Above: who's shooting who? That's me on the right, posing with a border guard while filming Chechen refugees on the border between Chechnya and Ingushetia, November 1999.

In 1996, I defected from London to Moscow to work for a well established independent British TV production company.

Russia and the former Soviet republics are particularly difficult places to work, they are countries of extremes, not for the faint-hearted. It takes a special breed of person to survive and perform there without going insane. Apart from the language barrier and complex, frustrating bureaucracy at all levels, there is widespread crime, corruption, discrimination, harassment and harsh weather conditions to contend with.

In spite of this, I somehow managed to survive 5 years humping my Betacam SP camera gear and edit pack through some of the most remote, coldest and dangerous corners of the former Soviet Union, often under harsh and difficult conditions, without being deported, thrown in prison or developing serious alcohol, drug and/or mental problems (I think).

I shot, edited and directed documentaries and news features with foreign correspondents and producers in war zones, natural disasters, sporting events and political summits in just about every hazardous condition possible in the field of TV journalism: from the Baltics to Kamchatka, including three missions into war-torn Chechnya and Ingushetia.

I’ve been exposed to hazardous radiation levels in Chernobyl, Ukraine, covered humanitarian aid in the aftermath of an earthquake in the rugged mountains of northern Afghanistan, braved a Siberian prison rife with drug-resistant tuberculosis, covered a mass funeral service for the 9000 plus victims shot by Stalin’s NKVD during the political purges in 1936-1938, filmed ecological issues and the sonar mapping of Siberia’s picturesque Lake Baikal, economic collapse stories in Murmansk, Chukotka and Kamchatka, and uncovered dark secrets in Moscow’s KGB Museum to name just a few.

I've been crash-tackled by a Russian soldier while filming refugees in Chechnya, frozen my arse off in -45°C in Siberia, filmed inside a mobile nuclear ICBM launcher at a secret Russian military base and even knelt in bear poo just to get a good angle for an ITN story on bear cubs orphaned after their mothers were killed by hunters.

Some highlights: I was DOP on the documentary The General & The Boxer with BBC journalist Andrew Harding for the BBC Correspondent series, shot two camera interviews for the BBC HARDtalk series with multi award-winning journalist-presenter Tim Sebastian, filmed the 2000 Moscow Film Festival for Los Angeles based E-entertainment, covered international news events such as the election and inauguration of President Putin, the Kursk submarine tragedy, the official shutdown of the Chernobyl reactor complex, several segments for 'Eurotrash' and the 2001 International Olympic Committee congress in Moscow. Other clients included Channel 4 News, NBC, ABC, ZDF, NOS Dutch TV, VRT Belgian TV, Rapido TV, & many others.

  

portfolio Russia Strange Journeys Across Russia & the former USSR