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Poultry Photographer Rupert Stephenson has been a huge contributor to the site, providing us with many of the excellent photos you see. Here is a chance for you to get to know him a little better!
 Born in 1959 in Keresley, near Coventry, I grew up in a rural setting in the countryside of Meriden, as a boy we had a few brown hens some light Sussex and my brother kept peacocks, as all my family were smallholders and farmers, I basically grew up on someone's farm, never spending any time indoors and school holidays were great spent fishing rabbiting, potato picking infact just having a good time in the countryside.
Birds fish and animals have always been in my blood, having kept a variety of things in my youth from tropical fish to finches and always a few ferrets and laying hens.
In the mid 1970's we moved to the center of Coventry, a real difference for a country boy, but we managed to keep and show some top class Blue and Opal Rex rabbits, winning at the London's Alexandra palace, and this is also the time when I developed my love of dahlia growing from my step father who grew some real beauties and to this day I still grow around 50 dahlias from giants at 12" across to dwarfs and tiny pom-poms at only 2" across.
Then after finishing school in 1976 we moved back out to the suburbs of Coventry to our present home where we have been since then, the garden was a jungle when we moved in and we set about renovating it.
This was a good exercise for me as I was serving my apprentership with Coventry parks department at the time. First we used it as a large vegetable plot, producing our own greens and flowers and winning a few times with our cauliflowers at the local show, but I always had a longing for a few animals and soon built a large aviary and was soon breeding rare coloured ring necked doves and black faced zebra finches
This was soon developed into breeding a few bantams and the vegetable area gave way to a pen and run for my first banties, a trio of Gold Sebrights, but I was not happy with them and over the years I tried various other breeds with some success in the breeding pens and with the eggs at our local agricultural show winning a few times over the years, I bred some nice Light Brahmas, pencilled Hamburghs, Light and Speckled Sussex, Araucanas, rumples game and mottled Leghorns over the years but my real love is Marans and Welsummers for the eggs and some pretty Dutch bantams for pleasure.
 So how did poultry photography become part of my life? Well I have worked in the family business most of my life, 12 hour days six days a week starting off dressing chickens, then helping on our shellfish stall before taking over in 1991,I have served on several committees, a vice chair of the Coventry market traders, chairman of fillongley agricultural show and help fund raise for the R.N.L.I. and Royal national mission to deep sea fishermen as well as regular local radio spots over 15 years and which I still do on a Friday morning, Rupert's radio recipe, chicken and fish recipes, but to name a few of the things I did , as I approached 40 , I became aware I actually had no time for myself or my partner of the time, so a massive change was needed .
I ordered a skip knocked down the aviaries, landscaped the garden, built a pergola, planted a wildlife area, put in two small ponds made dahlia areas and erected fences for plants to grow up, I also decided to get rid of most of my livestock, and reduce my charity work to just a few.
With all this done over a twelve-month period, I consulted littleacre products and bought three quality small bantam runs built a small aviary, erected four purpose built sheds and waited for it all to mature.
This has given me time to pursue my life long passion for photography, all be it in a small way, in the last four years what started as snapping a few pictures for Fancy Fowl at the national show with a small digital camera has built into a very pleasing pass time using a professional digital camera and a cannon EOS with a selection of lenses, now being asked to travel around the country at weekends, taking photos of breeders and shows, meeting wonderful people along the way, especially my friends Rambling Richard Rowley, who has helped me immensely, teaching me about the different breeds, and how to pick a winner , Graham Hicks the waterfowl guru who has helped me on the duck and goose side of things and my good friend Dr Hans Schippers who has been invaluable in helping improve my techniques with the camera and teaching me how to select a good candidate for photographing, we correspond regularly by e-mail and meet to discuss poultry at some of the shows around the U.K. when he can fly in.
I have met so many nice poultry people over the years I cant name them all, but each person is unique and holds a real love for their chosen breed that can be clearly seen in their passion for their birds.
 It gives me great pleasure to see my work in magazines and on the poultrykeeper web site , especially after you have waited all day for a particular shot of a bird, and I hope the fanciers like the photos too, judging by the response I receive, most people seem too.
I often see photos of people's favourite bird, but inside cages, clipped heads or feet, over or under exposed. You only get the one chance of taking a photo to capture that special moment when you win, so may I offer a few tips: always ask to take the bird out of the cage, it looks so much better, try to get a good background, a large plain board, wall, cloth etc anything that gives a nice solid background that stops shadow from the flash, if you are not conversant with manual setting on your camera, put it on auto. But the best tip I can offer is use a tripod and BE PATIENT, it might take 30 minutes before the bird settles into the correct position for a photo, and try to frame your bird within the cameras view finder to avoid clipping the head and feet.
As for the rest of my time, I have an aviary and shed to breed my rare pied and ivory ring neck doves in, a few black faced zebra finches and my dahlia patch which is self  watering, a real time saver every day of over 2 hours, and the ponds are fairly much self supporting too, the spring and autumn see me spend a lot of time in the garden planting, lifting and setting up the incubators and broodies, I don't keep any large fowl cockerels due to the noise so I buy my eggs from Ken Nash of Marans fame, setting up my two small 18 egg Brinsea auto turn incubators , then run the chicks on in the floor area of one of the sheds , before moving them out into an empty run to mature after I dispose of the old hens , I do love to hatch a couple of sittings under broodies, this coming year I hope the ring-necked teal will lay a clutch of eggs, its been years since I last reared ducklings.
For anyone wanting to experience nature at its finest, just watch a broody hen teaching her chicks how to feed; you can spend all day in the garden just enjoying the scene.
After all that is done the rest of the time is now mine to take photographs!
So if you would like your local club show reporting on, or would like to do a meet the fancier article then contact me on 07974 140255 www.rupert-fish.co.uk e-mail
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