POLAR PHOTO ALBUM – PAGES 33-35
ARCTIC, JUNE 1994
For much of the past four decades, he has brought the natural world to us in all its beauty.
Planet Earth, Blue Planet and Life In The Freezer are just a few of the series for which wildlife filmmaker and cinematographer Doug Allan has won acclaim.
He has picked up Bafta and Emmy awards for the remarkable footage he has shot, often in the most extreme environments and sometimes at great personal risk.
And Allan, who comes from Dunfermline, has just marked the milestone moment that started it all – an encounter with Sir David Attenborough.
The diver and photographer was working at a British Antarctic Survey base in 1981 when the broadcasting legend visited with a small film crew.
“I hadn’t even picked up a movie camera at that time,” said Allan, who now lives in Bristol. “But when I looked at what he and the team were doing it made me think that was a side of photography I’d love to experience.
“David appreciated the help I gave the crew and said that if he returned to Antarctica, he’d come to me for advice. He’s a wonderfully generous man.
“At any one time in history there are only a handful of people like him alive. When I realised a few weeks ago that it was 40 years since that first meeting, I wrote him a letter thanking him. He replied saying how kind it was of me to remember and he was glad to have been an encouragement.”
Allan turned to full-time filmmaking and has travelled the globe, capturing iconic images. Hairy moments along the way include being grabbed by a walrus and being caught in the open just metres away from a prowling polar bear.
Much of his work has been at the polar regions and it’s 45 years since his first visit to the Antarctic, where he’s seen it stay dark for 100 days and had temperatures fall to -50C.
“When I first went, we were given an allowance of just 100 words per month which we could send by Telex to stay in touch with home,” he said. “Now, just about everyone is connected via email.
“And we had to do more to look after ourselves. In those days we’d go out half-an-hour before lunch to cut blocks of snow to melt to get our water. No base runs like that now.
“The bases themselves are
ultra-modern and are often modular, shipped down and put together there. I sometimes wonder if, in 10 years’ time, it’ll be like living in a Best Western hotel, no matter where you are in the Antarctic.”
Allan has always been passionate about environmental and conservation matters, and climate change remains a major concern. He is hoping to be a part of COP26, the major UN climate change conference re-scheduled to take place in Glasgow this November.
In the past four decades he has seen the impact of global warming, with sea ice breaking up irregularly and periods of unprecedented high temperatures.
“Climate change is affecting the poles more than almost anywhere else,” said Allan, who wrote an illustrated book of his adventurous life, Freeze Frame.
“We are moving in the right direction, but we’re not moving fast enough,” he added. “If we don’t get a handle on climate change then we’ll lose the poles as they are right now.”
Doug turns 70 this summer but is showing little sign of slowing down and is currently quarantining in a hotel in Kathmandu before working on a feature film being shot in the Himalayas. He said: “I don’t want to look back in 10 years’ time and regret things I haven’t done,”
Belugas are unique to the Arctic and they are both curious and very vocal. When you are underwater near a pod you’ll hear them way before you see them. There are all sorts of whistles and squeaks and calls as they communicate with each other and find out about the environment. To get close, it’s best to simply lie on top of the water and start singing down your snorkel to attract their attention. As they can’t see upwards very well, when they are underneath you, they roll on their backs to look up. That’s when I got this shot and it’s the memories of their sounds that fill my head when I look at it.