Here is a lovely term coined by Deepa Mohan

Photo-constipation:

It is what many ’serious photographers’ suffer from as they have to edit the images. Its usually when after one trip, it takes three months, sometimes, for just a few images to emerge out!

I, for one, have been suffering from it the last few month. What about you ?

Benjamin Lee has a very interesting Job. He works for the Singapore National Parks Board. He is responsible for maintaining the tree cover in town and also the National parks and watersheds. I was introduced to Ben as he was the best person to show me Colugo in the wild in Singapore.

He called me last evening and said he has a very special surprise for me. A Colugo had entered one of the buildings next to the park and we had to go pick it up and release it back in the national park. It was dropped off at the zoo and we picked it up and drove to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve.

Colugo, also known as the flying lemur is one of the weirdest creature on earth. Its has a very weird skin, a strange membrane around the animal and is the most capable gliding mammal on earth (after bats of course). I first saw it in a David Attenborough documentary and been wanting to see it even since. The amazing thing about this mammal is that it can never stand on the ground like the bats, and can only glide for locomotion.

Colugo Cynocephalus volans

We reached the National park at 6:30pm and was just about the right time to release the Colugo. Since it was in a box, I didnt see it too well. We took it to a large tree and released it. Just as we opened the box, it leaped on Ben, and then jumped onto the bark of the tree and ran up. After going up, it disappeared. It took us a fraction of a second to realise that it has gone airborne. It was one of the most wonderful sights on earth to see as it glided to a large ficus tree a good hundred meters away.

We got back to the office and then started searching for the resident Colugos. Today it was not there on the tree which it’s usually found. After a bit of searching, I suddenly heard a ‘thud’ on a tree next to me and then realised it was Colugo which landed on a tree very close to me. I whipped my camera out and shot the photograph below. I made sure I did not use a flash and shot this only with a torch light.

Philippine Colugo Cynocephalus volans (Nikon D700 with 70-200mm | 1/25 sec at f/2.8 @ ISO 2000)

This disappeared into the canopy and soon after, we bumped into the team from the National Parks who were doing their monthly night survey of the park. They invited me to join and I was more than happy to go along. I was just not prepared for the humidity, but the next 4 hours of walk through the forests was amazing. We saw the Long-tailed nightjar, Common Palm civet, Red-cheeked Flying Squirrel, Malayan Giant frog and dozen of amazing rainforest trees in bloom.

Colugo carrying a young one

Along the trek, we also spotted 3 more Colugos and this one was carrying its young one along with it. We all got back late night, had a data sharing meeting and called it a day. It was excellent to survey a new forests and was quite happy to have identified most of the species myself.

I strongly hope, other big cities learn from Singapore (and New York) on how to manage urban forests. Even if they don’t care about the tree cover, at least realise that unlimited clean water supply can only come from the watersheds that these forests provide.

Looks like Times of India is not only good at violating copyrights, its also good at photoshopping images to exaggerate the content. I am all for using photoshop to enhance the photograph, but not in journalism to enhance the news itself.

And for those of you who think this is a printing issue, its not. The other photos in the paper including all the Page 3 photos have the right contrasts and saturations.

This is the image that everyone has of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Clear blue waters, white sandy beaches which transform into lush rainforests as you move onto the land.

The truth however is quite contrary.

There is very little of original, undisturbed, pristine rainforests left. The Andamans were the timber source for mainland India for many decades. In fact till recently, the largest saw-mill in Asia was operated out of there. People in mainland India were given incentives like 10 tons of wood every year to settle down in the Andamans and ‘colonize’ the islands. Burmese people even today come into the islands, cut down the tallest trees, tie them all together and toe them back to Myanmar.

The People

Great Andamanese hunters, in an 1875 photograph (source commons)

The real tragedy has been with the local tribes. There were 6 different tribes in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. While a few of them (Jarawa, Sentinelese, Onge, Great Andamanese) are of Negroid origin, the others are Mongoloid (Shompen, Nicobarese) and have been living there for thousands of years and possibly represent a very critical link in human migration. The Andamans are theorized to be a key stepping stone in a great coastal migration of humans from Africa via the Arabian peninsula, along the coastal regions of the Indian mainland and towards Southeast Asia, Japan and Oceania. First, the European and Central Asian sailors tried to make slaves out of them. This made them wary of the outside world and have always treated outsiders with hostility. Then the British moved into these islands and tried to make contact with them. This contact led to spread of diseases and also alcoholism and other bane of the modern society. History repeated itself, and like the Amazon and Mayan tribes, the populations of these tribes also plummeted.

Great Andamanese who’s population used to be 5000+, plummeted to 600 by 1901. Today less than 30 of them survive. Jarawas which were also in few thousands have dropped to 300 and restricted to a small part of their former territory – the Jarawa Reserve in the west coast of the South and Middle Andamans. There is a main highway going through their reserve which has become the source of contact and interactions between these tribes and the settlers. The settlers being mostly people from West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Ranchi. Even though there is a Supreme Court order to shut down the road, it is still operational.

Onge which live in Little Andaman have less than a 100 people left. The only tribe which still maintains no contact with the outside world are are the Sentinelese. There are an estimated 300 left on the North Sentinel Island.

Just last month, one of the sub-tribes of Andamanese became extinct when the last of its member passed away.

Tsunami

Tsunami has transformed the islands and left its scar forever. There is life before the Tsunami and then there is the life after.

There was a lot of lives lost and a lot of damage to the property. The real damage came not from the wave of water but from the earthquakes that shook the islands during that time. The islands got tilted and land got submerged into waters or got lifted up. A lot of coral reefs died because they were lifted by a few feet. The little change in depth can change the temperature and that led to the mass dying of the corals. Some even got lifted above the sea level. A lot of fertile land got submerged and now they are just marshes with submerged and abandoned houses in between and a lot of palm trees without their crowns.

Dead corals that were pushed above the water by the earthquake

The Tsunami also changed the social landscape of the islands. The government lifted the ban on logging and opened up the rainforests to support the people. A lot of money that was pumped into the relief efforts has changed the economic balance of the island people. Everyone owns a badly built fishing boat that were presented to them post-tsunami. Now most of them are broken down because of the bad quality and whats left are used for tourism purposes. There has been a boom in tourism too. These obscure islands became popular. All the money that came in as relief were quickly converted to resorts.

Wildlife

This was the first time I’ve experienced ‘island ecosystem’. Basically, these islands have been remote for so long that, no mammals have reached here. Every time I heard something, I would look in the understory to look out for some deer etc.. but then realise that there are no mammals in these islands and the sound was either another person or a stray dog. The real diversity of these islands is in the plants, reptiles and birds. Most birds here are endemic and are relatives of the mainland birds like the Andaman Serpent Eagle, Andaman Coucal, Andaman Teal, Andaman something or the other! The same story goes with the snakes and lizards too. One of the extraordinary reptile here is the Andaman Day Gecko Phelsuma

Andaman Day Gecko

Unlike regular geckos, this one is diurnal, very colourful and you are almost sure to find one on every areca (betel nut) tree if you look carefully. They are most active during mid day when they come out to catch flies that land on the inflorescence of these plants.

Andaman Crake – One of the many endemic birds

Olive Ridley Turtle nesting on the Ramnagar beach

Heritiera littoralis seed

My favorite is this mangrove plant whose boat-shaped seed has a small ‘keel’ or sail on top to help it disperse across the open oceans riding the waves. Were these the inspiration when humans first made the sail boats ?

The other highlight was the Edible-nest swiftlets for which I’ll write a separate post.

On Feb 6th, I got up early for my workshop and sat to glance through the Times of India while having breakfast to catch up on the morning news. On the front page, I saw a headline Bhimgarh now wildlife sanctuary (if the link does not work, here is the article without the image) and when I looked down, I was shocked to see my bat photograph of the rare Wroughton’s Free-tailed Bat. Now I had to work real hard to get permits to enter the cave and spend a lot of money to just access it and photograph it. Being a long time contributor of Wikipedia, I thought it would be a good to add this photo for the article as no other photo exists for this species.

Being a professional photographer, I earn by bread and butter via photography. Yet I feel the compulsion to share my photographs as half the reason I photograph in the first place is so that others can see what I had seen. Also since I have my roots in free software and creative commons, The CC license is one of the most attractive licenses. If you go to my website, you will realise that each and every photograph of mine is under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license (Freely copy, use and remix the photograph for non-commercial use). Unfortunately Wikipedia insists on a CC-By-SA license (Freely copy, use and remix the photograph for commercial use as well).

Well, the urge to upload to Wikipedia this picture so that the others can see this bat was a lot more than trying to keep this locked up in my hard disks. So I released one of the photographs under CC-By-SA. So its free for anyone to use, remix, etc (even for commercial use) as long as they give the attribution or credit.

Times of India has a nasty reputation when it comes to handling photographs. From what I hear, the journalists just google for the image that they need, click on image search and download the first image that they come across. They have used a lot of my photographs before from both my website and Wikipedia and have printed it in their news paper. I got angry, but let it pass as I was on the road and sometimes didn’t bother too much.

But the more they do it, the more annoying it gets. This time, I felt I had to do something about this. Not just for myself, but for other photographers in India who’s work in Wikipedia and flickr gets exploited by these publications. This will also discourage photographers from contributing to CC, which will in-turn kill creativity and also sharing of knowledge, rare photographs and pictures.

I wrote to the contact email address and did not get any response. I left a note on the online form and did not get any response. So I’m sending a legal notice to them via a legal adviser. I’m not asking for a compensation, but I want Times of India to publish a public apology for exploiting Creative Commons and Wikipedia and hopefully if we can make enough noise that other publications will take note too.

Update (12 Feb 2010) :

Times of India have apologised on their front page today. Good, but unfortunately not good enough. Obviously someone inside ToI have read this and have responded. It would be good if you can contact me regarding this. First, I wish it was an apology for lifting content from Creative Commons. Second, as a compensation, it would be good if you can run an article on Creative Commons in your paper. Not to highlight this issue, but a very general article so that people are aware of the strength of Creative Commons and how its helping people all around the world

Nikon D700 + Sigma 105mm macro + Sb800 flash – 1/60 sec at f16

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.

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.

More soon …

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

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.