Currently showing on Discovery channel in the US and UK is Gold Rush White Water, a show I very much enjoyed shooting on last summer in the wilds of Alaska.

A huge team is involved in making this kind of production. The camp we were based in was remote, covered in deep snow all winter it’s a vast build to set up sleeping tents, kits tents, mess tents and all the electricity and logistics needed for full production, it’s certainly no slim task. Alaskans are very much people who can, so it all gets done, expertly and importantly, safely. We were sharing this land over the long summer with bears, traversing deep ravines and filming in and around raging whitewater rivers, so safety was paramount.

My job was to film the gold minors as they searched for the gold below the ice-cold glacial waters.This was the most interesting water I’ve dived to date. Glacial water has very fine silt, and an ever-changing colour due to snow melt, or lands slides way upriver. The air in the turbulent water due to its flow made diving tricky, a lot of extra weight was needed to get below the surface, and then you’ve got to hope you stay down there. Moving boulders, changing depth and at times zero visibility meant wielding a camera complicated, it was all a huge learning curve.

The safety team and their knowledge of these rivers is what make these shoots possible.In a team communication is vital, macho behaviours obsolete and experience invaluable, allowing you trust, then you can to get in and give it your all.

It’s definitely where I perform and enjoy working best, in a finely tuned team, and this shoot was most certainly that, and all in the most fantastic scenery of the last frontier.