When someone asks me what I like about my job as a film/video cameraman I’ll tell them that no two days are ever the same.  When I started out as a young keen BBC Assistant Film Cameraman, I might’ve answered ‘the excitement’ or ‘the travelling’.  With about 30 years experience I can say that because every day is different, so are the challenges, therefore the motivation and the satisfaction.  And it really doesn’t matter whether it’s a tightly-scheduled night shoot in a steamy ex-colonial House of Parliament with an unreliable electricity supply and a willing though unruly bunch of extras or a ‘talking head’ in an office in London.  One applies the same effort – when I look at the image in two dimensions through the viewfinder is it the most pleasing (to me) as it can possibly be?

 As a BBC ‘staffer’ I was lucky enough to be allocated day by day to work on the whole range of BBC filmed programmes from Religion through Light Entertainment and Dramas to Documentaries, and everything in between.  The freelance industry is different in that one builds up a reputation in one area and tends to get work on that genre of programmes almost exclusively.  We all end up much more as specialists in a particular field.  For me documentary filming has always given me the biggest thrill.  Meeting real people in every walk of life and all over the globe and finding out about their lifestyles; and helping viewers, mostly through television programmes, to experience a little of what I’ve been lucky enough to.