I’m Ricky Marsh. I keep people safe around the heavy stuff — and I photograph the quiet things.

For much of my working life I’ve worked in lifting and construction safety. In practice that means I review lift plans, scrutinise method statements, and make sure that when a crane swings a load over people’s heads — or an excavator carries something it was never strictly designed to carry — it has been thought through properly, against the standards that exist precisely because the alternative is so serious.

It’s detailed, unglamorous work, and I’ve come to love exactly that about it. A good lift plan is a small act of care for people who’ll never know my name. Through RMT Safety Solutions I bring that same eye to projects across the industry — applying the standards not as a box-ticking exercise but as the difference between a routine day and a bad one.

If my profession is about controlling risk, wildlife photography is the opposite — it’s about surrendering control and waiting. You can’t direct a kingfisher. You can only learn its habits, find your spot, sit still, and earn the shot. It’s become the thing that empties my head after a week of plans and standards, and the discipline turns out to be strangely similar: preparation, attention to detail, and respect for something that doesn’t care about your schedule.

I’m roughly ten years from retirement, and rather than treating that as a finish line, I’m treating it as a direction — gradually letting the camera take up more of the calendar while I wind down the consultancy on my own terms. This site is partly a record of that transition. I don’t know exactly what retirement looks like yet, but I suspect it involves a lot more time sitting very still in cold places, waiting for something wonderful to wander into frame.