Basil Pao

Basil Pao Ho-Yun (鲍皓昕) is a Hong Kong-based photographer. He has been the stills photographer on the BBC filming teams that made Michael Palin's television travel programmes.

Pao was born in Hong Kong, but started his career as an art director and graphic designer in New York and Los Angeles. His work during that time included making numerous record covers and posters for Atlantic Records, Polygram and Warner Bros. Records.

During this time, Pao also met Michael Palin, when they worked together on the book for the Monty Python film Life of Brian.

In 1980, Pao returned to Hong Kong and took up photography as his new career.

When Michael Palin was doing his first trip for the BBC in 1988, Around the World in Eighty Days, he asked Basil Pao to show him around Hong Kong when he arrived there. After a couple of days in Hong Kong, Palin asked Pao to accompany the BBC team on the stretch from Hong Kong to Shanghai to act as guide and interpreter, and Pao agreed. Many of the photographs between Hong Kong and Shanghai used in the book that Palin later wrote about this trip, Around the World in 80 Days, were taken by Pao.

In 1992, when Palin and the BBC were planning to make a new travel programme, Pole to Pole, they decided that it would be a good idea to have a full-time stills photographer on the team, and that Pao was a top candidate for the job. Pao accepted, and, except for the very first few days and the very last few days (he missed out on the two poles due to lack of space in the small aircraft used at both ends of the trip) it was exclusively his pictures that were used in the follow-on book that Palin wrote, Pole to Pole with Michael Palin.

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