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…
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…
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…
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…
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. Nikon D3 with Nikkor 105mm VR macro
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…
4 weeks, 12 locations, 4200 km, 380GB of footage/photos and a big pile of stinky and wet clothes. What an amazing journey it was. The monsoon rains hit us a lot harder than we had anticipated. We missed out on some wildlife (Paul specifically came down for the Purple frog), but we made that up by capturing some amazing stories and meeting some wonderful people across the Western Ghats who are doing great conservation work. Paul has been diligent enough to write a lot during the expedition. Over the next few weeks, we will start putting the stories together and…
Well not really, but if you have been following the news, this is the situation in central Karnataka where we have been hoping to film. We just got back to Mysore from two lovely days at BR hills. It’s always nice to be back in my home town and on this trip, we were greeted by an amazing, hour-long bonanza of a small herd of elephants. The plan is to head up to Agumbe/Jog/Sirsi from here but with these rains it will mean we might not make it till our destination at all and even if we did, the rain…
We are back in town for a day to dry up, and have managed to put together a quick clip of our tryst with a mugger crocodile at Ranganthittu. This is the clip where Paul has for the first time in his life seen and even got this close to a big Croc. He was in for quite a surprise when this happened. Presentation: Paul Williams, Direction: Kalyan Varma, Camera: David Heath, Production Manager/Sound: Mandana Dilan. Lot more stories coming up soon. We are heading to the more familiar jungles of BR hills and Nagarahole for the big wildlife and…