Not many people can list the following on their resume: engineer, member of the Royal Air Force, management consultant, survival training graduate, traveler to 105 countries, Stanford MBA, awarded in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition (1 of the 100 images out of 60,000 entries chosen and then exhibited in Natural History museums worldwide for a year), National Geographic photography instructor, and expedition guide.
As I sat down to chat with Sue Forbes, she was just about to head back to the Arctic on her 11th or 12th trip “to look for some polar bears, whales, and walruses”. A dozen trips to the Arctic don’t seem like a lot, considering Sue’s been to Antarctica over 25 times.
How does a British woman in her 60s, who was trained as an engineer, worked in the British Royal Air Force, attended Stanford Business School, and worked in Silicon Valley, become a wildlife photographer who spends half the year on expeditions as the National Geographic photography teacher/lecturer? A good spreadsheet and the courage to pursue what makes her happy seem to be the keys to her remarkable life path.
So you’re about to head back to the Arctic. If you were to recommend someone go to either the Arctic or Antarctica, which would you choose?
If you want to go once and go big, then you do Antarctica, South Georgia, and the Falklands. This triangle is a classic trip. You get to see hundreds of thousands of king penguins, which have the lovely orangey colors in the South Georgia Islands, and you get to see these crazy albatross colonies right next to you, with birds that have up to a 12-foot wingspan. You get very different experiences.
So let’s back up. Please tell me how your career started:
I grew up in England near Liverpool, and I did electronic engineering as my undergrad. When I graduated, I started as a design engineer. I was actually designing an aircraft fuel management system for the A318 Airbus. I realized pretty quickly that I did not enjoy that job. I realized that I’d just spent three years, plus a lot of industrial experience, training to be an engineer, and I actually wanted to be an engineering manager. However, I’m 22 years old, and they’re not going to give me a management job.
So I decided to join the Royal Air Force, which was a little unusual, as I’m not from a military family or anything like that. My family was like, “What are you doing?!” I went in as an engineer officer.
And you already loved traveling…and photography at this point?
I’d already developed a love for travel. As soon as I started earning my own money, I began traveling, something I hadn’t done much of growing up. And that’s what made me pick up a camera for the first time as well. I wanted to record the places I went. This started a decades-long process, as I traveled extensively when I joined the British Royal Air Force as an engineer officer.
What was your job in the Royal Air Force?
I was responsible for an airfield, including the air traffic control center, the communication systems, the computer systems, and both long-range and short-range communications, and I had a large group of technicians. Basically, we kept the airfield running 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. I was stationed in England, then in the Falkland Islands and South Georgia, and later in Cyprus, in the Mediterranean, where I lived for a few years. So I went all around the Greek Islands, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and I’d take my camera along every time, which sort of started the whole photography process.
Were you self-taught in photography at that point?
Yes, completely self-taught. And I wasn’t particularly good at that point. I’m just your average person on holiday, taking snapshots. But I liked doing it, so it was fun. It was more about the travel at that point than it was about the photography.
How long were you in the Air Force?
I was in the Air Force for about six and a half years, and then I hit a point where they were going to promote me to be a senior officer in the UK, but you have to sign on for 16 years! That’s a lot of years. And I’d never intended to have that as my whole career. It was always going to be a stepping stone. So I was like, okay, I think this is the time to move on, because they were also saying that my reward was “You’ll get a nice desk job in London.” I’m thinking, Aghh! That’s exactly what I DON’T want.
I’d been able to do things like jump out of airplanes, parachute into the English Channel, and do flight test trials over the North Pole, and the idea of a London desk job was not really what I wanted to do. And what I discovered was that when leaving the Air Force, I had limited job opportunities – the defense industry in the UK or going back into engineering. So I decided to go to business school and do an MBA. And as I was going to fund it myself, I decided I’d go only if I got into a really good school. I managed to get into Stanford and chose to go there.
So I came to Stanford, did my MBA, and did a traditional post-Stanford job. I went to McKinsey and was a management consultant for a couple of years in San Francisco. Then I went into product management in the tech industry, which utilized my engineering undergrad and my business degree. I worked my way up in both small and large companies, eventually reaching the vice president level. And this was in the early 2000s, around the time of the massive dot bomb period. I got ‘dot bombed’, and, like a lot of people, I lost my job.
So What Was Next?
Between all of these transitions, I always took off big chunks of time. So, for example, even before I joined the Air Force, I went traveling around Europe for a month, and when I finished my MBA, I went traveling for seven months. And all those times I’d been taking my photographs and getting more and more into it. But this time, I packed my backpack and headed off around the world for eight months.
So this is 2002, I’m single, I’m in my late 30s, and I did one of those, ‘Okay, do I really want to do the whole tech world thing for the rest of my working career’ discussion with myself. I decided I loved living in the Bay Area. I loved all my friends. But I really wanted to do my photography. However, it’s expensive to pay my mortgage and stuff like that!
So, given I’m an engineer, I put together a spreadsheet to figure things out. I calculated how much money I needed to save to pay the mortgage so that I could try doing photography full-time, knowing that it was highly unlikely I’d earn a lot of money doing it. Plus, my real love is wildlife photography, and that’s even harder to make money doing because the availability of free images in the market is ubiquitous. But I had my plan mapped out for how long it would take me to save enough money to become a photographer.
How long was the timeline?
It took me eight years. When I reached the figure, I was working for the CEO of Motorola, and I just walked into his office and said, “Time for me to move on.”
It’s now 2011 when I finally quit. I’m 47 and married at this point. I had been a general manager/senior executive, and I had been super busy. My only ‘plan’ was to save money, per the spreadsheet I’d made. And when I hit my number and quit, I literally woke up the following Monday morning and was like, ‘Okay, so now I’m a wildlife photographer. What do I do now?’
So what did you do?
The first few months, not surprisingly, I spent upgrading my skills. If I was really going to do this, I needed to know what I’m doing. I’d literally be out in the garden shed practicing my hummingbird photography, as I was still all self-taught. I think my tech career helped in that, in photography, you just need to work things out. When you have an issue, you just work it out. That’s what business is all about, so I use that for photography as well.
Then I booked a trip up to the Arctic because I wanted to see polar bears. It was a ship-based trip. At this time, I was like, ‘Okay, how am I going to be a wildlife photographer? Am I going to write a blog? Am I going to travel? Am I going to try to write magazine articles? How am I going to do this?’ I’m looking at all these various options, and at the same time, I’ve bought this trip to the Arctic.
And what happened on that first trip to the Arctic?
I got there, and I don’t have particularly fancy gear at this point, but it’s okay gear, and I find people start asking me photography questions, like ‘Sue, how do I blah, blah, blah’. And I was like, well, this is quite fun. I actually quite enjoy the idea of teaching this. This is quite good.
These are what they call expedition trips. And I didn’t even know about this industry, but it’s the expedition travel industry. You go to super cool places around the world, and they have what’s called an expedition leader who basically is responsible for all passenger activities when you’re ashore, because you go ashore, or to some ice, probably twice a day. I approached the expedition leader and asked if she’d ever thought of having a photographer on board. You need to be bold sometimes in life, but you also need to be lucky!
She mentioned that she was planning a trial of this very idea in the Antarctic, to see whether they might start having a photographer on board. She asked if I would want to be considered. And I said, “Yes, I would!’ I thought I’d better rewrite my resume, as I didn’t think they’d care about the business of billions of dollars or the hundreds of people I’ve managed or anything like that. But this is where, to be honest, my military and survival training, as well as my rifle-carrying training, was a big bonus. Polar bear protection duty and driving small craft, like the Zodiacs, are part of this job, and I’d done all that before, as well as general leadership, which definitely helps with this kind of role.
And you got the job?
So I got the job! It was unpaid. Like a lot of things, when you make big transitions, it doesn’t start with a nice big salary. It was unpaid, and I loved it. I was on the ship, with people who are on holiday, and I’m basically teaching them photography, and then I’m also guiding. I had to learn naturalist skills. I drive the Zodiac craft that we use to get ashore most of the time, and I give lectures. I often create a movie or a slideshow of images from the trip as well. I’m what’s called the expedition staff. Everybody on the staff is a naturalist, so you need to have basic general naturalist knowledge as a starting point. I had to do all the qualifications and skills to then move on to paid work. My training included things like firefighting and personal survival.
So where do you work now?
I now work on the National Geographic ships for Lindblad Expeditions (National Geographic, Lindblad Expeditions is the company name). For them, everyone’s a naturalist, but then everybody also has a depth, an individual skill. Mine is photography, and others might be a marine biologist, a historian, or an ornithologist. I’m a National Geographic certified photo instructor. Sometimes I give lectures on natural history, such as on whales, ice, or seabirds, or on Shackleton’s experiences in the Antarctic, but I will always give lectures on photography. And this includes using everything from phones, because a lot of people just have phones to do their photography, to more sophisticated cameras. I work with beginners through to advanced users who want to refine their skills when they’re on holiday.
And what’s the average time that you’re out on a trip?
The trips can be as short as five days or as long as a month. I would say on average, they are about two weeks. I’ll do multiple trips in a row, though. The guests change, but I stay on board. I usually do a month to six weeks at a time at sea, and then I’ll come back home.
How much time are you at sea a year?
I’m a contractor, not an employee, and I spend about four to six months a year at sea, with the rest of the time at home. They would love me to work more, but I’m not interested in that crazy life. I want flexibility to spend time with my husband when I’m home and be focused.
One of your photos was awarded in the highly acclaimed British Wildlife Photography Awards. Are you still entering contests? What is your photography goal right now?
I haven’t been dong the competitions recently. I focus the majority of my time on increasing my skills so I can help other people learn how to take great photos. I’ve also been doing more personal photography trips. One recent trip that was quite amazing was to Antarctica, where I camped with emperor penguins on the Weddell Sea. I camped on the sea ice with an emperor penguin colony for a couple of weeks. I’m doing more of that kind of thing where I have a specific objective. Next year, I’m going to see if I can find wolverines up in Finland and black leopards in Kenya.
Another area I’m now focusing on is underwater photography. I’m a diver, and photographing underwater isn’t easy. In comparison to my land-based photography, I still have lots to learn.
I think photography is a little bit like golf – there are always new things to learn.
Do you focus on selling your photography?
Initially, I thought I would make money selling my photographs. I have a website and I do sell occasionally, but I need to do a lot of marketing, and I don’t put much effort into it because it feels too much like the business job I had before. I do Instagram because it’s more about whether I can bring enjoyment to people through seeing my images, rather than the finances of trying to sell them. I do sell occasionally, but I haven’t focused on that.
My job is really as an expedition staff member and photography teacher.
What’s a hard part of your job?
Sometimes a person on board can bring a random camera that I might never have seen in my life. They’ll hand it to me and say, ‘I don’t know what I’ve done! It’s not working correctly!’ The whales are breaching, and they need the shot! And my logical brain needs to kick in, as I’ve never seen this camera before, but I can work this out! I like to try to fix the issues, so they can get the photo they want.
So how many years have you been doing this now?
It’s been almost 15 years now.
And do you plan to keep doing it as long as you can?
I love to go to new and different places, to have different experiences, and to be exposed to other cultures. I have a lot of places I want to go, but a lot of them, not surprisingly, are not ship-based. I’m shifting to more land-based personal stuff rather than ship-based for 2026, and we’ll see what 2027 brings.
I definitely have the attitude of, I do things while I enjoy it, and I carry on doing them while I enjoy it, and if I don’t enjoy it any more, then I change and do something else. This is what I tell my nephews or niece – to do something for now. Don’t worry about the whole lifelong thing. You can always change your skill set. There are courses available to be able to get very focused new skills if you haven’t got exactly the right skill. And don’t be afraid to take pay cuts, to be able to go in a different direction. And if you’re not happy, change, don’t complain about it.
And it’s not always quick or easy. As I said, after I made my spreadsheet it took me eight years! Some things in life take a lot of planning.
Do you find that photography changes how you look at a place when you visit, because you’re looking with a different eye?
Part of the reason I love traveling so much is the experiences that you get in these places. You just can’t replicate them back home, and I think it widens your perspective on the world. With photography, I find I’m a lot more aware of everything around me because I’m constantly scanning. I have that sort of photographic eye, which means I notice things. That awareness is super high because you’re always looking for images. You find yourself not just wandering through places. You find yourself really immersing yourself in them because you’re so conscious of everything around you.
Sue’s Fab5 Places For Different Types of Photographic Experiences:
Adventure:
The Antarctic, South Georgia, and the Falkland Islands. It is unusual enough that not that many people do it.
Classic Wildlife:
Tanzania, but pick the private conservancies that give you a bit more flexibility and a less cluttered wildlife experience with fewer tourists.
Cities:
Prague in the winter. Not in the summer, in the winter, when the fog is over the river and the lights are coming out. It’s just an amazing city to wander around in the fall or winter.
Unusual Culture:
The Kingdom of Bhutan. It’s a very gentle society with the most stunning scenery, making it a great place to explore.
Islands:
The Cook Islands. Down in the South Pacific, the Cook Islands are very, very remote with super interesting people who don’t get that much tourism, so it’s a very genuine place to visit. And if you want a slightly simpler experience, I’d recommend the combination of islands and underwater photography in the Galapagos. It’s an amazing place, and the experience of snorkeling with sea lions, penguins, marine iguanas, and sea turtles… It’s unreal. And if you go out to Wolf and Darwin, you can have amazing experiences with whale sharks.
Sue’s Fab5 Places She’d Like to Visit (new or repeat):
Ethiopia
Unfortunately, it’s a little troubled right now, so not a good time at the moment to be able to do that.
The Five Stans (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan )
The Stans offer a combination of the Silk Road, cultural scenery, and wildlife, with things like the eagle hunters. It’s got a really interesting mix.
Tonga
I want to go back to Tonga and swim with the humpback whales.
Japan
I’d like to go back to Japan. That’s more cultural, because the last time I was there, I wasn’t really a photographer.
West Coast of Africa
I was booked to go there for work a couple of times, but unfortunately, both trips got canceled. The Western Coast of Africa feels super interesting!
You can follow Sue on Instagram at :@sueforbesphoto
Find more of her images on her website at: www.sueforbesphoto.com
Enjoy a few of her images below, including her award-winning juvenile red-footed booby chasing a flying fish!
