The seeds of this timber species, sometimes known as the Andaman Redwood Pterocarpus dalbergioides are held between two leaf like structures which are tied together by these veins.
Thursday, January 21st, 2010 | Category : Wildlife
Munda Pahad – The southern tip of South Andamans
After waiting many years, I’m finally at Andaman Islands. Spent the last 3 days exploring the mangroves, chasing the endemic birds and snorkeling in some of the most breathtaking and clear lagoons of the islands. Tomorrow we leave to go up north to middle and north Andamans to check out the Edible-nest swiftlet caves.
About two months ago, while I was on a shoot, I suddenly get a call to be on a luxury east Africa safari four days later. I finished the shoot, rushed to Bangalore, got my yellow fever shot and jumped into a plane to Nairobi. Till the day before I got into the plane, I didn’t even know where I was going in east Africa.
From Nairobi, we took a charter to Mara over the great Rift Valley. The minute I landed, I got out and kissed the Earth under my feet. In the next 8 days, I saw, experienced, and photographed some of the greatest wildlife spectacles on earth. We saw Olive, the leopard (the leopard star of BBC Big Cat Diary), make multiple kills with her 2 young cubs, we saw thousands of Wildebeest crossing the rivers and getting eaten by Nile crocodiles, we saw cheetahs touching the speed record to take down its prey and most of all, saw the giants of Africa against limitless sky and savannah.
From the moment I landed, I knew I had to do a Black and White series of Masai Mara. It is an amazing photography experience when you take photographs specifically to make them into monotones. So here is my first fine art wildlife series: Mara in Monotones
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 | Category : Events
I’m giving a talk on Wildlife Conservation through Photography at the Photography Society of Madras this Saturday. Its a public talk, so if you are in Chennai, do drop by at the talk and the field visit the day after at Pullicat Lake.
You remember the Chasing the Monsoon expedition? Paul has been very efficient and has been both writing and putting together video snippets from the trip.
BBC has finally put up one of the stories from the expedition which I presented on the Lion-tailed macaques (Filmed by David, Paul and Mandanna). Lion-tailed macaques are the most fascinating primates from the Western Ghats and are also one of the most endangered in the world. I have been following this group for a while now when I did the photo essays, and it was a pleasure to see them again and thankfully doing well for the moment. Unfortunately currently this video can be accessed only from UK. I’ll try to put it up elsewhere once I get the permission. Till then, the best way to see it would be via a UK based open proxy.
Earth Explorer is the coolest title I’ve ever had in my life. The coming year will be the year of exploration and travel for me.
Thursday, October 8th, 2009 | Category : Photography
In the last two months of the Outlook Traveller magazine, my photographs have appeared on the cover and in the cover stories. Its really nice to see the photos in Outlook magazine and Geo as their layout design is good and the printing quality is excellent.
This month’s cover story is about Kalakad-Mundanthural Tiger Reserve. I just saw the preview of it and it looks amazing. The prints of the photos have come out really well. Do go out and pick up your copy from the stores now. Below is the cover of this month’s issue.
Outlook Traveller Oct 2009 Cover
You might be wondering now–this image looks familiar. Well it sure is, as I have posted this before and this was photographed in BR hills. This is where the magazine goofed up. Normally its impossible to always get all the photographs from the same location.. and sometimes publishers mix photos from other locations. This is fine too as most photos are from BR hills and Anamalais which in some way share many of the species with this forest. But instead of saying “A leopard in the forests, a common predator of KMTR”, they said “A leopard photographed in KMTR” which it is not.
I did not get the proof before it went for print, so I did not realise it would come out this way. As I said, though the article is about KMTR, most of the photos are from Anamalais or BR hills and I’m really sorry for misleading people about KMTR. KMTR itself is a wonderful forest and maybe one of the few least-touched places in the Western Ghats, and all these species are found there too, however they are extremely difficult to sight and photographing them there is a really tough job because of the dense forest canopy and therefore the low-light conditions, as well as the steeply sloping terrain.
The main page of the cover story on KMTR
The above photograph was taken in Anamalais too, but they have mentioned KMTR here as well. I again really apologise for misinformation like this. I will try my best to make sure the publishers get it right in all the future work.
Last month’s photo story was about the long trek that we did two years ago to Gandhigram through the Namdapha Tiger Reserve in Arunachal Pradesh. You can read the full article by clicking on the image below.
I’m off on a month-long assignment to film snakes at the Madras Crocodile Bank. Its an Icon Films production for the BBC.
What’s the film about ?
World Health Organization estimates suggest that over one million people are bitten by snakes in India each year; between 20,000 and 50,000 of these prove fatal, as many as the rest of the world combined. Although shocking, these statistics are still just estimates and as such sadly hold diminished weight. There is presently no conclusive data that confirms exactly what the situation is. But this is all set to change later this year when the Registrar General in Delhi announces the findings of the most extensive survey of snake bites in India ever. The results are rumored to confirm the most extreme predictions.
So WHY are so many people in India still dying from snake bites each year? India is home to only one of the World’s 10 most deadly snakes yet the number of fatalities far exceeds this statistic.
SNAKE BITES will probe the fascinating natural history that lies behind the report’s findings. Herpetologist, Romulus Whitaker, will unpack not only the statistics but the particular species of snakes that are driving them, taking us on an eye opening excursion through the world of India’s venomous snakes. From the Hook-nosed Sea Snake of the Gulf of Mannar to the Black Cobras of the deserts of Rajasthan, Rom will get up-close and personal with these magnificent animals.
Personally, I’m very excited to work on the project because of the excellent team. We will also be working with some amazing gear. From very high speed Photron SA-3 cameras which were used in Planet Earth to film the sharks, to time-slice rigs which were used in the Matrix movie to get the bullet time sequence.
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 | Category : Photography
One of the frustrations that I go through as a photographer is when people do not think what you do is hard work. I hear comments like “All he has to do and click some snaps with a camera”. Thankfully in wildlife, people cannot complain much, but in India I know how badly photographers are treated.
Infact people go out and spend a lot of money in buying paintings. But when you ask the same for a fine art photograph, they say..”Oh he just clicked it in few seconds.. why should we pay so much”. No one puts the cost behind years of learning and hard work to get that photograph.
Anyway came across this cool video. See how it feels like
Monsoon brings out all the moisture loving plants and the Impatiens which are the beautiful group of flowering plants come out in full bloom in this season. There are about 76 species of Impatiens which are endemic to the Western Ghats.
Earlier this year I was fortunate enough to be invited to be part of an expedition team led by Dr AJT Johnsingh. The trek was from Mukurthi National Park in Tamil Nadu to Silent Valley National Park in Kerala and the primary purpose was to evaluate the importance of the two national parks in the conservation planning for large mammals. A delightful and detailed account of the expedition has been written by Dr AJT Johnsingh in the Frontline magazine.
While I had no scientific expertise to add to the mission, I did have ulterior motives. This route goes via the famous Sispara pass. Sispara was used by the British as the shortest ditance between Ooty and Kozhikode.
Now this is where it gets interesting
Around the 1830s a British officer of the Bombay Army named Stephen Ponsonby Peacocke was in India with his regiment and was in Ooty up in the Nilgiri Hills convalescing from an illness for some time during this period. He had a lot of free time on his hands and since he was good at painting, he created 17 drawings of spectacular landscape views in the Nilgiri Hills. His artwork is known for being lifelike and to proportion and scale. He finally published all of them in 1847. Thanks to wikipedia, you can browse through all of them.
Before the trip, I printed out all these photographs and carried them with me to search for these landmarks which were painted more than 170 years ago. From the start of the walk, I was looking at every mountain, every peak, and every pass, and was trying to compare them with the photographs that I had with me.
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