Someone's Got To Do It: Jobs in the travel industry

RAY MARLOW has been a cameraman working on travel television programmes for the past three years.

How did you get your job?

I came from photography, and very much wanted to get into moving pictures. I thought I wanted to become a feature-film cameraman. But then I discovered documentary, and how much it brings you into touch with real people, doing real things, and having those moments when you see things that no one else would in the normal course of their work.

What do you bring to your work that makes you different or better than other people?

I guess it's accumulated knowledge gained from 20 years of looking through lenses. You build up a catalogue of things that look good, and know instinctively where the shot is. Most of the time you can pull a shot out of almost anything.

People must say you've got the best job in the world, because you are paid large amounts of money to travel.

They would say that, definitely. Whenever I get back from a job, and I'm hanging in half, and I'm completely shattered, and all I want to do is sleep for two days, people have no sympathy whatsoever because you've just come back from the most extraordinary place like Madagascar or Bali or Thailand, or even France. People have no sympathy when you point out that you work 12-, 13-, 14-hour days and it's very tiring.

Do you get to see much of the places beyond your camera viewfinder?

You have insights into places that other people wouldn't on a normal holiday, probably. You go a bit deeper into certain areas, and get under the skin to some degree.

When you take holidays, where do you go?

Somewhere I can lie on my back and put my feet up.

Is travel good for TV, and vice-versa?

I think people love travel shows. All the people I know always seem to have seen lots of them. So I guess travel is a good subject for TV. And I think TV is a good way of showing you round the world.

The party question: you're at a party, and someone finds out what you do. What is the question they invariably ask, and how do you answer them?

"What's the most favourite place you've ever been to?" And it's impossible to answer because the more places you go to, the more you realise there isn't such a place.

Ray Marlow's camera-work can be seen on `The Travel Show', BBC2, 8.30pm 9 Aug