Miles spent time in his school holidays - he attended King's Ely[1] - working on conservation at RSPB reserves, and decided on a career as a wildlife filmmaker after watching Eric Ashby on television in the early 1960s.
Miles then joined the RSPB and was in charge of producing one hundred minutes of film a year.
Miles went freelance in the mid-1970s, with his first job being to film for the BBC wildlife series Life on Earth.
[citation needed] By wearing the same clothes and doing the same thing every day, he hoped that the animals would get used to him as part of the landscape and would eventually take no notice of his presence.
The film went on to win awards for Best Conservation Film at Jackson Hole 1997 and Wildscreen 1998, and was also seen by the Premier of Newfoundland, who decided to put a copy in every school so that the children were brought up understanding their environment and the dangers of over exploitation of a wildlife resource.