Meet Doug Allan OBE, wildlife cameraman and environmental speaker
I moved to the Bristol area in 1988, about five years after I started filming. The BBC’s Natural History Unit was the epicentre for wildlife TV and being on their doorstep had big practical advantages.
I live a couple of streets from The Downs. It’s a running track, a cycle circuit, a dozen and more football fields, a place for personal fitness groups, an outing to study nature for Bristol primary schools, a social space for dogs and their walkers, the site for entertainments from music festivals to food festivals. That big green space is inspiring to me because it’s an example of what far sighted thinking from business leaders can give to the people of a city. The sort of public-spirited imagination we’ll hopefully now be seeing more of in Bristol.
There are places in the Chew Valley and Cheddar Gorge where it’s possible to feel the wildness. Wander through the woods there over April, May and June and you’ll see and hear wonderful things. I had a memorable quiet evening canoe paddle over a stretch of the River Avon with Bevis Watts when he showed me the beavers who now live there.
When I received news of my OBE, I felt firstly how fortunate I was to have friends and colleagues who thought enough of me to put their time and effort into the nomination process. The citation itself included my “promotion of environmental awareness” – which was a very satisfying reflection of what I’ve been trying to do over the last few years by speaking to pupils and young adults at schools across Bristol and beyond.
The biggest buzz for a cameraperson is to have the chance to film behaviour that hasn’t been covered before. And if that action is particularly spectacular or dramatic and involves charismatic animals, then you really have hit the jackpot. So I was particularly proud to film (along with fellow Scot Doug Anderson) the killer whales washing seals from ice floes in Antarctica by creating a wave with their tails beating in unison. I’d tried filming it for another BBC series a couple of years earlier. We were unsuccessful then, but we applied what I learned on that trip for our return to Antarctica for Frozen Planet. Witnessing that behaviour, realising the level of intelligence the killers were showing, seeing it enough times that we could shoot all the angles, knowing that here was a real highlight – when all those come together then it‘s bound to be a standout in your life.
It’s hard to pin down one favourite place where I’ve filmed, but Antarctica will always be special. I worked there as a diver and a scientist between 1976 and 1983. It was where my interest in photography began, where I first met David Attenborough and where I did my first full on filming assignment.
All animals have been my teachers. You can’t hide from polar bears on the ice or whales and seals in the water, so you learn the field craft that then helps you move close. It’s sometimes specific knowledge about the animals, but often a “feel” for them, an empathy that you project out somehow. It’s a massive privilege when an animal chooses to accept your presence. After all, their other option is to walk, run or swim away. I’ve learned most from being in the presence of wild animals in challengingly wild places with people who are intimate with those spaces and their nature. So, travelling an Arctic ice edge for days in the company of an Inuk, looking for belugas and narwhal, listening to him talk about his relationship with his environment – that’s as fascinating as being involved in a film about the birth of icebergs where it’s the company of the scientists who are stimulating.
I enjoy cycling when I’m not working. The scenery moves at just the right speed and helps with the fitness. It’s by far the best way to access the city centre, and there are some bonny loops into the countryside all round Bristol itself.
