The Pro Interview
Timothy Allen is an award-winning travel photographer who arrived at his career via an unconventional route. He talks to David Clark
Timothy Allen tells us about the unusual route he took to becoming a pro travel photographer and travelling the world
For people who love exploring the world and its diverse range of people and cultures, being a travel photographer has to be the ideal way to make a living. It’s certainly the one job Timothy Allen wanted to do more than anything else. Since leaving the world of news photography more than ten years ago, he has travelled widely around the globe, won numerous awards and created a portfolio brimming with stunning images.
Yet Allen didn’t initially set out to become a travel photographer and, as he explains, his journey to this sought-after job was dependent on a dash of good fortune supplementing his natural enthusiasm and photographic skills…
Travel’s a big part of your life. When did you start?
I first went backpacking after I finished a degree in Zoology at Leeds University. As part of my course I did a research project with a bunch of friends and six of us went travelling in Indonesia. Backpacking really opened my eyes to travel. While in Sulawesi we met an indigenous tribe that
hadn’t really had contact with the outside world before. I was travelling for about three years in total and it became obvious to me that this is what I wanted to do.
Did you take photographs while on your travels?
I took some pictures on the trip with an old Fuji 35mm film camera, but at that time I had absolutely no inclination to be a photographer. When I was growing up, becoming a pop star, model or photographer weren’t available career options. Nobody ever talked about those kinds of things. I went to a school that was setting you up for a normal job that you’d do for life, probably in the city of London. It took quite a few years of deconstructing my personality before I realized I might actually be able to do photography as a job.
How did you get into it?
After I came back from Indonesia I went to live in Herefordshire and I started a night course in photography at a local Art & Design college. During this time a woman came to the college to give advice. She saw some black-and-white photos I’d taken and said I was on to something. She called a friend of hers, Judah Passow, who was the founder of the Network agency. He told me to see the picture editor of the Sunday Telegraph, who asked me to shoot ten portraits and come back in a week. I did, and after that he started to give me shifts of two or three days a week on the paper. At that point
I moved to London.
Was working as a freelance photographer difficult back then?
There was no internet to tell you what to do. So you literally had to track down other photographers, cold call them and ask, “Who do I need to see?” Then you’d have to call picture editors and show them your portfolio. If you were lucky you’d get a call to do a shift a few days later. The Holy Grail was working on a broadsheet and I literally walked into the Sunday Telegraph office and, within a week, I had a job. After that, I started working for lots of other papers. Within a year The Independent asked me if I wanted something more reliable and I worked exclusively for them as a news photographer for about six years.
How did you make the move into travel photography?
When I started, working for national newspapers or magazines was great; it was the pinnacle of what I was aiming for. But after six years I wasn’t that bothered about it. I wanted to be travelling hard, not covering politics, I wanted to get out and do real National
Geographic-type travel. I had money I’d saved up and so I just quit my job and took off. I ended up travelling from one end of the Himalayas to the other, over about two years.
Did anything else prompt you to make that decision?
The tipping-point for me was when the Canon EOS 5D came out. That camera was a game-changer. Prior to that I was a Nikon user and there were no full-frame digital cameras out there. But the 5D was small, full-frame and it could take great images, so I could go out and shoot exactly what I wanted. When I came back, it was the fledgling internet age and I put up pages of pictures on my website. They were seen by some BBC researchers, which started a dialogue that led to me
I just quit my job and took off. I ended up travelling from one end of the Himalayas to the other
being given a two-year contract on the documentary series Human Planet.
How did you talk them into it?
The researchers initially contacted me looking for story ideas. I then tapped them up and said this project sounds amazing; do you have a project photographer shooting all the publicity images? They said they didn’t. The Natural History Unit has never done that in the past, because it’s expensive to get a cameraman and photographer on a shoot. But Human Planet was about humans and so it was far more predictable. It was quite easy for me to cover as many of the stories as I could without it costing them a huge amount of money.
When did you start to shoot video?
I did that about halfway through shooting
Human Planet. For the first year we were shooting video with the Panasonic Varicam, but when the 5D Mark II came out I got one and it blew everyone away. Suddenly I could shoot video simply and easily, and that’s when a lot of people, myself included, started dabbling with it and now it’s quite a large part of my work.
Would you have moved on to shooting video anyway?
Shooting video is a double-edged sword: it’s a very good medium for telling stories, but getting the stories is far more tedious. With photography you can walk into a situation and work almost undercover, but with film you have to re-shoot things and do reverse angles and cutaways and all that stuff. It’s far less fun and you have far less time to enjoy what you’re doing because the workload is huge.
What camera body do you use now, and any plans to upgrade?
I use the Canon EOS 5D Mark III but I’ll be updating soon. I’m happy with the Mark III and it gives me great images. I’ve tried Nikon and just don’t get the warmth out of them that I can with Canon. I’ve used Canon for so long it’s almost like an extension of my hand. I shoot manually, I don’t use any auto-exposure modes and my fingers move intuitively. The important thing for me is the camera’s low-light capabilities, and the 5D Mark III gives me exactly I want in low light. I reluctantly upgrade to the new version of the 5D each time, then, in hindsight, I’m glad I did.
And what lenses do you use?
I’ve shot with the same lenses for many years. The 50mm f/1.2 and 85mm f/1.2
The 5D was small, full-frame and took great images, so I could go out and shoot exactly what I wanted
are the ones I most often use. The 16-35mm f/2.8 is always hanging around somewhere, but if I’ve got the time I’ll use a prime lens. I also carry the 200mm f/2.8 and the 400mm f/5.6. The differences between primes and zooms are becoming a bit niggly these days because of the way people are consuming these pictures. Most people are looking at them on a phone, let alone a computer screen, so the difference is negligible. It’s rare that images are printed up.
Do you spend much time processing your images?
I spend a fair amount of time on it. For me, it’s part of the image-making process and when I’m shooting something I’m thinking about what I can get out of it in post. However, I think we’re getting to the point where there’s so much capability in post that too many people are relying on it and it makes pictures looks unrealistic. It’s not what real life looks like. I use Photoshop to the degree I would have used an enlarger. I deal with every part of the photo separately, masking areas off and making them punchier.
Do you shoot Raw images?
No, I only shoot JPEGS because I shot them for years as a news photographer and I got quite good at getting the exposure right. I like the look of the JPEGS I get out of the camera. These days, some news agencies insist that
photographers shoot JPEGS because you can’t over-process the images. It’s also good training because it’s not so forgiving and if you screw up your exposure you can’t bring it back in post.
How do you feel about today’s camera technology?
There’s so much new kit now it’s overwhelming. This morning I’m buying a drone for the new 5D and it’s incredible what this thing can do compared to ten years ago. Then, it would have cost ten grand to get a shot, and now I can do it with my own personal piece of equipment. There are so many little gimmicks you can get now that I’m starting to go back to just using one camera body and a fixed lens. Drones are so good these days that anyone can shoot incredible aerial images, whereas it used to be a skill ten years ago. What not everybody can do is get a great picture and a great story.
After all your travels, what’s been your favourite place to visit?
I’ve been a long-time admirer of Mongolia
I only shoot JPEGS. I shot them for years as a news photographer and I got good at getting the exposure right
and have been there many times over the years, maybe too much. The places I like now are the ones that are off most people’s radar. Countries like Bulgaria, Romania and Macedonia excite me because they’re pretty much unknown. There are tons of great things happening there and nobody, apart from local photographers, are reporting on them. In the world of travel, there are thousands of people shooting the same things over and over again. The pictures look lovely but there’s no originality to them. As a traveller, I’m looking for original content that’s also interesting.
Is most of your photography now self-assigned?
Since I did Human Planet, work now comes to me and I will think something up, then go and do it. When I shoot an editorial story now I have no intention of selling it, because there’s really no money in doing that any more. I use it to publicize my own brand, which gets me all kinds of other work. It’s important to shoot the great images of faraway places because it keeps everything rolling along. In the past it would have been my income, but now I concentrate on completely different things while maintaining a high-profile portfolio.
What other things do you do?
My company makes money in various different ways, and one of them is running expeditions for photographers. We’ve been doing it for four years now. It’s basically the same process as organizing a film shoot, but instead of taking a crew along we take the clients. It’s a nice way to work because you get the pleasure of doing those things without the pressure of producing a film. We use the same fixers and setup, and it works pretty well. We run three trips a year and they always sell out within a few days of them being announced.
How has your work changed since you started as a photographer?
There are far fewer jobs in the kind of work I used to do. Twenty years ago there were 15 or more staff photographers at
The Independent and there are none now. I got out of that kind of photography when it was still okay and I’ve watched it collapse ever since. After I left editorial, I worked on a couple of long-term projects and when they were finished I contacted some people and flashed some ideas at them. It was incredible what had happened while I was away. Even magazines such as National Geographic had cut budgets immensely. National
Countries like Bulgaria, Romania and Macedonia excite me because they’re pretty much unknown
Geographic Traveller offered £500 for a complete story, but you had to shoot it first. It’s difficult to make a living with that kind of journalistic travel work now.
What advice would you give aspiring photographers?
I don’t know what advice I’d give someone getting into the business now. It used to be quite simple. Now I often tell people, get a job you love and make photography your hobby, because that’s the way you’re going to get to do the things you really want to do. The photography trips I run are basically full of enthusiasts who have a job and then can afford to do those kinds of things. And they’re all getting great experiences – better than your average working photographer.
Your pictures are uplifting – do you like giving a positive view of the world?
Absolutely. I come from the world of photojournalism, and in that world the way I work now would be frowned upon. Photojournalists tend to look for hardship, strife and conflict, but I do the opposite. Yes, there are terrible things happening in the world, but there are also great things happening. There are plenty of people highlighting the terrible things. I used to believe a great way to influence people was to kind of scare them, but now I think it’s better to inspire people.
Get a job you love and make photography your hobby – that’s the way to get to do things you really want to