Doug Allan
The award-winning documentary film-maker and photographer on shooting in extreme cold
Film‑maker and photographer His work has graced some of the finest documentaries ever made about wildlife and the natural world. Discover the secrets of Doug’s success from
One of the headline speakers at The Photography Show Virtual Festival in September, Doug Allan talked about how he made the break as a wildlife photographer; how he transitioned from stills to movies; the equipment he selects for assignments; and how he overcomes the extreme conditions he faces while in the field. For any Digital Camera readers who may have missed Doug’s talk, we’re delighted to present some highlights from the 40-minute interview.
How did you make the move from being a diver to a photographer?
I was 24 when I first went to Signy Research Station, and I’d describe the eight years down south that followed as my formative years. In the summer at Signy, there would be 20 to 25 people on the base, but in the winter, when the ships went north and the sea ice formed, it would only be about 15.
As a diver, I was one of the support staff; my job was to make sure that the marine biologists dived safely and efficiently. For me at that time in my life,
it was near perfect. I learned a lot about cold-water diving, as well as how to manage in the cold topside. l learned my own limits; the difference between feeling chilly, approaching hypothermia, and being frostbitten. It gave me a feeling for snow and ice that I took on into my filming career.
I became interested in photography while in the Antarctic, starting with stills. I wanted not just to photograph the wildlife, but also to cover the whole story about how the base operated – so I learned how to take the kinds of photographs that would tell those stories. It was almost like training to be a photojournalist rather than a wildlife photographer. Some of those pictures are among my most valuable today, in terms of giving talks and showing people how life was on the base back then.
In 1981, you met David Attenborough – an encounter that took you in a new direction.
David and his very small film crew came to our base for just two days. They were filming for his second big BBC TV series, The Living Planet, and they wanted to do a few pieces to camera on our island. It fell to me to take them to different places on the island where they could get the shots they wanted.
I watched how they were working together, then chatted to David and the others in the evenings. This crew felt like they were an extension of the lifestyle
we had at Signy, but with worldwide travel and adventure thrown in. It was hugely attractive for me.
I had a chat with David about how you would get a job like his cameraman’s. He explained how it was all done on a freelance basis, but he said to me at one point: “You know, Doug, if I want to go to Africa, there are a dozen people I can ask about the animals and the weather. But if I want to come back to the Antarctic, I’ll have to come to you, because you’re the only person I know who knows about the animals under the ice, the cold weather and preparing the equipment.” The implication was that if I wanted to get into the business, then I should play to my unique skills and experience.
When I finished that contract and returned to the UK, BAS offered me the base commander’s job down at Halley Station. It’s utterly different from Signy: there’s no biology, no diving, it’s all ionospheric science. But I knew that about 12 miles from the base there was a colony of emperor penguins. I decided to buy a 16mm camera and take it with me to Halley.
I approached the BBC and made contact with the producer of a series about birds around the world, who asked me if I could get some footage of emperor penguins. I filmed what he wanted and took it back to the UK, where he seemed pleased with the results. When he asked me to research some other birds, I looked at his list and realised
that all the summer birds he wanted were on Signy, that same location where I’d spent three winters.
I pointed this out, whereupon he admitted he couldn’t afford to keep his principal cameraman for four months at Signy. Perhaps I could go and film it for a much lower rate? He pointed out that if I did this, a significant part of the first episode would be my footage – the best way for me to show off my talents. An easy decision really.
Looking back on that time, David started me off on the route to becoming a film-maker; the emperor penguins were my first big break. By mid-1984, I could see the way ahead to make it a full-time career.
How different were things when you shot on film, compared with today’s digital equipment?
It was massively different. With film, there was no feedback on what you had actually shot. You had to hope that you had everything, hope it was OK technically, and hope that the film wasn’t X-rayed on its way back to the UK. You’d do the filming, come back and hand the film in to the labs. A couple of weeks later, the producer would call you in to see the rushes [the footage as it came out of the camera].
In the projection room, it would all be up on a big screen, with the editor on one side of you and the producer on the other. You waited for the big intake of breath – and hoped that it wasn’t because you’d made some enormous mess-up, but because they’d really liked what you’d done.
Is that inconceivable to people who’ve grown up with the instant feedback of digital?
When I went to the Antarctic to do the emperor penguins, and then later on three films for [the ITV series] Survival, I effectively shot blind through the winter. It wasn’t until I came back to the UK and all the film was processed that I could see we actually had a movie in our hands.
Underwater the problems were even greater… Imagine you dive, and you’ve got 36 pictures or 10 minutes of film. You shoot your 10 minutes and return to the surface, split the housing, open up the camera, load a new film and go back down again – the chances of refinding what you had been witnessing are small.
And we’d be doing all this through a small optical viewfinder that was quite dark at small apertures. To go on to one-hour tapes with a lovely big bright monitor was massively better than shooting on film. Electronic imaging also had that ability to penetrate
murky waters, to give you sharp edges and much better colour than film straight out of the camera. Moving to electronic media was a huge step up from film, and it was an even bigger improvement for working underwater.
Having said that, only the last couple of generations of camera are producing better results electronically than you could get on fine-grain film. Plus, shooting on film is almost future-proof: that film will always be accessible. Shooting on electronic formats – well, hard drives and memory cards haven’t been around long enough for us to know how they will last. And early electronic formats can pose real problems for modern incompatible software.
What is your current equipment for cold climate filming – on land and also for underwater?
My kit setup includes Red Gemini 8K, Sony PMW 200 HD video camera, Canon EOS-1Ds and EOS 5D Mk II stills cameras, and Canon zoom lenses ranging from 8mm to 400mm. The new solid-state movie cameras run pretty well in the cold. You just make a cover to keep the wind off, and enough batteries to keep the camera fired up on standby. The camera will keep itself warm that way. Long lenses exposed to the elements might have to be winterised beforehand. Very cold temperatures make the lubrication grease freeze up; the servo motors stop working and focus really stiffens. The solution is to have the lens stripped down and the normal grease replaced with a thinner type before you head for the cold.
There’s a friendly freezer store near where I live, which is capable of dropping the temperature to around -30 degrees. If I’m to use unfamiliar equipment I’ll take it there and leave it for a few hours, then see what works and what doesn’t.
What you wear is crucial to staying warm. You can’t concentrate on filming if you’re getting chilled. You need different clothing at -10 compared to seriously cold -40. Bear in mind that it’s wind that’s the killer – it sucks away the heat and makes it truly challenging. In calm sunny weather, you can work fine down to minus 25 degrees, but throw in just five or 10 knots of wind, and it’s a different story.
Working underwater is all about dry suits and ideally having somewhere warm to prepare before slipping in, and to retreat to when you’re back on the surface. But that’s not always possible.
Discomfort comes with the job – you can’t expect to be comfortable all the time. But having done so many polar dives, I also know how cold I can feel before it starts to affect my performance. Sometimes I pull out all the stops just to stay that extra 10 minutes in the water.
Have you ever endangered your own life to get the shot or capture the footage you need?
A lot of work by a huge production team goes into organising a shoot. Researchers, producers and production managers pull in all the information so that a cameraperson ends up in front of the animal at the ideal time, with the best chance of success. We try not to end up in dangerous situations; we hope that we can recognise the subtle changes in animal behaviour that tell us when an animal is starting to get wary or feels threatened.
Polar bears are classic – they do kill people. They’re very clever; they can smell humans from up to a mile away before they decide to move closer.
“Discomfort comes with the job – you can’t expect to be comfortable all the time”
So you need to have the means of chasing a polar bear away – but crucially without injuring it. We carry rifles, but it would be a tragedy if I ever had to use one in earnest.
Keep your wits about you, carry flare pistols with explosive shells or rubber bullets, and a can of pepper spray. Look out all the time for a bear, see it from a distance and you can tell if it’s approaching out of curiosity or threat, then you can take appropriate action. Animals are very aware of your body language, and if you give out the wrong signals with that then you may encourage an animal to come at you. Or you can give it a different message: “I can see you, keep your distance…”
What’s absolutely imperative is that the welfare of the animals comes before everything else.
How do you overcome local difficulties and cultural differences on assignment?
I try to be sensitive to the people around me, from a cultural perspective and from the point of view of personality. Always remember that on almost every shoot, you’re dependent on people’s cooperation. It doesn’t do to ride roughshod over anyone or ignore what is important to them, so I try to accommodate them and to keep everything flowing smoothly. It does matter.
Working in the Arctic, I learned much from the Inuit, the local people. They don’t talk much, and they seldom offer direct advice. Film crews can be pushy, give the impression they know what to do. The Inuit stand back, let them do their own thing and the crew very often comes back with very little.
The secret of working with the Inuit is to watch them with their youngsters. Hardly a word passes between them. They say, “We learn by listening.” So I might say, “I’d like to film narwhal, I’ll just follow you while you look for them.” And it means that when we go out, sometimes we find narwhal and sometimes we don’t. I certainly never say, “Why are the narwhal not here? I thought you said we’d find some today.” The Inuit just don’t work like that, and realising that is a revelation. When you do listen to them and learn from them, they recognise it and everything works better. • Freeze Frame by Doug Allan is available for £25 plus postage, from www.dougallan.com. To add a personal dedication, write to: dougallancamera @mac.com