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.

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.

Outlook Traveller article on Namdapha expedition

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.

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