Antarvedi Fish Market

 Fishermen waking up at sunrise and preparing to sell their catch of the night

At the end of my recent trip to India, my dad and I visited a fish market that takes place every morning in Antarvedi at the mouth of the Godavari river.  Fisherman who have spent all night out at sea come back before dawn to sell their catch to wholesale buyers. 

Dindi

Women washing clothes in a lake at sunrise

My favorite part of going to India is visiting my grandmother in the rural village of Dindi. I’ve been going since before I can remember and I can think of no place in India I’d rather be than this little hamlet on the banks of the Godavari river. 

Ijjalluru - Hidden Village of the Konda Reddy

While visiting my grandmother in India, my dad and I were able to take a side trip to Ijjalluru, a tiny village of the Konda Reddy tribe tucked away in the forests of the Eastern Ghat mountains in the state of Andhra Pradesh.  I have always been fascinated by the idea of tribal people in this region, given the dense population of India today.  The fact that they still hunt with bows and arrows was more intriguing still.

Diwali: An Interactive Fireworks Experience

Last month, I got to experience Diwali during a family trip to Hyderabad, India.  During this festival of lights, lamps are lit and firecrackers ignited to celebrate the triumph of good over evil.  Every household stockpiles all kinds of fireworks for this celebration and no one seems to bother reading the safety precautions...

And…There Goes 10 Years of My Life (Part 7 of 7)

...continued from previous post

The next morning, I decided I needed to make it back to my water supply at the cabin as soon as possible. I was below the most questionable terrain so I was able to move quickly. Miraculously, I found a trickle emerging from a snowfield that was not contaminated with ash. While I am normally very cautious about water sources in the wilderness, I was out of options. And from talking to a volcanologist in Bariloche, I knew that lab tests had failed to detect heavy metals or other toxins in the ash. While that was no guarantee, it offered some degree of reassurance.

Be Right Back I Promise (Part 6 of 7)

After spending two days on Volcan Casablanca, I returned to Bariloche to spend New Year’s Eve with friends. I didn’t have the landscape photo I wanted, but I still had a week left to work on it. There was another dormant volcano, Cerro Mirador, that seemed worth checking out. Access to this mountain looked fairly straightforward from Google Earth, but this time I decided not to go it alone.

Tell Me, For What Reason Do You Need A Map? (Part 5 of 7)

My time in Jacobacci had gone so well that I wondered if I should stay longer. But the story was about ash and I needed to show where it was all coming from. I needed to photograph the volcano.

Granny With A Gun (Part 4 of 7)

A year earlier, I had driven out to a ranch outside of Jacobacci called Estancia Yuquiche. I knew from Google Earth that the ranch had some interesting canyons and wetlands so I just showed up and asked if I could wander around. After an incredibly awkward introduction, the owner agreed to host me at her ranch house. That’s how I met Carmen Crespo, the 67-year old grandmother of Valentin and Camila. The week I spent there was one of the most memorable of my life.

Life Goes On (Part 3 of 7)

I only spent a week in Jacobacci but my days quickly began to follow a pattern. Without meaning to, my daily schedule turned into the following:

10am – wake up, sort gear (notice the lack of sunrise images….I am not a morning person)
11am-1pm – wander the streets looking for images
1pm-2pm – massive lunch
2pm-4pm – nap, sort gear
4pm-6pm – sort more gear
6pm-9pm – wander the streets looking for images
9pm-10pm – playtime with Camila
10pm-12am – long dinner usually with friends, neighbors, extended family
12am-2am – sort gear, stare blankly at wall

Playtime With Camila (Part 2 of 7)

When I arrived in Argentina I headed straight for a small town called Jacobacci out in the rural steppe of the Rio Negro province. I had a wonderful time there the previous year and I was excited about seeing my friends again, but I was also starting to wonder what exactly I was going to photograph. It was a relief to not have an assignment or a deadline to worry about, but still I found myself getting anxious about the project.

Ashes to Ashes... (Part 1 of 7)

On June 4th 2011 the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcanic complex erupted in Chilean Patagonia sending millions of cubic meters of ash and rock into the air. Most of this material, called volcanic tephra, landed in Argentina due to the prevailing winds in the region. The areas most affected by this eruption are the same places I visited just 6 months earlier as part of my project to photograph the wetlands of Patagonia.

Above: A "remolino" (dust devil) out in the dry Patagonian steppe. The ash has the consistency of baby powder so it is easily remobilized by the lightest breeze.

Photo ID

I realize things are getting a little stale around here. I've been working on a really interesting project and I promise to get some fresh content up soon. While I am organizing my field notes into blog material, I thought I would share a fun anecdote from a few months back.

 I was traveling to Washington D.C. from the west coast and I managed to lose my driver's license along the way. I didn't have enough time to replace it before my return flight so I decided to try an unconventional form of photo ID - a copy of the October 2011 issue of National Geographic Magazine. In 2010, I received a Young Explorer Grant from a branch of the National Geographic called the Expeditions Council. My project was to document wetland diversity in northern Patagonia. The magazine ran a picture of me on their explorer page so I showed up to the airport security checkpoint with a copy of National Geographic and a handful of assorted cards from my wallet.

 The TSA agent laughed and had a hard time recognizing me from the photo, but eventually waved me through. Apparently, that was the first time anyone had tried to pull that stunt on him.

Consolation Prize

By our last field day, we had no sound recordings, no high-speed video, and no decent pictures of the Gorgeted Woodstar.  What were we supposed to expect from a species that is so poorly known?  I guess we have been spoiled by our success in studying other bee hummingbirds.  Of the 21 species I have helped Chris track down so far, we have only had two species that didn’t displays for us.  But for these two, the Magenta-throated Woodstar of Costa Rica and the Sparkling-tailed Woodstar of Guatemala, at least I got a few decent photos.  

Bug Photographer's Paradise

We decided to relocate to the Wild Sumaco lodge for the last two days of fieldwork because we knew the woodstars visited there regularly.  Getting to the lodge turned out to be a little tricky.  A few days earlier, a Coca Cola delivery truck had overturned on a bridge on its way to deliver its goods to – get this – the city of Coca.  We needed to cross this bridge to get to the lodge and we were considered abandoning the car, fording the river, and getting picked up on the other side.  We were getting desperate to see any woodstars, even if they weren’t going to display for us. 

Amazon At Last

After five days of looking for woodstars, it is clear that we are here at the wrong time of year.  We have seen several males visiting flowers, but they aren’t defending territories or showing any interest in the nearby females.  Since we have no hope of getting data at this point, we decided to blow off a day and go visit the lowland rainforest.  The Amazon jungle starts a few thousand feet below our field site and stretches across the continent to the Atlantic Ocean.  It is so vast that referring to it as a single entity doesn’t make sense because it is made up of so many different forest types.  Still, “the Amazon” has been in my dreams for as long as I can remember and this was my first chance to set foot in it. 

My Kind Of Place

Any place that takes its hammocks seriously is my kind of place. I am at the Yanayacu Biological Station in the Napo province of eastern Ecuador in search of the Gorgeted Woodstar (Chaetocercus heliodor). This trip is part of a 3-year study to describe the courtship displays of all the bee hummingbirds. This group of hummingbirds consists of about 3 dozen species that range from Alaska to Chile and includes the Anna’s Hummingbird and Ruby-throated Hummingbird. The lead scientist, Chris Clark, discovered that these hummingbirds actually produce sounds using their tail feathers during their courtship displays.  Chris’ research was featured along with my photographs in the September 9th issue of the journal Science.

Hello!

After many years of procrastination and a couple of false starts, I have finally decided to give this blogging thing a try.  I am not yet sure what my aim is in creating this blog, but I figure at its best it could be a wonderful platform for exchanging ideas about biology, photography, and whatever else happens to catch my fancy.   My career so far has benefited tremendously from resources extracted from the blogosphere so maybe it is time I jumped in and played an active role.  The worst case scenario is that I will get lazy and this will become nothing more than another online space for shameless self-promotion.  We'll see which way it goes...

I consider myself a bit of a gear head so expect some content focused on new toys (kite photography, infrared triggers, motorized sliders, etc.)  I will do my best to include fun stories from the field, but there are strict embargo policies for the National Geographic projects I work on so I will have to wait to publish those.  Hopefully there will be enough interesting things going on in the meantime to keep you entertained.  Of course, I always welcome your feedback.

anand