It was a great evening though; free champagne and a red carpet which was a bit more like a large doormat than the usual Academy Award type walkway. Ants did look fantastic on the big screen, and did get a big cheer when it came up as a nominee.

It was lovely to see material I’d filmed featured in a few of the nominated films; Madagascar, Ants and my snow monkey footage from the One Life feature film all looked great on the cinema screen. There were some very deserving winners; Madagascar got pipped by the wonderful ‘My Life as a Turkey’ in the Best Wildlife Programme category (also beating Frozen Planet to show that there is hope for the little guy!) and Human Planet won Best Specialist Factual.

I’m off to Alaska tomorrow to carry on with the two films I’m working on there for Parthenon / Animal Planet. The main aim of this trip is to see if we can film wolves scavenging on a moose carcass. I think it could be tricky, I tried filming wolves from this pack several years ago and after a huge amount of effort only got one shot on a remote camera, this time we’re taking out a much more elaborate remote camera setup and I’m really excited at the thought of what we might see – wolves, wolverine, brown bear (apparently there is still one out and about in the area despite it being midwinter) and, of course, the Sasquatch.

I’m working with old friends Rick & Jessy from the Alaska Department of Fish & Game, they seem pretty relaxed about the chances of the wolves turning up and it’s been a very hard winter in Alaska this year so they should be hungry. The action is probably going to happen at night, I’ll be filming in infra red and it’s going to be a case of sitting and monitoring the cameras throughout the night, it’s been -26C there recently, I’ll pack some extra socks.

This was all great until I read that, for the Best Photography award, my competition consists of two little known series; Frozen Planet and Human Planet, and Madagascar is also up against the behemoth that is Frozen Planet…

I’m currently trying to decide whether to remove the champagne from the fridge and put it back on the dusty shelf where it usually lives or order another bottle.

I`m delighted to now be able to inform you that the judging of the RTS 2012 awards has been completed. This year we had more entries than ever before and the good news is

The following has  been nominated:

John Brown for Natural World: Empire of the Desert Ants in the Best Photography category.

Makes all the 3am starts and scrabbling around in the desert worthwhile. The awards bash is in a couple of weeks, it’s going to be a challenge to keep 20,000 ants in their party frocks under control on the red carpet.

Simon’s work has had some great publicity on the UK press over the last few days – the fact that it has taken over 1 million (large!) spiders, and 8 years, to create these beautiful works of art has really captured the public’s imagination. It has been known that spider silk is the strongest natural fibre – with a greater tensile strength than steel – for many years, but despite a range of attempts, nobody other than Simon has managed to figure out how to collect and weave it in any meaningful quantity.

I have been really fortunate to see both of these pieces under construction over the last few years – I always stay with Simon and his family on filming trips to Madagascar, and Simon’s workshop is in the ground floor of his home. The process of collecting the spiders (which are later released into the wild), extracting the silk, spinning, designing and weaving is nothing short of alchemy. To turn boxes of seething spiders into this incredible cloth which seems to glow with its own inner light has a real fairy tale quality.

Simon has written a fantastic book about the history of weaving with spider silk which features some of my photographs of the process. The exhibition runs at the V&A for a couple of months and is really worth a visit – while you are in London check out the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy too, incredible and inspiring.

x2 60 minute programmes for Animal Planet, produced by Parthenon

Director of Photography

I have just started this project which will run for most of 2012 and will involve filming all over Alaska, more news to follow.

We spent the first few days filming the bald eagle congregation on the Chilkat River. After an epic journey – three flights, three days, a five hour chug on a ferry up the inside passage (humpack whales and Dall’s porpoise) and very little sleep we arrived to find the town pretty much closed for the winter.

The tourist season had well and truly finished and residents seemed to have settled in for a hard winter of drinking. We stayed at the infamous ‘Captain’s Choice’ hotel (not sure which captain this refers to, but his faculties must have been somewhat dulled if he chose to stay here) – the other residents all seemed to have 4 or 5 small dogs staying in each of their rooms, which was nice.

The Chilkat River is the last stretch of open fresh water when the rest of the area freezes. It is kept flowing by glacial meltwater percolating through an alluvial fan and getting warmed up by geothermal heat. It is also where the last salmon runs of the season – Coho and Dog Salmon – occur, hence the huge congregations of bald eagles that gather there.

When we arrived the estimate was that over 1,000 eagles were still gathered along a 2 mile open stretch of the river. It was pretty spectacular, some of the spruce trees had 40-50 eagles perched in them, looking like bizarre Christmas decorations in the snow. The activity was sporadic; every now and again an eagle would grab a hapless salmon from the water (the fish were all well past their sell by date by this stage) and there would be 30 minutes or so of squabbling and dive bombing as other eagles, ravens, magpies, and occasionally coyotes, would come in for a share of the fish.

It all looked fantastic, there had been huge amounts of snow so the river and the surrounding country looked beautiful and the sight of eagles tussling with each other, slithering around on the ice and thrashing in the snow was pretty primeval.

The biggest treat was seeing a pack of 6 wolves on the last day – they were a long way off but it looked like they made a kill – the slight of them playing around like puppies in the snow after they had finished whatever it was that they were eating was unforgettable.

After Haines it was back to Anchorage to meet up with old friends Rick & Jessy from the Alaska Fish & Game Department, I had made a Natural World film about them years ago but hadn’t seen them since, so is was lovely to catch up. Rick is now retired and Jessy is responsible for keeping the demented phenomena that is Anchorage under control. We’re going to be doing a lot of filming in the city over the next year – trying to film a few things (wolves, brown bear, attack beaver (!)) that I didn’t film last time, along with the omnipresent moose. For all its extraordinary weirdness it was great to be back in Anchorage, it was such a challenge making the last film there so it was rather cathartic to revisit the place and see it all with fresh eyes.

Now I’m properly home for Christmas, and I’ve got a few weeks off which is much needed. 2012 is going to be super busy so I’m looking forward to recharging my batteries before it all goes crazy again in February. Happy Christmas!

I’m delighted to say that the Champagne was claimed, and drunk (thanks Rob). We filmed the most amazing fight I’ve ever seen – 400+ baboons facing off against each other, the noise was unbelieveable – it was one of the most incredible pieces of behaviour I have ever seen. Very difficult to film in a coherent way as the battle lines between the two groups were constantly shifting, and it was dusk, but I think we got a pretty exciting sequence.

We got some great stuff with my Jimmy Jib up on the baboons favourite sleeping cliff, and field tested my new panning / tracking timelapse rig with some really lovely results.

The shoot was tainted slightly by some very peculiar goings on – having to evacuate our tents in the middle of the night due to the attentions of a spotted hyena (probably with rabies, even shots fired at point blank range didn’t deter it), then we had a 6ft spitting cobra in the kit tent (miraculously spotted by Matt, and dealt with by Nick – well done chaps) and finally the gruesome sight of an eviscerated, but still live, donkey in the camp one morning – attacked by hyenas the previous night and rescued by park scouts.

It was all rather strange, the kind of trip that will stay with you for a while; waking up to see the moonlit shape of a hyena nose to nose with your tent and  hearing it brush along the fabric a few inches from you knowing that it is intent to get in – then to hear the bolt of a rifle being pulled back and a shots being fired only for the hyena just to keep coming back for more was not exactly conducive for a good night’s sleep.

The strangeness was offset by the brilliant people I was out there with – thanks Nick and Matt. I’m not sure if any of us will be heading back there for a holiday any time soon…

Last Sunday Max and I had a grand day out at London Wasps. Witney RFC had been invited to participate in a half time demonstration of tag rugby so we took our U7′s & U8′s down for the day. It was all slightly chaotic, Max scored a try in front of 10,000 people, Wasps were thumped by Northampton Saints, we were thumped by Maidenhead RFC and we got to meet a chap in an enormous wasp costume – it doesn’t get much better than that!

Witney U7's prepare to unleash hell ...

In my time at home I also managed to build myself a Telecaster – which I’d been planning on doing for ages, I’ve previously built two Stratocasters (I’m going to do a section of this website all about my guitar obsession at some stage) but this was my first Tele. Ash body, thin & aged nitrocellulose laquer finish (beautifully done by MJT Aged Finishes), Callham parts and Bare Knuckle pickups – sounds lovely, I still need to do some fine tuning tweaks … but here it is:

We had a really great shoot for Wild Brittania with Andrew Murray. The weather looked less than promising the whole week but somehow we managed some great filming including a fantastic day on the top of the Cairngorms, great fun and rather exhausting.

I’m now back home for a couple of weeks which is really lovely (a potential shoot to the UAE just fell through due to the fact that the key contributor is heading off to Mecca, but that’s OK!).

Make sure to watch Frozen Planet starting this wednesday on BBC1 – it promises to be utterly spectacular – I made a very small contribution to the series (good to see our Musk Ox featuring prominently in the trailer!) but there are loads of super talented people who have worked on it so I’m really looking forward to it.