About
Charlie Gould
Photographer & Biologist
Resident Photographer · Governors’ Camp, Maasai Mara
I am a 21-year-old photographer & biologist from the UK. I graduated with First Class Honours in Biology (Zoology) from the University of Edinburgh — the highest overall grade in my cohort — and I work between photography, research, and conservation across the world.
01 — Beginning
Samburu, age thirteen
It all really started when I was 13 and we went on a family safari to Elephant Watch Camp in Samburu. We had the most incredible guide when we were there, and he showed us all of the tracks, dung, and plants, and he knew so much about every animal we saw. The camp also works with Save the Elephants, and they knew every individual elephant by name. I was just in absolute awe. That was the trip that showed me there could be a path to work with wildlife.
My dad had bought a camera for the trip, and I think he had every intention of using it himself, but that didn’t happen. I took it from pretty much day one, and we still debate now about who took what photo. Of course I argue that I took every single one.
It wasn’t necessarily the trip where photography became exactly what I wanted to do, but it showed thirteen-year-old me that maybe I could follow this new dream I had: to live and work out in the bush.
02 — School
Trying to stay close to it
Over the next few years, as I went through school, I tried to stay as involved as I could with wildlife. I went on a few trips to South Africa and was involved in some cheetah collaring (see photo above) and rhino dehorning projects there, and I kept trying to convince my family that we should go on more family safaris.
I was lucky enough to get my own camera one year for Christmas, after I think my dad got sick of not being able to use the one he had bought for himself. So I was taking quite a few photos on those trips, but I wasn’t very confident in them. I had started an Instagram account for the work, but I wasn’t proud of it. I wanted somewhere to post them, and I was scared of being judged, especially through school. It wasn’t something I wanted to show off to my peers, but I wanted other people who liked photography to see them.
Through school, biology became the subject I knew I wanted to pursue further. It was definitely my favourite. In 2023 I started at the University of Edinburgh to study Biology (Zoology). Photography still wasn’t really something on my horizon. I loved taking wildlife photos when I went away, but I never thought much beyond that. I took the camera up to university anyway.
03 — Camera
I started by
photographing rugby
Sport has always been a huge part of my life. I have played rugby since I was three, and I also competed in triathlon for a number of years.
A few weeks into university, after meeting my girlfriend, I took the camera down to one of her rugby matches. Everyone loves photos of themselves, and I thought if I was going to watch her every week then I may as well take some.
I started posting some of the photos I was taking of the University of Edinburgh women’s rugby team, and they were getting a bit more traction. Soon a few friends asked if I could shoot their games too — basketball, football, hockey. Over the course of my first year I was shooting more and more of these events, all for free, all voluntarily. Rugby was my favourite sport to shoot, and it still is. I have played it for so long that being able to predict what was going to happen, and understanding the feeling of the sport, made it much more enjoyable.
I was also trying to get myself accreditation for various rugby games, including some Edinburgh Rugby matches and England versus Scotland Under-20s in the Men’s Under-20 Six Nations. In February 2024, after shooting for free for five months, I got my first paid photography job. That was a huge deal to me. I completely undersold myself, but that didn’t matter at the time. The fact I could actually earn money from taking photos was something I never even thought would happen.
Slowly, over the next year, a few more jobs started trickling in. Then the University of Edinburgh Sports Union got in touch. They had seen a lot of the work I had been doing, and they offered me a part-time job between PlayerLayer (the university’s sports kit supplier) and the Sports Union, to start the next academic year. That was probably one of the biggest and most influential things that could have happened to me so far. Over the next two years I worked more and more, and I gained more experience than you could believe. I was working alone, with almost complete creative freedom, and I produced some projects I am still really proud of. I have to say a huge thank you to the team there that believed in me from the start, and pushed me to keep making new things.
View sportSport and training are still huge parts of my life. I represented Scotland at the 2026 European Touch Championships, and I raced the Gralloch UCI Gravel race in 2026, from which I qualified for the UCI Gravel World Championships. I have a few very exciting events and trips lined up over the next year.
04 — Field
Summers in the field
While all of that was happening at university, wildlife was still a huge passion of mine. In the summer of 2024 I did my safari guiding qualifications — NQF2 Nature Site Guide Qualification and CyberTracker Track & Sign Level 2.
The next summer, in 2025, I worked as a research assistant with the Kyambura Lion Monitoring Project in Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda. That was awesome. The team there are incredible and they work ridiculously hard every single day. Part of the work was setting camera traps in Maramagambo Forest. My work with them there led to co-authorship on a paper in Current Biology on multi-species foraging on a Marburg virus bat reservoir.
The same summer I also worked as an assistant guide with Cycle Mashatu in Botswana, taking guests out on mountain bike safaris in Mashatu Game Reserve.
05 — Now
Governors’ Camp,
Maasai Mara
I had been following Governors’ Camp for years. They are one of the most famous camps on the continent, and I had seen that that is where Will Fortescue had started — a huge inspiration of mine. I got in touch, explained who I was and the work I had done, and they offered me a three-month stint as the resident photographer from August 2026.
I graduated from the University of Edinburgh in June 2026 and was on a flight to Kenya at the start of August, which is where I am currently working.
How I got here
Selected Clients
Let’s work together
Wildlife, sport, conservation, brand work — if you have something in mind, get in touch. Email or WhatsApp is usually the fastest.