in her job as a photographer’s darkroom assistant. His own camera collection includes examples from the era of mahogany glass-plate cameras, but he feels more at home behind the long lens of a Micro Four Thirds Olympus M1X.

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Peter’s images have been included three times in the Audubon Society’s Top 100 Bird Photographs of the Year. His recently completed book 100 Flying Birds: A Photographer’s Notebook will be published in 2021. Peter is a member of the North American Nature Photographers Association and he guest-curated the Exhibit How Birds Fly at the Seattle Museum of Flight. Among his recent shows was a 6-month exhibit Birds of the Pacific Northwest at the Seattle Aquarium.

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In pre-COVID-19 times, Peter travelled widely in search of interesting birds. He lectures (now virtually!) on bird flight and bird photography. He lives in the San Juan Islands of Washington State, USA with his wife, artist Ann Vandervelde