A pioneering wildlife photographer who worked closely with Sir David Attenborough has died while trekking in Nepal.
Doug Allan, 74, was principal cameraman on BBC shows including The Blue Planet, Blue Planet II, Planet Earth and Frozen Planet. He won eight Emmy awards for his work and was made an OBE for services to broadcast media and environmental awareness in 2024.
Allan’s management company said that he was a “true pioneer of wildlife film-making” who had captured “some of the most breathtaking and intimate images” of the natural world.
Allan with Sir David Attenborough in 2015Alamy
In a statement, Jo Sarsby Management said: “His work brought audiences closer to the wonders of our planet, inspiring awe, understanding and deep respect for the planet.
“When we think of Doug, we will always remember his unforgettable kindness and his extraordinary talent. Our thoughts are with his family, friends, colleagues across the wildlife film-making industry and the many people around the world who admired his work.”
Sue Flood, his ex-wife, said that it was “of comfort that he was doing something adventurous with a dear friend of ours” when he died.
Allan credited Attenborough with inspiring him to become a wildlife cameraman, after they met at the British Antarctic Survey in the South Orkney Islands, where Allan was working as a research diver.
“It was a chance meeting with David Attenborough, of all people, in 1981. He turned up in our base with a small film crew,” he said in an interview.
“The next trip to the Antarctic I bought a 16mm movie camera and in the wonderful naiveness of youth I went and did some filming of emperor penguins and sold the footage to [the] BBC when I went back. That’s where it all started.”
Allan filming mother and calf humpback whales in TongaBridgeman Images
He went on to work with Attenborough for decades, and asked the veteran presenter to contribute commentary for the 2012 BBC Scotland series Wildlife Cameramen at Work.
“It was classic David … he did me the great honour of saying in his commentary that, ‘Wildlife cameramen don’t come much more special than Doug Allan’,” Allan said in a 2019 interview.
“He often tweaked his commentaries, and he must have put that in to make it personal. That’s very typical of him. People still latch on to that quote. It’ll be the one on my gravestone.”
Alamy
Allan, who was born in Dunfermline, Fife, in 1951, became enthralled by the natural world after watching Jacques Cousteau’s film The Silent World. The 1956 documentary was among the first to use underwater filming.
He studied marine biology at Stirling University in 1973, graduating with an honours degree, before becoming a research diver at the British Antarctic Survey station on Signy Island.