FOR a young photographer who cut his teeth recording cute red squirrels near his Haydon Bridge home, coming face to face with this big brown bear might have been an unnerving experience.

But 22-year-old Will Nicholls is made of stern stuff. “At times the bears were just three metres away, standing eight feet tall on their legs,” he said.

“They’re amazing to watch and very shy, so as soon as they are aware you are there, they will disappear.”

Will, currently studying zoology at the University of Exeter, captured these amazing images during a two- week trip to the Finnish border with Russia last year, where he spent 15 hours a day in a hide staking out the kings of the Taiga forest.

The images form part of an exhibition currently showing at Allendale Forge studios. Titled Northumberland and Beyond, it gives followers of Will’s work the opportunity to catch up with where he’s been and what he’s been up to for the past few years.

Crowned Young British Wildlife Photographer of the Year at the tender age of 14, he went on to scoop the RSPCA’s Young Photographer of the Year award just two years later.

He published his first book at 18 with Wagtail Press, On the Trail of the Red Squirrel, which documented the lives of some of the squirrels living just up the road from his home.

A gap year, during which the talented photographer travelled to Cambodia, followed and in 2015, he spent two and a half months in Peru in the Amazon rainforest, which is where he enjoyed one of his most spectacular animal encounters to date.

“I’d gone out to the Manu Biosphere Reserve, which is home to part of the last intact forest in Peru, with the aim of building up more of a portfolio.

“One afternoon I was checking a motion-activated camera I’d set up on a salt lick (a place where animals go to lick salt from the ground) and a branch fell at my feet. I looked up and suddenly there were all these black- faced spider monkeys, only about 10 metres in front of me – at eye level. They were just watching me for about 15 minutes before disappearing to go and get the rest of their group to come and have a look at me – there must have been 10 to 15 of them.”

Will managed to get some fantastic shots of the inquisitive primates, which also appear in this latest exhibition.

The lensman’s Amazon experience convinced him that recording the natural history of the rainforest is what he would most like to do with his career.

“It’s a very challenging environment, working in over 90 per cent humidity. It’s difficult for the electronics, but it’s also mentally and physically wearing and I like that extreme environment. It has the most amazing wildlife. Some of the craziest animals live there with the weirdest evolutionary traits.

“For example, the leaf-katydid is an insect that looks exactly like a leaf. They have evolved all the individual veins like a leaf and holes in the middle of their bodies so that it looks like a caterpillar has taken a bite out of them. It’s amazing camouflage.”

Will has decided to move to Bristol post-graduation, as it’s the home of Britain’s wildlife film-making industry with the BBC’s natural history unit based there and other independent production companies.

“Wildlife film making is what I want to do, though photography will always be a big part of my life and I will never stop taking still photographs,” said Will. “But I am after that first film production credit now and hope to build a career in natural history.”

l Will’s exhibition is on until Wednesday,May 31.