Michael Darling

Anti wildlife trafficking messaging

A series of evidence-led educational posters, leaflets and infographics, distributed across Laos to combat the illegal wildlife trade.

• Laos

Species signs

I produced a series of 29 eye-catching signs for locals and tourists visiting LCTW's wildlife rehabilitation centre. Combining simple facts with personal stories and threats faced by animals in the wild, the signs were designed to engage with visitors holding diverse interests and motivations, and were introduced alongside a research study to gauge their effectiveness.

• Vientiane Province, Laos

Pangolin rehabilitation centre

These bilingual signs tell the story of a pangolin rescued from the illegal wildlife trade. Visitors can follow her progress from rescue to rehabilitation to release in this working centre.

• Vientiane Province, Laos

Anti wildlife trafficking billboards

I designed three billboards to present the dangers and consequences of the illegal wildlife trade. The billboards are displayed at airports to target tourists in multiple languages, and along highways across Laos.

• Laos

Achievement report

Distilling the activities of a small NGO into a digestible report to showcase their achievements to donors and grant funders.

• Fort Dauphin, southeast Madagascar

Zoo education visit leaflet

Joining an established department to produce and deliver interactive educational activities for school and community groups, I designed marketing materials and campaigns that saw sales rise by more than 3,000% over a two-year period.

• Yorkshire, United Kingdom

Hummingbird

A quiet afternoon in the jungle, a fast shutter speed and a whole lot of patience is all you need to capture these stunning birds feeding from the banana flowers.

• Cusuco National Park, Honduras
• Sony A6500
• 70-300mm zoom
• Natural light

Sifaka

Fort Dauphin must be my favourite place I've ever lived. If you ever find yourself in the area, take a couple of days off to relax at the Nahampoana Reserve, home to an incredible array of wildlife including this curious Verreaux's sifaka.

• Nahampoana Reserve, southeast Madagascar
• Nikon D5100
• 55-300mm zoom
• Natural light

Student

In a region where education is understaffed and under-resourced, access to school supplies can have a massive impact on students' attendance and learning. SEED Madagascar partnered with School in a Bag to provide students with basic equipment as well as raincoats and flip flops to help them get to school. That's a reason to celebrate!

• Anosy Region, southeast Madagascar
• Nikon D5100
• 18-55mm kit
• Natural light

Salamander

You need to go out at night to see everything that Cusuco has to offer. Charge your batteries, get your feet wet and keep an eye on the branches for salamanders!

• Cusuco National Park, Honduras
• Sony A6500
• 30mm macro
• Yongnuo YN-467 II, wireless trigger, small softbox

Zebu

I always bring this photo up as proof that you don't need the best equipment to capture something cool. I took this with the selfie camera on a cheap smartphone, arm flung over my head from a bumpy zebu cart. It's blown out and the composition is off. But who cares?

• Matsedroy village, northwest Madagascar
• OnePlus One

Katydid

In hindsight, a 30mm macro is way too short to capture small, flighty animals. Luckily this katydid was kind enough to wait as I directed a few light stands friends :)

• Cusuco National Park, Honduras
• Sony A6500
• 30mm macro
• Yongnuo YN-467 II, bare-bulb

Moraingy

Brutal on the surface yet strangely lighthearted, this bare-knuckle boxing tradition is a lot of fun to watch as the whole village turns out to celebrate Independence Day. For best results, ask the army to referee.

• Mariarano village, northwest Madagascar
• Nikon D5100
• 35mm portrait
• Natural light

Pangolin

Seized by authorities from a poacher, this Chinese pangolin gave birth shortly after arriving at LCTW's rehabilitation centre. Though largely unknown, pangolins are in great demand by the illegal wildlife trade, giving them the dubious award of the world's most trafficked mammal.

• Vientiane Province, Laos
• Sony A6500
• 35mm portrait
• Available light

Karen

Living in the mountains bordering Thailand and Myanmar, the Karen people are one of Thailand's most overlooked ethnic minorities. Though the country has developed rapidly over the past decades, Karen communities remain isolated with little access to public health and education.

• Mae Hong Son, northern Thailand
• Sony A6500
• 35mm portrait
• Natural light

Shark

I'm still speechless at having seen one of these. The Greenland shark can live to perhaps 500 years, making it the world's longest-living vertebrate. We picked this one up unexpectedly on a research expedition to assess the effects of deep-sea trawling on the sea floor. Don't worry, after checking his vitals he was carefully returned home!

• Long et al., 2021
• Arctic Circle
• Sony A6500
• 35mm portrait
• Natural light

Frog

When you picture a frog, you're probably thinking of this one. The red-eyed tree frog is The Frog, pictured here in axillary amplexus. Love is beautiful.

• La Ceiba, Honduras
• Sony A6500
• 30mm macro
• Yongnuo YN-467 II, wireless trigger, medium softbox

Football

Plug a vuvuzela into your motorbike's exhaust and get hyped for the wildest street party you've ever seen. When Vietnam's football team takes the cup, the flares are guaranteed to come out.

• Hanoi, Vietnam
• Sony A6500
• 20mm pancake
• Available light

Whales

The moral of this story: always miss the first boat. Seeing whales courting was never on my bucket list, but it needed to be.

• Fort Dauphin, southeast Madagascar
• Nikon D5100
• 55-300mm zoom
• Natural light

Arctic

I've never quite got the hang of landscapes, but the stark beauty of this Greenland summer was a hard one to resist.

• Greenland
• Huawei Honor 7X

Life in the Mountains

The Karen people are one of Thailand's most marginalised ethnic groups. I produced this short film for the Karen Hilltribes Trust to show the daily challenges faced by those living in the remote villages of the north, and to showcase KHT's more than three decades of work there.

• Mae Hong Son, northern Thailand

Nootsabar's Story

Nootsabar has been working for the Karen Hilltribes Trust since 2006, after receiving a scholarship from the charity to study at university. Here, she tells her story of growing up in a Karen village.

• Mae Hong Son, northern Thailand

Giving Day for Apes

An animation and video produced as a fundraiser for Giving Day for Apes, following the rehabilitation and recovery of a gibbon rescued from the illegal wildlife trade.

Most footage provided by talented duo Animal360. If you're looking to donate your talents to a worthy cause, get in touch with LCTW!

• Vientiane Province, Laos

Your Conservation Programme

A short video produced in the field to showcase SEED Madagascar's Conservation Research Programme to potential volunteers.

• Sainte Luce, southeast Madagascar

Stitch Sainte Luce

A video produced in Malagasy and English to present women's embroidery cooperative Stitch Sainte Luce to similar groups across Madagascar, demonstrating their success in providing a sustainable income for hundreds of families living under the poverty line in southeast Madagascar.

• Sainte Luce, southeast Madagascar

Off-grid scientific data collection

Using low-cost mobile devices and battery-powered Raspberry Pis as base stations for sites without internet or electricity supply, integrating automated device provisioning, backups and data exports.

• Mariarano, northwest Madagascar
• OpenDataKit
• Batch & shell scripting
• R

Rainfall forecasts delivered by SMS

Delivering simple 3-day forecasts to remote villages with newly-installed rainwater harvesting systems, giving them the information they need to plan their next collection.

• Sainte Luce, southeast Madagascar
• PHP
• Twilio API

youtube-dl-web-viewer

A side project to organise archived and collected videos into a pleasant web interface.

Built in Python 3 with a Flask web interface in HTML, CSS and vanilla Javascript.

• youtube-dl-web-viewer
• Python
• SQLite

HORSEBOT3000

A side-project sports trading bot to predict and take advantage of price changes in horse races.

Built in Python 3 with Selenium to scrape stats, pandas and numpy for modelling, and Flask for an accessible web interface.

• Python
• MySQL
• Selenium

Frontend for zoo experience booking system

Building a frontend for a booking system allowing shop staff to book experiences directly from the POS, animal keepers to check their daily schedules, and customers (through integration with Xibo-based digital signage) to see availability at a glance.

• Yorkshire, United Kingdom
• PHP
• Bootstrap
• Xibo
• Notepad*
  *would not recommend as an IDE

Low-cost scientific data collection

Supporting a team of scientists to capture and fit flying box bats with GPS trackers to research their feeding and roosting behaviour, and retrieve and process collected data.

• Sainte Luce, southeast Madagascar
• R
• Batch

Renewable energy

I built three independent solar installations to supply a research site and arts studio with 12v and 240v supplies, powering LED lighting, USB charging points, computers and research equipment. The systems were sized based on solar flux and predicted demand and local staff were trained in panel cleaning and maintenance. With low-cost rainwater harvesting systems built by social enterprise Tatirano, the site is able to run off the grid indefinitely.

• Sainte Luce, southeast Madagascar

Bulletproof IT

Supporting a team of thirty across two offices sharing a 256kbps internet connection and facing daily power failures, I built a resilient network that kept everyone online. Low-cost Mikrotik routers and repurposed hardware allowed failover switching, bandwidth monitoring, centralised updates, backups, media storage and large download management, all on a shoestring budget.

• Fort Dauphin, southeast Madasgascar

Hardware repair

Working out in the field means you can't rely on spare parts being available - or even electricity, running water or an internet connection. I've repaired drowned laptops, shattered drones, cameras, motorbikes and even the occasional toilet. I like to carry a soldering iron everywhere I go.

Photography

I run wildlife photography workshops in the field for both novice and experienced photographers, from theory and practice to editing and publishing.

• Worldwide

Data collection

I have taught university students on the importance of collecting good data for conservation, covering research techniques, statistical analysis and GIS.

• Worldwide

IT

Teaching brand new computer users to use Windows, Ubuntu and office software to manage their business more effectively as an independent cooperative.

• Sainte Luce, southeast Madagascar

Education

Training new wildlife educators in Tanzania to help them reach students with effective conservation messaging.

• Mikumi, Tanzania

Food

I love food – and the more from scratch (and needlessly complex) the better! I like to make cheese and sourdough and have raised chickens, turkeys, geese and goats.

Linux

I have been running my own servers since 2008, and for more than a decade have lead a cooperative group of friends to pool our resources, giving us top specs at low cost.

We run a XenServer-based stack on which I've learned virtualisation, webhosting and networking, though I'm excited to move to the fully open source XCP-NG on our next upgrade.

Motorbikes

I've only been riding for a few years, but one of my goals in 2020 was to learn to maintain engines – so I picked up a 2003 Honda Phantom as a restoration project.

After a full teardown, complete overhaul of the engine, electrics and a respray, I upgraded the air and fuel systems and had it feeling almost like new.

(P.S. in doing so, I managed to track down a rare copy of the workshop manual. If you're in desperate need for your 200cc Honda TA200 Phantom/Shadow, shoot me an email!)

Buying for life

Working in conservation means I try to live a low-waste lifestyle, making things last as long as they can. My laptop is from 2012 and, heavily-modded into an editing powerhouse, still holds its own with the latest models.

My favourite open-source "forever" projects include the BLF LT1, a high-spec camping lantern, and the Pinecil, a portable temperature-controlled soldering iron.