The original poem written by Rabindranath Tagore, “Jana Gana Mana” was officially adopted by the Constituent Assembly as the Indian national anthem on 26th January 1950 – Republic Day. Celebrated with a show of power and progress, Republic Day is known for its display of India’s military power as well as a gala show of India’s cultural heritage. What is really missing is a sense of national pride for the country’s natural heritage and we hope that this video fills that void.

The comments and feedback we’ve had ever since we put this video online has been heart-warming and touching.

Anonymous said, “In my three decades in India, I had the occasion to hear the national anthem countless times, but it is only today with your video that I can finally relate to it… may be because all those species have no sense of political (artificial) boundaries, even though they know to defend their territories “

Aline Dobbie 1 week ago

I have shared this lovely film which brought tears to my eyes…Beloved Bharat, Land of my birth but also the Land of the Tiger, the Elephant, the Peacock and all the other beautiful wild creatures of the Indian Jungle and Terai. May we all dedicate ourselves anew to the proper and responsible Custodianship of these wondrous fellow beings in a beautiful ancient yet striving to be modern land. Jai Hind

Thank you all for your heartfelt comments after watching the video.

Along with showing the video online, we thought of engaging people even more deeply and had a small contest for those who love taking up challenges. In this, the stakes were quite high – A Himalaya: Mountains of Life coffee-table book (valued at Rs. 3500) for the first one who identifies ALL the species shown in the video clip. Calendars for the 3 best attempts.
Unfortunately, nobody WON the prize, but a few came close.
Apologies for the delay in getting the species list up, but its taken us quite a while to review the entries and see what went wrong where!

List of species in the national anthem video in order of appearance:
1. Asiatic Elephant
2. Blackbuck
3. Cattle Egret
4. Asiatic One-horned Rhinoceros
5. Asiatic Ibex
6. Red Panda
7. Bharal
8. Western Hoolock Gibbon
9. Chital
10. Jungle Myna
11. Asiatic Water Buffalo
12. Hog Deer
13. Swamp Deer – Barasingha
14. Tiger
15. Pond Heron
16. Himalayan Snowcock
17. Smooth-coated Otter
19. Jungle Crow
20. Red-wattled Lapwing
21. Arunachal Macaque – (00.38)
22. Lion-tailed Macaque
23. Grizzled Giant Squirrel
Asiatic Elephant herd
24. Striped Hyena
25. Gaur
26. Sloth bear
27. Intermediate egret- breeding plumage
28. Japalura sp.
29. Amolops sp.
30. Polypedates himalayensis – Himalayan tree frog
31. King Cobra
32. Blue Mormon
33. Praying Mantis
34. Cruiser
35. Silk-cotton Bug
36. Fig Wasp
37. Giant wood spider (feeding on Reduviidae bug)
38. Blue-bearded Bee-eater (eating some winged insect)
39. Pied Kingfisher (feeding on fresh water shrimp)
40. Wreathed Hornbill
41. Great Hornbill
42. Asian Barred Owlet
43. Juvenile Changeable Hawk-eagle – (01.20)
44. Greater Racket-tailed Drongo – (01.21)
45. Blue-cheeked Barbet
46. Hoary-bellied Squirrel – (01.22)
47. Stump-tailed Macaque
48. Golden langur
49. Clouded leopard
Elephant
Tiger
Himalayan Ibex

Tiger calling

The one that most people completely missed was the Hoary-bellied Squirrel (@ 01.22) which made a split-second appearance in the silk-cotton tree along with the drongo and the barbet. The second one was the Arunachal Macaque @ 00.38, which many mistook for a Rhesus Macaque or an Assamese Macaque and the third was the Changeable Hawk-Eagle, which some mistook for an Osprey. All in all, fantastic effort by all and I was impressed by the sharp-eyed naturalists who spotted the Hoary-bellied Squirrel which I honestly think is tough to spot!
ok, so the ones that came closest to winning are: Priya Singh, Saurabh Sawant & Shardul Bajikar.
Do send me your addresses for the 2013 Himalaya calendar ASAP!

Cheers,
Sandesh

Here’s a short video of the whole expedition edited by Pooja Gupta, a student of Srishti School of Design.

Expedition Tompotika – Sulawesi from Sandesh Kadur on Vimeo.

ENDANGERED
Maleo Macrocephalon maleo

The Maleo is a very cool looking ground nesting bird with a distinctive, bare, bump on its head. We spent time in a hide near one of the nesting beaches that this bird inhabits. Highly endangered the Maleo is endemic to Sulawesi and nearby islands. It lays its eggs in the sand and allows it to be incubated by solar and in some places geothermal radiation. It was great fun watching this turkey-like bird defend its patch from rivals uttering a guttural, gurgle-like call while chasing away intruders.

Wagler’s Pit Viper – Tropidolaemus wagleri

“An interesting story was told in former days in Indonesia about the species Tropidolaemus wagleri/ It was regarded as a good-natured and laconic animal, which could be seized, at least during daytime, and with which one could play without being bitten. On Sumatra one would even place it in the palm trees on the outer veranda of the house, where it would stay motionless in the same place, sometimes for a month. It would bring good luck to the tenant and children would even wear it as a necklace! Because of its kind-heartedness it was known as “Ular Cinta Manis”, the loveable, sweet snake.People believed that birds came to pay tribute and bring food for the holy snake. Other people believed that, because of its almost invisible daily activity, it would live on air” (Delsman, 1951)

At the end of the day what we do is help build awareness in places where although high in species and biodiversity, the local people would have little knowledge, access, or appreciation of what lives around them. Perhaps if we could get more people to ‘see’ whats around them, they would appreciate, value and thereby ‘want’ to protect what’s left.
For more information and to support the work of The Alliance for Tompotika Conservation / Aliansi Konservasi Tompotika (AlTo) visit their website: www.tompotika.org

Here are a series of my favourite people portraits captured over the last few years ending with images from Nagaland, an ethnologist’s paradise – a place where I’m headed to in exactly a month’s time!

Kuruba – Brahmagiri, Kerala – This is one of my favourite early portraits made on a Canon A2 Film Camera. I used a Sigma 105mm f/2.8 macro to blur out the background and make him and his head gear of Cassia fistula flowers stand out.

Peruvian Lady – Cordillera del Condor, on the border of Ecuador in Peru – My first visit to South America. What I love about this image is not only a deeply wrinkled face that speaks of hardships in higher elevations, but also the earthen wall in the background. Camera: Canon5D Lens: 24-105mm @ f/4 ss:1/200

Fisherman in Tompotika – Sulawesi – Indonesia. Using artificial light. I love making images with natural light, but sometimes it just won’t work. Here I rushed back to camp fitted on my wireless transmitter and off-camera flash a Canon 580EX with diffuser and walked waist-deep into the water to get the right angle – holding the flash high to the left with one-hand and keeping the camera low to the water angled up to get the incredible sky and sunrise happening in the background. The dangerous part was the waves that came in a certain cycle and every thirty seconds rose up to chest level! DO NOT LET YOUR CAMERA SOAK IN WATER – especially not salt water! Canon 5D Mark2 with 16-35mm lens @ f/11 1/8^th with off-camera Canon 580EX flash ST-E2 transmitter.

Photographer – Kevin Schafer Portrait – Tompotika Peninsula – Sulawesi. Again, great sky, wide-angle portrait – but no flash. Here I used my head lamp on a diffused setting to light up only Kevin’s face to create this image. Always pay attention to the background, and if you’ve got a dramatic sky – please do include it! Canon 5Dmark2 with 16-355mm lens ISO320 f/3.5 1/5^th sec. with light from a Petzl headlamp.

Tompotika – Man smoking. Using natural light. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a country with as many people who smoke as Sulawesi. It was quite shocking actually. Here a man was taking his last puff of the day, just before going to sleep.  Canon 1DMark4 with 16-35mm @ f/2.8 1/8^th of sec ISO4000.

Create silhouettes – Velas, Maharashtra. This old man is the turtle crusader of Velas. Poacher turned conservationist he was full of stories. I loved the hat he wore and the cane he walked with. So after getting the images that the magazine editor would be happy with, I turned to shooting towards the light – not to create a back-lit image, but to create a silhouette. Shape and form dictates good silhouettes. Canon 1D Mark4 lens- 70-200mm f/2.8 @ ISO 160 f/2.8 1/2500^th

Girl with mask by fishing nets. Act quick, the moment doesn’t last. This little girl popped out of the fishing net only very briefly playing peek-a-boo with the photographer. Walking through old fishing villages and interacting with the local people is a good way to get candid images. But always remember to ask permissions. Digital is great because you can show the people the pictures after you make them, and then get further co-operation for more images. It works – most of the time…

A lady walking into a shop – Jodhpur, Rajasthan. Anticipate, pre-compose, wait. Here all I saw were the hanging colourful fabrics of a saree shop and knew that it would get some customers walking in. So I stood across the shop and pre-composed my image, exposure etc and waited for the moment. The only thing I didn’t like here was the white bag on the left, but I suppose it too adds colour – white. Canon 1D Mark4 with Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens ISO 100 ss 1/320^th sec.

Man with umbrella – Assam, just before the monsoon. I have a pet project – subject – Umbrellas. So yes, I’ve photographed people under umbrellas all over and I must say, they make for great photo-subjects. Here though, the umbrella is not the main element, but the strong light and double rainbow, yes there is a faint rainbow above the main one. Again, something that didn’t last too long and it was still pouring rain, you’ll notice a big blob of water on the bottom right, but remember, you’ve got to keep your lens clean at all times. Canon 5Dmark2 with 24-105mm lens ISO 320 f/8

A Sikh religious elder – Nihang resting. Hola Mohalla, Punjab. Nihang (means Crocodile in Persian) were the men at the forefront of battle and they were known for their bravery and skill in weaponry. During peacetime they are mostly ceremonial and lead the parade, armed with swords and sporting huge head-dresses. Carrying one for long periods can be heavily strenuous on the neck; with head-dresses weighing upwards of 10 kilos a Nihang rests in a building. During this huge event hundreds of thousands of people gather in the town of Anantpur sahibnagar in Punjab. Another great place for portrait photography. Canon 1Dmark4 16-35mm lens f/4 SS 1/125

Don’t have a DSLR, don’t worry – Here above are two of my favourite images made with, guess what – a Camera phone, in this case an iPhone 4. With a little help from Instagram, they’ve turned into my instant favourites. Literally, point,shoot, tweak…

This image of a Bodo boy from Assam recently got kicked out of my book – Himalaya: mountains of Life, so here it is: Compose your image. I tend to off-center an image a lot, because when you use it as a double-spread your main area doesn’t get buried in the center, especially a problem when you are editing images to use in a book. Although the image didn’t make the book, I still love the image for its composition and use of light, shadow and sleeping dog. Cameras these days can do all the technical specs for you to a large extent, so focusing on getting your ‘focus’ right and composition are critical to making strong portraits.

Naga Feet – Blur the action – While photographing people especially events such as dances, you want to be able to convey the feeling of action and energy. A high-shutter shot would essentially make the image quite boring. And yes using a slow shutter will make you blur 98% of the images in an un-useable way, but once you start getting the hang of it, you will really enjoy creating the 2% of striking imagery with energy. Here’s one of my favourites from last year’s Hornbill Festival. Canon 5D Mark2 with 24-105mm lens ISO: 50 Aperture: 20 Shutter: 1/8

On November 29^th I take a group or two to witness a cultural extravaganza – the Hornbill Festival in Nagaland. It’s a place that gives photographers a great opportunity of creating fantastic people images. Details of the two trips are below. Since this is a bit of a last minute trip I’d request that confirmations be made quickly as the group sizes are small and vehicle/accommodation bookings need to be confirmed ASAP.

email me for a detailed itinerary: workshops(at)felis.in

By around 10PM after six hours of driving, we were stopped by people along the road, saying that we would have to turn back, the river had engulfed the road. We pushed on forward and came to a traffic jam. Waters of the River Brahmaputra had indeed just started to submerge the road. While the big lorries moved on, although emanating large clouds of smoke from their vehicles, the little cars were hesitant. After another half hour of confusion the blockade cleared and we moved forward, tyres up to about a foot in water. We hurried along and reached the administrative boundaries of Kaziranga. The Forest Department guards had set up a check point. They handed us a ‘time-card’ and entered in a time and told us to drive slowly and carefully as wild animals were on the highway. The time-card was to ensure that vehicles moved at a slow speed. Check points ahead would calculate your speed of travel from point A to B, another way to deter people from speeding along the highway.

All along there were animals, herds of Hog deer, Swamp deer, Wild Buffalo and a few isolated ones. The highway was their high ground, a temporary refuge before they crossed into the Karbi Hills on the southern side of Kaziranga. It was well past midnight by the time we reached the destination and unpacked. The next day started by 4AM. Packed and ready we were out of the door to see the extent of the flood, the damage, and how the animals were dealing with this.

Presented below is the Kaziranga Flood July 2012 – In Pictures:

The day we arrived, the entire park was submerged. The road was just about manageable in some places. This image was taken closer to the last day when the waters had subsided considerably. Two days earlier this portion of the road was impassable.

Floods are also a time of plenty. Young boys set up fishing nets at night and in the first light of dawn collect a variety of fish to sell on the highway and to consume at home.

All along the National Highway-37, passing along the southern boundary of Kaziranga National Park, the Forest Department had set up blockades to control the speed of traffic. Time cards are also given all night to prevent motorists from speeding.

Yet many animals, especially Hog Deer die on the highway. The only proper solution would be to close the highway to night traffic. Many National Parks and protected areas across the country have successfully introduced a ban on night traffic. For Kaziranga this step is vital.

A wild water buffalo carcass floating in the flood-waters of the Brahmaputra

A boatman goes past houses fully submerged by the rising flood waters of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries.

A rhino calf separated from its mother while escaping the flood lies stranded at the back of a house, ever hopeful that its mother will come back.

Wildlife rescue teams at the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation will again have their hands full with many species like this rhino abandoned and unable to cope on their own.

A rhino in a pool of blood. Rhinos escaping the rising flood-waters of the Brahmaputra seek shelter in the Karbi Hills to the south. This is where the poachers lie in wait for an opportunity to strike. The Forest Department tries desperately to round up each rhino and send it back towards the mostly flooded park. While we were there four rhinos had been poached in different parts of the reserve.

Elephants, great swimmers, also suffer greatly during the flood. Here a line of elephants using their trunks like snorkels follow each other, almost like a line of young shrew. Led by the matriarch they are heading to high ground. Interestingly this particular herd left the hills of Karbi and entered into the flooded plains of Kaziranga.

Fully soaked a herd of elephants cross the highway in the early hours of morning when the traffic is not too bad. Later in the day traffic on the highway causes a lot of stress to tired animals that jump back into the flood-waters unable to cross the highway due to constant traffic.

The ones that can’t swim so well seek temporary refuge on mats of floating vegetation. Hog deer were among the most affected with the highest number of casualties.

For anyone familiar with Kaziranga they may perhaps recognise the elephant riding point at Kohora. Two days earlier even the platform was under water. You can imagine how wide the Brahmaputra must have been for waters to be this high, submerging the entire region.

Flood waters inundate houses located several kilometers away from the Brahmaputra, such as this one on the banks of River Diphlu. All in sight becomes one vast sheet of water.

Backyards turned into a giant swimming pool, young boys enjoy the temporary flood waters.

With an extraordinary gape the Nandus nandus, Gangetic Leaf Fish is one of numerous species of fish that inhabit the waters of the Brahmaputra.

Everyone in Kaziranga knew or rather expected another BIG one to come again this year. The soil already saturated from the first flood would not be able to absorb any thing more. Sure enough, over the weekend (September 23rd 2012) Kaziranga flooded once again. The waters have touched the highway and the rains in the catchment area of Arunachal haven’t stopped. Already hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced or affected by the flood. In the next few days we will find out the true extent of the flood and how many more animals have died in this year’s second big flood in Assam. But for Kaziranga, floods like this are an important part of the natural cycle. The amount of top soil that gets deposited during the flood enriches the soil and ensures a lush growth of new vegetation to support new life.

To really get an idea of what the area looks like, one has to see the Brahmaputra from above. In this parting shot, one can see the width of River Brahmaputra. At places the river can be over twenty kilometres wide, perhaps double that during the flood.

Aerial view of Brahmaputra during the July 2012 flood.

Further reading:

Jay Mazoomdar’s article about the flood

Conservation India link

Animal deaths no threat to Park – telegraph

All images copyright – Felis Creations-2012 – Photographs by Priya Singh, Bhuvan Gogoi & Sandesh Kadur

The 2012 International Conservation PhotographyConservation-photo award winners at the Burke: beautiful, brutal, complex exhibit at Seattle’s Burke Museum mixes an environmental-activism message with some utterly transportive camera work. The exhibition will be on from now until Nov. 25, 2012 after which it will travel to other museums across the USA.

A Naga Kitchen
Story behind the image:

A year ago in June I was accompanying a team documenting the Biodiversity of Nagaland. We were in the village of Shatuza when news of a clouded leopard pelt came in. Anaki – the school head-master, Priya Singh and I drove to the little hamlet of Zipu. Here we asked the village Headman and he proudly brought out the half-rotting pelt of a clouded leopard.  He said he shot the animal during the obligatory ‘no-hunting’ season while he was on his way to work in the fields. It was about 8AM, and he shot the animal, not to eat it, not in self-defense, not because he was scared, he shot it, just because it was there – a very natural thing to do in these parts along the Indo-Myanmar border.

Skins and skulls of various rarely seen species are part of common decor in the kitchens’ of many Naga tribes – the best place to do a faunal biodiversity inventory. In fact a new species of leaf deer unknown to India, or to science was found whilst rummaging through these dusty collections of old skulls and bones.

What is Conservation Photography?

Cristina Mittermeier puts it best, “The concept of conservation photography has been proposed out of the need to make a distinction between the creation of images for the sake of photography, and the creation of images to serve the purpose of conserving nature.

Conservation photography showcases both the beauty of our planet and its vanishing spirit, and it represents the “pictorial voice” used by many conservation organizations to further their messages. Although traditional nature photography is good enough to do the job, the creation of images that inspire and move people to change behaviors and take action requires an understanding of the issues necessary to tell the story; this is the job of a conservation photographer. “

In the hills of Meghalaya, northeast India, ‘hunting is engrained in the culture,’ says Sandesh. ‘Everything is eaten.’ Sandesh was photographing a pile of frogs that had been skinned and were drying in the sun when this little boy ran into his house and returned proudly holding a bird. ‘He had shot the blue whistling thrush with a catapult that morning, and it was barely alive,’ says Sandesh. Wildlife is becoming increasingly scarce in the area, not so much because of hunting but because of forest loss to logging, cultivation and development projects. The best hunting areas are now the few pockets of undisturbed natural vegetation, many of them supposedly protected areas.

About the International Conservation Photography Awards

The International Conservation Photography Awards (ICP Awards), is a premier worldwide photography event. The biennial juried photo competition includes an online exhibit, a six-week museum gallery show at the Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture in Seattle, Washington, and publication in a prestigious photography magazine. The selected prints celebrate the world’s diversity along with the creativity and originality of photographers.

Over 75 photos were chosen from more than 1,500 images submitted by amateur and professional photographers from 15 countries across the globe. A panel of five judges selected winning photographs in each of the nine categories. The photographs are conservation-focused, chosen in categories such as Wildlife, Landscape, Underwater, and Natural Environment at Risk, which examines environmental threats to urban areas. Capturing beautiful moments in the natural world from the Arctic to the South Seas, the photos connect us to the tiniest of creatures and enormous environmental changes. The competition and its award-winning photos inspire, educate, and encourage us all to consider our impacts on the world’s natural resources.

In 2010, my image of Greater Adjutant Storks (Leptoptilos dubius) won 1^st place in the Community at Risk category of  ICP. I was honoured to be present in Seattle for the opening show and to meet with Art Wolfe, the founder and creator of this biennial contest that fosters awareness of our natural world.

For More Information
International Conservation Photography Awards – 2010

Around mid-night the curtains along the window start lashing out. A cool wind begins to stream through the house. I turn the fan off for the first time this season. I step out on the porch and see a stream of clouds floating in on a cool breeze steadily blowing from the west. I can’t wait for the rains to begin…

Over the years I’ve spent many days & nights soaked in monsoonal downpours while working in the Western Ghats and northeastern India. Here are a selection of images from times spent traveling with the monsoon.

Exactly this time last year, I was in Kaziranga National Park in Assam. I was there to document the onset of the monsoon and see how the animals cope in the rainy season. But when I got there, all I saw were blue skies and puffy clouds. There had been heavy rains all through May, but in June the rains had stopped. The first bout of monsoon rain had come and gone. I took this image with my iphone camera. It shows the transformation of the landscape from a seemingly lifeless, parched brown of summer to a transformed green vista of the monsoon.

What is the monsoon??

The word monsoon actually means season, after the Arabic word mausim – and what better symbol of transformation from one season to the next than the onset of monsoon rains over the lands scorched by the unrelenting heat of summer. Monsoons are caused by the difference in temperature between landmasses and the surrounding oceans. The Indian monsoons are initiated when the Asian landmass heats up during the summer. As the warm air rises, it creates a low-pressure system that causes air from the oceans to stream overland. These moisture-laden southwest winds from the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal release monsoon showers from June to September. Mountain ranges like the Western Ghats and the Himalaya intercept these moisture-laden winds and receive significantly more rainfall than other parts of India. During winter, northern winds from the cold Asian landmass start pushing back the southwest winds, causing the retreating or the northeast monsoon from September to November.

Everyday I check Google Earth to see what the monsoon is doing. In this image from a few hours ago you can see a huge swathe of clouds covering most of coastal and peninsular India. The other arm is flowing up the Bay of Bengal soon to make landfall in Meghalaya and North-eastern India.

If not the Malabar Coast the next best place I’d want to be at to see the onset of the monsoon is in Meghalaya. Here the Khasi hills give way to the plains of Bangladesh and when the southwest monsoon gathers momentum over the Bay of Bengal, the first places to get soaked are Cherrapunji and Mawsynram – two of the wettest places on earth, receiving nearly 500 inches of rainfall – that’s nearly 40 feet of rainfall each year!!

Nohkalikai Falls – plunging to over 1000 feet, this is one of India’s tallest waterfalls. I photographed the falls in the dry season, I can’t wait to get back there to photograph it in August.

Monsoon fishing seems to be a popular past time in many parts of Meghalaya. Fish are stocked in these large ponds and during the monsoon I saw posters for fishing tournaments on nearly every weekend. Even during the heaviest rains men and women sit under umbrellas for hours to catch a prized fish and win the grand prize cash award for the biggest fish.

In 2009 I was stationed at Agumbe -one of my favourite places to watch the advancing monsoon clouds. From the viewpoint along a hairpin bend you get a nice view of the coastline and the Arabian Sea. When the monsoon clouds advance, the Western Ghats form a blockade, an obstacle. Here we positioned ourselves and created a time-lapse of the advancing monsoon. A half hour later the rains arrived, battering our equipment and us before we could retreat into the vehicle.

Western Ghats Through Timelapse from Sandesh Kadur on Vimeo.

A Little Cormorant (Phalacrocorax niger) typically found swimming on water bodies takes a break from fishing and rests high on a tree in heavy rainfall somewhere in the Western Ghats.

Perhaps the most bizarre of all frogs – the purple frog – (Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis). Very little is known about the frog apart from the fact that they surface during the heavy monsoon rains only to feed and mate before returning back underground. Their hard nose and stout limbs are ideal adaptations that allow this creature to burrow into moist soil. The pig-nosed frog, derives its scientific name from the word nasika, Sanskrit for nose, referring to the pointed snout, batrachus, Greek for frog and sahyadri, as the local name of the mountain range where it was found. We were fortunate to find and film this frog a few years ago while filming for the BBC Natural World – Mountains of the Monsoon.

A pair of critically endangered frogs in amplexus, the (Rhacophorus pseudomalabaricus). The smaller male on top holds on to the female while fertilizing the eggs, which are laid after creating a large foam nest, usually over a permanent water body. Once the eggs are fertilized and the tiny tadpoles start wriggling in the foam nest, they drop down into the water and undergo the rest of their life-cycle as tadpoles underwater.

Frogs constitute a major portion of a large-scaled green pit viper’s (Trimeresurus macrolepis) diet. Tiny droplets of water on all forms of life encapsulate the spirit of the monsoon.

At Jog Falls, the Sharavathy River plummets a spectacular 253 metres, forming one of the highest waterfalls on the Indian subcontinent. During the monsoon, the sheer force of water plummeting down is an incredible sight to behold and is one of the top monsoon tourist destinations in the state of Karnataka. I only wish the Tourism Department would better manage the flow of people and stop the menace of tourist litter in this otherwise incredible spot.

The State bird of Karnataka the Indian Roller (Coracias benghalensis) soaks in a bit of the monsoon.

A mother rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) and young along the periphery of Corbett Tiger Reserve, Uttarakhand.

While documenting the Eastern Himalaya I was photographing near a village when the rains came. My assistant and I ran and took shelter in a small house in a Bodo village near the Indo-Bhutan border. As we sat and waited for the rain to subside, (which wasn’t happening) a lady opened up an umbrella and started on a long walk to the next village. For most people the monsoon is cause only for a momentary pause, otherwise life goes on as normal.

As we were driving along the Eastern periphery of Kaziranga National Park, the rains paused momentarily and the sun came out creating a rainbow. I was lucky to find this villager walking along the same road to tend his field. The warm evening light, and if you look closely, the double rainbow makes this one of my favourite monsoon shots.

A man rides a bicycle while fending off rain holding an umbrella in one hand…

As you can tell, I love photographing umbrellas. I photographed this young Bodo boy, his family and his psychedelic umbrella, in Assam on my way back from Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary.

Tips for shooting in the Monsoon:

1)   Get a good raincover, or even a plastic bag with a hole for the lens will do. For years I used a hand towel around the main body and lens while duct-taping a plastic cover to the hood of the lens. This works incredibly well.

2)   Always keep a good raincoat – rather a poncho. These are much better, as they can also cover your backpack during heavy bouts of rain.

3)   Shoot out of your car. While doing this always try to angle yourself opposite the direction of the rain. Not always possible, but helps get the images more comfortably if you can get the angle right.

4)   Fill your camera bags with Silica gel, or better yet, keep a drying container, where you can quickly dry up a camera and keep in a silica-gel container for use the next day.

5)   Do NOT pack your cameras and lens caps on the lens while still wet. This is what can later lead to the development of fungus inside the lens – an expensive clean-up job.

6)   Do NOT keep running your equipment in & out of air-conditioning. This can lead to condensation due to the high levels of moisture in the air and the temperature differential.

7)   Find interesting mini-topics within the broad theme of the monsoon. Umbrellas is taken – anything else is fine…

8)   Don’t worry too much about shooting in high ISO. Most of the time you’ll need to shoot in a high ISO. Content is what matters.

9)   Prepare to face wet weather. Keep the right kind of clothing gear. Being wet means being cold, and being cold means being uncomfortable. So get comfortable, stay dry.

10)  Most importantly if you plan to shoot during the monsoon don’t forget a good umbrella and a clean handkerchief!

PARTING SHOT

Like no other bird in the world, the endangered maleo lays its single, enormous egg near hot springs, or in the warm sands of a sunny Sulawesi beachside nesting ground. After laying, the maleo parents do not stick around to incubate their egg or raise their chick. Rather, they make one huge, big-hearted investment in their single egg, place it well, and then return to their rainforest home, trusting that in Mother Nature’s hands, the chick will eventually hatch, emerge, and learn to fend for itself.

Maleo chick    Photo: Sandesh Kadur

Already, thousands of endangered maleo birds (not to mention sea turtles, rainforest creatures, and more) are alive who wouldn’t have existed without your help. To keep that going, on May 2, 2012, we all have an opportunity to deepen our big-hearted investment in Mother Nature, through The Seattle Foundation’s 24-hour online giving event called GiveBIG. Please give as generously as you can.

Click on this link: http://www.seattlefoundation.org/npos/Pages/TheAllianceforTompotikaConservation.aspx?bv=nposearch

If we take care of the human part, Mother Nature will take care of the rest…and both maleos and humans will thrive.

Maleo    Photo: Sandesh Kadur

The Atlas moth was photographed on the road in some part of remote Arunachal Pradesh. At first I thought the moth may be dead, but upon getting close to it, it raised it’s wings and spread them out. The colours and symmetry drew me into the image. At first I thought of shooting with a macro lens, but later decided that it would look much more striking with my Sigma 15mm Fish-eye. So most of these images were made at a distance of 4-5 cms from the moth revealing it’s character in close up. I need to dig out some more images of the moth with a person’s face in the background. You’ll see how the wingspan of the moth makes the face look small in comparison.

Camera: Canon 5DMark2

Lens: Sigma 15mm f/2.8 fish-eye

Flash: Canon 550 EX – Off camera flash with Diffuser

INTRODUCTION
It was late January 2011 when all the stars aligned and I set off to film the first episode Elephant Kingdom for Secrets of Wild India. In Bangalore Chinmay and I hustled to get all the High-Definition cameras ready. My trusty HDX900 was pulled out of its case dusted off and prepared for the long shoot ahead.

Our first stop – Guwahati – the capital of Assam – A state known more for its tea than for its spectacular wildlife! This is also the gateway to much of North-Eastern India. After a few days of permit work and getting the Getaway ready we headed east along the mighty Brahmaputra River. Born in the Himalaya the Brahmaputra is the lifeline and fluid emblem of this part of India. For millennia its waters have shaped the land and the lives of people who live along its broad course. The vast floodplain is rich in minerals and so fertile that little original habitat is left as most of it has been brought under the plough. But one small fragment remains…and that is where we are headed.

Bordered by the Brahmaputra River to its north and flanked by the Karbi-Anglong hills to the south is a sea of grassland. This is Kaziranga – India’s Serengeti – a unique floodplain ecosystem teeming with life.

ESTABLISHING – CAMP FELIS

Our first task was to set up a base camp. We found a newly constructed cement house and decided to set up camp there. It had a big hall, a kitchen and two rooms with attached bathrooms. The main hall became the equipment room with a mini-studio on one side. The first order of business was to get a drinking water set-up and a garage set up for the vehicles to protect them from sun and rain.

ESTABLISHING A NETWORK

Kaziranga is an easy place to film wildlife. There’s always some wildlife or the other around. But what we needed were stories and in a place spread over 600 sq. kms. you are guaranteed never to be at the right spot at the right time. Enter – Karpagam Chelliah, a wildlife researcher studying elephants, Bhuvan the man with a Land Rover and a network of ALL the tourist gypsy drivers and finally the Kaziranga Forest Department staff – without whose active co-operation none of this would have been possible.

Speaking of being at the right place at the right time – it’s not always possible and not as easy as it sounds. For example, the opening sequence of the film features a day old elephant calf, still pink, with large eyes and unsteady legs. I got a call from Karpagam who was in field, informing me of the elephant calf moments after it was born. I was far away in the city of Guwahati when this happened. The moment I got the news I rushed back to Kaziranga and the following day we were able to track the herd and capture the sequence. So it’s important to have a large network of extra eyes and ears who can inform you of things as they unfold – otherwise it’s nearly impossible to get lucky enough to capture all aspects of an animals’ life history within a short period of time.

CAMERA EQUIPMENT & CAMERA CREW
By end February Sam Mansfield arrived with all the big toys. A massive HJ-40X lens matched with an equally massive Ronford-Baker tripod. The main camera for the shoot was my Panasonic HDX900. Apart from this we also shot with a Canon 5DMark2 and a 1DMark4. Although the 5DMark2 was mainly used for time-lapse we also shot a number of key sequences in the documentary. For example, the sequence of fig wasps was shot entirely with the Canon MP-E65mm 1-5X macro lens. It magnifies an image 5 times life size. For an animal the size of a fig wasp this was an essential piece of kit!

Chinmay Rane’s additional task was to gather as much natural sound as possible, especially of each landscape and individual animal sounds. Sound recording is a critically important part of the filmmaking process and often the one that’s most ignored. Here Chinmay and I are trying to record Hoolock Gibbons at Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary.

Apart from being the assistant producer of the show Sam’s role was to distract people away from the camera. With his exotic appearance he played this role remarkably well.

Next Duncan Chard – the series director arrived to take in a bit of Kaziranga and get a feel and direction for the film. At the end of each day’s filming we gathered not just to discuss the days events, but mostly to enjoy a chilled mug of beer and watch the Cricket World Cup that was going on during that time.

Along with Duncan came Brendan McGinty – a London based cameraman with a passion for new technology. He brought with him a brand new ABC-DSLR Light Jib and two 5D Mark2 kits for shooting time-lapses. It was great fun working with Brendan who loves his camera toys as much as I do mine… He almost talked me into buying a Red Epic… but I put that on hold for now and instead got myself an ABC D-SLR Light Jib that I’ve now used on every shoot since Kaziranga.

But Harry Marshall (Executive Producer) in his comment sums Brendan best – “There was also Brendan McGinty, that rare beast – a cameraman equally comfortable shooting wildlife on a long lens as he is filming a fashion event on the catwalk. His job was to bring the fresher more contemporary feel which National Geographic Wild had asked us to brand the series.”

The magic ingredient at the end of the day boils down to teamwork. None of these projects can ever be made alone and the credit really goes to the fantastic team behind it. From the field side of things, I owe it to generous support from the Forest Department, Chinmay Rane – Assistant cameraman, Bhuvan – my field assistant and to Karpagam Chelliah.

In post-production, series director Duncan Chard worked tirelessly with editor Glenn Rainton watching every frame of footage and tying things together. Also, credit goes to Harry Marshall who not only came up with the idea, but also brought in the real magic ingredient for the series – the timeless, epic voice of Sir David Attenborough.

Special thanks: Secrets of Wild India – Elephant Kingdom

MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENT AND FORESTS, NATIONAL TIGER CONSERVATION AUTHORITY (NTCA) ASSAM FOREST DEPARTMENT, ASSAM FOREST SERVICE,  KAZIRANGA NATIONAL PARK SURESH CHAND, CHIEF WILDLIFE WARDEN, SURAJIT DATTA, FIELD DIRECTOR, D. D. GOGOI, DISTRICT FOREST OFFICER, RAJENDRA, DISTRICT FOREST OFFICER, A.R. RAHMAN, RANGE FOREST OFFICER, DEORI – RANGE FOREST OFFICER, KOLITA – RANGE FOREST OFFICER THE MADRAS CROCODILE BANK TRUST
KARPAGAM CHELLIAH, SANGEETHA KADUR, BHUVAN GOGOI, BIR BAHADUR CHETRI, L. SARO, RANJIT BARUAH, WILD GRASS, DIPHLU RIVER LODGE, BHOMONI, SANJEEB BARUAH

Further reading:

If you’d like to read about Tiger Jungles and Desert Lions – visit (Sara) Saravanakumar’s fantastic new blog.
Interview with Harry Marshall – Broadcast Magazine – UK
For television schedule, it’s best to look up National Geographic’s various websites in different countries.

Last week the International Wildlife Film Festival announced the finalists awarding - Secrets of Wild India – Elephant Kingdom with the title – Best of Category – Television Series. To see further details about the rest of the series click here and to see the full list of Award winners at IWFF 2012 click here.

I was fifteen years old or so when my father brought a set of VHS cassettes home to watch. For the present day audience a VHS – short for Video Home System, was a tape format akin to what optical DVD’s are now and the dominant form of home entertainment at a time when television programs were scarce and broadcast networks like Discovery, National Geographic, etc. non-existent in India.  The cover of the VHS set had the image of a Killer Whale breaching near the shore with a dozen nervous seals in the foreground – a striking image. This was the ‘Trials of Life’ – a twelve-part BBC Natural History series about animal behaviour written and presented by ‘David Attenborough’. I remember watching the series over and over again glued to the fascinating world of animals and to the simple yet riveting presentation of natural history by a tall white man with large teeth and a lovely British accent.

Fast-forward to 1999 – Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival. I was just beginning to take my first steps into documentary filmmaking. I attended the Festival and to my surprise present in the gathering was Sir David Attenborough. He had just completed another of the ‘Life’ series titled, ‘The Life of Birds’. At that time I earned part of my living leading bird tours in the neo-tropics and the Life of Birds was a bible. I remember meeting Sir David in the central lobby of the Grand Teton Lodge. It was an evening of wine and cheese and at the first opportunity we met, spoke and he jovially signed my shirt. The next day we met again and this time I got my book The Life of Birds autographed.

In all this my far-fetched dream was always to have something that I shot narrated by his voice. That dream came very close (2007) when the purple frog – Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis was to be included in the BBC Series Life in Cold Blood. But due to many broadcast and production reasons it did not happen and the sequence was retained for Mountains of the Monsoon. Although the purple frog sequence would’ve been a very small part of a big series, to me, that itself would’ve been a dream fulfilled. Sir David was 81 years old and I figured that after this big series he would hang up his hat and retire and I lost all hope of having anything associated with the voice of a legend.

This image was shot by late Barry Paine – another great voice and mentor whose warm conversations and company I’ll miss at Festivals he so devoutedly attended.

In 2008 I met Sir David at Wildscreen. I was helping Tom Veltre, head of The Really Interesting Picture Company (holds the record for the production company with the longest name I think) with his film about George Schaller titled, ‘Nature’s Greatest Defender’. In it was a key interview with Attenborough and this was the first time wherein I interacted with him at a personal level. I presented him with a copy of my book – Sahyadris: India’s Western Ghats. As he flipped through the book, he paused on the page of the Fairy Bluebird and exclaimed, “ Ahh, Irena puella, one of my favourite birds…” and then continued looking through the book.  His knowledge even of a place that he had hardly, if ever, traveled to was nothing short of remarkable!

Last year between January and June I worked along with Chinmay Rane on two film projects for National Geographic. One about Clouded Leopards for Cicada/NG and another titled, ‘Secrets of Wild India’ for Icon Films and National Geographic. This was to be a coffee-table book type documentary series about India’s natural history. My focus was on the first of the 3-part series covering the northeast Indian landscape along the foothills of the Himalaya and the Brahmaputra River. Kaziranga – a place I now call home was base camp and the wild inhabitants of the floodplain – rhinoceros, buffalo and elephant took center-stage in the film. While filming certain key sequences we often read out lines from the script, usually in a very Attenboroughesque manner, “In a remote clearing, a 30-year-old female Indian Elephant, heavy with milk, guards her newborn calf.  Only hours old, she was born under the cover of darkness in the shelter of the forest. The other females of the herd gather to witness her first tentative steps…” Months later when I heard that, Sir David Attenborough, the voice behind the epics we so love, was to do the narration for ‘Secrets of Wild India’ I was silently overjoyed. Finally a dream realized…

Home to over a billion people, India is best known as a diverse mass of noise, crowds, colour and religious devotion. And she also has a wild side, populated by giants, predators and exotic creatures.

Narrated by the legendary Sir David Attenborough Wild India airs Mondays at 8pm to give you a fascinating insight into this world-within-a-world, as each show explores the country’s extraordinary landscapes and their inhabitants.

As for now the tentative Air dates and schedule is detailed below. Please check in to your local NG Wild TV schedule for more accurate timings.

It airs today in the UK and in Latin America – 6th Feb 8PM. I do hope you enjoy watching the show as much as we’ve enjoyed capturing it. Look forward to hearing your comments and please share this with your friends and family.

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