Bertie Gregory has come a long way from the Reading, England, backyard where, as a youngster, he snapped photos of birds and badgers. Today he’s a natural history filmmaker and National Geographic Explorer who has visited every continent, documenting some of the most epic, least seen wildlife spectacles on Earth. Along the way, the 29-year-old has crossed paths with crocodiles and jaguars, logged thousands of hours in jungles and deserts, and lured beluga whales into camera range by singing to them (pop star Adele’s tunes work well, he found). As a boy, Gregory was teased for being “totally obsessed with the natural world,” he notes. But that zeal led to this career—and, he says, it’s “a great way to get other people excited” about conserving wildlife.
In his new series, Epic Adventures With Bertie Gregory, he takes viewers behind the camera to see both amazing animals and all the work and luck that go into filming them. Each episode tries to show the best of “animal and human, epic and personal, beautiful and urgent,” Gregory says. “I hope audiences are going to be blown away.”
This story appears in the October 2022 issue of National Geographic magazine.
