Sue Flood
Having made more than 30 trips to the Arctic and Antarctic during her
career, she recently released a collection of her polar photography
entitled Cold Places. She spoke to Olivia Edward about keeping clean in the Arctic and what it’s like to wake up next to a baby penguin.
I grew up watching David Attenborough on television and thought being a wildlife film maker would be an amazing job, but I never dreamt I would get to do it. After graduation, I started writing to the BBC Natural History Unit. On their advice, I gained work experience elsewhere and eventually started getting interviews with the BBC. Then I got down to the last 500 applicants, the last 200, the
last ten, and eventually, in 1993, they offered me a job.
To be a good wildlife film producer, you have to be patient, creative, have incredible attention to detail and be able to stick at something until it’s done. You also have to be willing to put up with uncomfortable conditions. You can be camping in a tent in the Arctic for months on end without a shower. I take a lot of wet wipes. It’s not for everybody. It can be pretty challenging, especially if there are four of you in a tent. Usually it’s just me and two or three guys.
One of the best jobs I ever had was as assistant producer on The Blue Planet. I got to go out and do some really interesting shoots, but ultimately, I wasn’t having to carry the can. The higher up the ladder you go, the bigger the budgets and the worse the stress. People expect spectacular pieces of never-seen-before behaviour from the big BBC series, so the pressure is on to film them on time and on budget.
One of the most challenging shoots I did was filming eider ducks diving under the ice in Hudson Bay. It was meant to be –35°C or –40°C, but we were lucky, it was ten degrees warmer. That’s still very cold, so we used an igloo to shelter out of the wind, and there’s a shot of me covered in snow and ice with my eyelashes frozen. But, we got what we wanted and it was great watching it back and seeing these ducks diving down, pulling up the urchins from the sea bed, throwing them around in their beaks to squash the spines, and then swallowing them whole.
One of the most magical moments I’ve had as a wildlife photographer was with a colony of emperor penguins. After carrying my camera gear a few kilometres across the sea ice, I lay down on the snow and actually dropped off to sleep listening to this wonderful cacophony of chicks calling out to be fed. When I woke up, a little chick was lying right by me with its wing on my hand. It was just incredible. I started chatting away to it and it looked at me and eventually got up and toddled off.
As a biologist, you don’t want to interfere with nature, but it’s very difficult to watch certain behaviours without feeling moved by the plight of the hunted animal. When I was working on The Blue Planet, I watched killer whales hunting grey whales. They went for this little calf, and it took about six hours for them to kill it. That was difficult. Another time, we filmed beluga whales trapped in a sassat – essentially a hole in the ice. They had been swimming along the edge of the ice and it had frozen behind them, trapping them in this small hole. It was about 22 kilometres to open water, which was too far for them to hold their breath under the ice. They just had to wait there until the ice melted later in the year. The polar bears had found them and were trying to fish them out of the water,
so the whales were all covered in these rake marks.
The stark beauty of the polar regions keeps luring me back. They’re very different of course; the Antarctic is a continent surrounded by ocean, and the Arctic is the reverse, but they’re both spectacular, and you have to be really on the ball to work there because the conditions are constantly changing.
It can be lonely. The downside of my job is that it’s very destructive on your personal life. You don’t have much time with your friends and family. But, on the other hand, you make really good friends with the people you’re working with because you’re with them for months at a time. Any negative aspects are far, far outweighed by the positives. To have the opportunity to enter a colony of curious penguins or see polar bears hunting on the sea ice feels like such a privilege.
Curriculum vitae
1965 Born in St Asaph, Denbighshire
1976–83 Attended Queen’s School, Chester
1983–86 BSc in zoology, Durham University
1998–99 News editor, Ocean Satellite Television, London and Florida
1990–93 Researcher, Survival, Anglia natural history unit
1993–2005 Wildlife film-maker with BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol
1996–2001 Assistant producer on The Blue Planet
2005–07 Photographer/field assistant on Planet Earth
2005–present Co-director of Tartan Dragon, a wildlife film-making company with Doug Allan
2010 Founded New Sue Productions
July 2011
I grew up watching David Attenborough on television and thought being a wildlife film maker would be an amazing job, but I never dreamt I would get to do it. After graduation, I started writing to the BBC Natural History Unit. On their advice, I gained work experience elsewhere and eventually started getting interviews with the BBC. Then I got down to the last 500 applicants, the last 200, the
last ten, and eventually, in 1993, they offered me a job.
To be a good wildlife film producer, you have to be patient, creative, have incredible attention to detail and be able to stick at something until it’s done. You also have to be willing to put up with uncomfortable conditions. You can be camping in a tent in the Arctic for months on end without a shower. I take a lot of wet wipes. It’s not for everybody. It can be pretty challenging, especially if there are four of you in a tent. Usually it’s just me and two or three guys.
One of the best jobs I ever had was as assistant producer on The Blue Planet. I got to go out and do some really interesting shoots, but ultimately, I wasn’t having to carry the can. The higher up the ladder you go, the bigger the budgets and the worse the stress. People expect spectacular pieces of never-seen-before behaviour from the big BBC series, so the pressure is on to film them on time and on budget.
One of the most challenging shoots I did was filming eider ducks diving under the ice in Hudson Bay. It was meant to be –35°C or –40°C, but we were lucky, it was ten degrees warmer. That’s still very cold, so we used an igloo to shelter out of the wind, and there’s a shot of me covered in snow and ice with my eyelashes frozen. But, we got what we wanted and it was great watching it back and seeing these ducks diving down, pulling up the urchins from the sea bed, throwing them around in their beaks to squash the spines, and then swallowing them whole.
One of the most magical moments I’ve had as a wildlife photographer was with a colony of emperor penguins. After carrying my camera gear a few kilometres across the sea ice, I lay down on the snow and actually dropped off to sleep listening to this wonderful cacophony of chicks calling out to be fed. When I woke up, a little chick was lying right by me with its wing on my hand. It was just incredible. I started chatting away to it and it looked at me and eventually got up and toddled off.
As a biologist, you don’t want to interfere with nature, but it’s very difficult to watch certain behaviours without feeling moved by the plight of the hunted animal. When I was working on The Blue Planet, I watched killer whales hunting grey whales. They went for this little calf, and it took about six hours for them to kill it. That was difficult. Another time, we filmed beluga whales trapped in a sassat – essentially a hole in the ice. They had been swimming along the edge of the ice and it had frozen behind them, trapping them in this small hole. It was about 22 kilometres to open water, which was too far for them to hold their breath under the ice. They just had to wait there until the ice melted later in the year. The polar bears had found them and were trying to fish them out of the water,
so the whales were all covered in these rake marks.
The stark beauty of the polar regions keeps luring me back. They’re very different of course; the Antarctic is a continent surrounded by ocean, and the Arctic is the reverse, but they’re both spectacular, and you have to be really on the ball to work there because the conditions are constantly changing.
It can be lonely. The downside of my job is that it’s very destructive on your personal life. You don’t have much time with your friends and family. But, on the other hand, you make really good friends with the people you’re working with because you’re with them for months at a time. Any negative aspects are far, far outweighed by the positives. To have the opportunity to enter a colony of curious penguins or see polar bears hunting on the sea ice feels like such a privilege.
Curriculum vitae
1965 Born in St Asaph, Denbighshire
1976–83 Attended Queen’s School, Chester
1983–86 BSc in zoology, Durham University
1998–99 News editor, Ocean Satellite Television, London and Florida
1990–93 Researcher, Survival, Anglia natural history unit
1993–2005 Wildlife film-maker with BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol
1996–2001 Assistant producer on The Blue Planet
2005–07 Photographer/field assistant on Planet Earth
2005–present Co-director of Tartan Dragon, a wildlife film-making company with Doug Allan
2010 Founded New Sue Productions
July 2011
