as a young boy I had a dream a dream
that was so far-fetched as probably
being an astronaut and that dream was to
be a photographer to be a filmmaker
because I was drawn by the visual image
I mean magazines by National Geographic
I mean who hasn’t been influenced by
them and when I saw those old issues of
National Geographic I mean I just was
drawn to those pictures of animals and I
just wanted to be one of those people
that went out there and take pictures
but you know of course growing up in
India I had no idea where to begin and
the title of a filmmaker and
photographer was was really far-fetched
but like I said in the end whether
you’re doing filmmaking or photography
it’s about telling a story and I decided
today that I wasn’t going to bombard you
with any more beautiful pictures because
around every corner in National
Geographic you’re seeing amazing images
so why bombard you with more of them but
then that was a problem I couldn’t get
past this slide
but I realized that I’m not the only one
handicapped through this problem
recently I was photographing a tribe on
the border of Burma the Naga tribe and
these are you know they were known as
headhunters and they live in a pretty
remote part of India and very few people
have been to these places and I realized
that they too couldn’t tell a story
without images and here you see in the
background is a huge panel of wood
probably the size of the screen and on
that are carved these incredible images
of a Pangolin in the center an elephant
on the side what looks like a wild dog a
Gibbon a skull and the story of
humankind
of course people back then didn’t have
fancy cameras so they used carvings to
depict stories to tell their stories
because that’s how you can capture
imagination and that’s how you can
fascinate people and that’s how they can
tell the stories to their children as
they sit in what’s called the more on
the dorm where they tell stories are
around the campfire hundreds of miles
away up in the Himalaya the Buddhist
monks drew beautiful paintings on the
walls of these monasteries to fascinate
you to capture the audience to capture
the imagination of course a raptor
carrying a snake away not very different
from what I attempt to do today with my
photography of course my pictures aren’t
as beautiful as what you just saw
earlier but I can’t paint and
photography is is in many ways more
challenging and and in many ways it
conveys that same message of what the
paintings trying to do so seeing all of
this I realized that even a hundred
years ago people were using the tool of
paintings of art sculpture to document
biodiversity and to tell the story of
life around them through images because
at the end of the day what we’ve all got
to realize is that these images
transcend boundaries of lang
which culture and all these things that
are difficult to get your message across
and images just go across all those
boundaries because what we are at the
end of the day we are very visual
animals we’re primates
and to that end we’re very visual we use
our eyes to see things it’s probably one
of our most acutely developed sense that
of sight and I was influenced like I
said by magazines like National
Geographic and if you can imagine the
power of one image having such an impact
can you imagine the power of a moving
image and when my father brought back
documentaries like trials of life by Sir
David Attenborough I was just I mean I
used to replay those tapes over and over
again until they were worn out because
that was a world I had never seen before
and what I was seeing on screen just
absorbed me fully and my father seeing
my interest in in all of this and him
being an amateur photographer himself
decided to give me his 25 year old my
Cormac stills camera while I was about
14 years old camera was far more
experienced with of course with no light
meter no autofocus of course wasn’t
digital and we used to use these things
called film back then if some of you
remember and what happened was that my
world was transformed I had suddenly
found a tool a little magic box where I
could go out there photograph things
around me and take them home and that
was what how photography started it
started as a documentation tool because
I could take these pictures and then try
to get them identified but the
consequence of that was that my
academics took a nosedive so my father
very quickly confiscated the camera from
me and sent me across the oceans
to a place called Brownsville Texas
shows up on the weather map when the
Hurricanes come up in the Gulf of Mexico
to go study Hotel Management
like any good Indian oh if it wasn’t
hotel management they would have
probably sent me to study to be an
engineer or a doctor but the best part
about it was that it allowed me the
freedom to be away from the family but I
had to work three jobs to earn my first
camera so I became a staff photographer
at the college newspaper so that brought
in a little bit of journalism into my
photography I started working as a lab
assistant and also as a receptionist at
the local wildlife sanctuary on weekends
and I earned the first camera and I set
off to explore Mexico in the cloud
forest and that was one of the most most
incredible experiences where I met this
person
John Beck’s a Belgian filmmaker who used
he made documentaries for discovery in
Animal Planet and he was fantastic with
capturing birds that was his specialty
and I convinced him that we have a
forest in India the Western Ghats a
mountain range similar to this cloud
forest which has an even more incredible
amount of biodiversity and why not he
come to India and and and and I be his
apprentice and he said yes and being an
apprentice was the best thing that could
have happened to me at that point
because I didn’t want to be in college
anymore so we decided we planned this
whole expedition and I was going to be
the one carrying his tripod and taking
him to all of my special places in the
mountains and a week before the trip
John calls me up and he says son dish I
don’t think I can make this trip my why
what happened I think I’m too old to go
to India I was his wife Alice telling
him that so I was shattered that was the
end of my dream but my director called
me to his office and he said son I used
to want to make this documentary and I
said yes and he invested a huge amount
of money about ten thousand dollars and
bought me my first video camera I had
never known head or tail which way to
use but I went back to India the
instruction manual of the camera was my
reading material for the flight back and
I did this documentary it was a supposed
to be a three-month summer college film
project but much to my parents dismay I
dropped out of college
and it turned into a three-year affair
because I couldn’t watch the first three
months of my footage and we made a
documentary called Sahyadri
mountains of the monsoon luckily the
documentary garnered a few awards and
then later on a person who saw the film
said that while we need to now convert
this into a book and then we went about
and we created a book a coffee-table
book about the Western Ghats and put in
a lot of science there have been a lot
of research that had been done in this
mountain range we combined science we
combined art and we put this together in
a beautiful book which is popular as
well as scientific for policy makers and
decision makers to think about the
Western Ghats and in the end what
happened was that most recently the book
in the documentary were used to declare
the Western gods as a unesco world
heritage site so that was the most
incredible thing and I was very
encouraged by what happened because you
were able to combine all these different
elements and bring about something that
could make a difference and encouraged
by that most recently we went into the
Himalaya and completed another book
project mountains of life but it’s not
easy going out there and taking pictures
and I thought I’d put together a short
clip of what it feels like to actually
be out there to go out take these
pictures and to bring it to all of you
so here’s a short clip from that scene
you where the tiger left off bronze ring
jacanas go about their daily business a
pied kingfisher feeds on little fish I
sit and wait
six days sitting in the hide and all
I’ve had is one brief glimpse of the
tiger reviewing the footage I see that
he’s not very happy with the camera
traps being there he snarls at one of
them before disappearing I decide it’s
time to remove all the camera traps
being being a wildlife filmmaker
photographer it’s a very very boring and
frustrating job
it’s not easy sitting there for hours on
end trying to get an image and even
after six days of sitting there I wasn’t
quite able to get the image I wanted
although I got a beautiful sequence of
the whole thing and my camera trap
technology captured this image of new
animal behavior Tiger feeding on a rhino
carcass for example and one thing I need
to mention is that the advent of digital
technology has allowed us to explore
push the boundaries and tell stories in
different ways earlier to this you had
to have a video camera and a still
camera but now you can do both with one
contraption and thats the beauty of
being able to harness all of this new
technology to tell your stories and I
like to not just documenting new
behavior it’s new technology I also like
to go after new species most recently we
did an expedition to a remote part of
northeastern India where we found this
little guy
a lizard without a name and new species
of course new species in that region are
not very new there’s been over 353 new
species over the last decade discovered
and described already in that part of
India so I love going to places where
you know that there are more new species
to be found to document them and put
them together in a way that connects the
outside world
to the natural world and just brings
these two things together and it’s like
I said earlier it’s not just about
taking great pretty pictures but it’s
also about spending the time packaging
it all combining the story of the
natural world
with the cultural world and putting it
together in a way that connects you with
people and that’s what I do as a
wildlife filmmaker and photographer and
a long time ago
while watching television another factor
that had a great influence in my life I
I read a quote a quote that many of you
here may have heard that in the end we
will conserve only what we love we love
only what we understand and we
understand only what we are taught and
to that end we put together an app also
because now I realize television isn’t
doing what it used to so we need to be
innovative in our storytelling to get
that message out to a larger audience
and with this what we’ve been able to do
is combine different elements of
filmmaking photography and tell a story
and as storytellers we need to keep
exploring these boundaries and harness
modern technology and tell stories in
different ways thank you
you
that was so far-fetched as probably
being an astronaut and that dream was to
be a photographer to be a filmmaker
because I was drawn by the visual image
I mean magazines by National Geographic
I mean who hasn’t been influenced by
them and when I saw those old issues of
National Geographic I mean I just was
drawn to those pictures of animals and I
just wanted to be one of those people
that went out there and take pictures
but you know of course growing up in
India I had no idea where to begin and
the title of a filmmaker and
photographer was was really far-fetched
but like I said in the end whether
you’re doing filmmaking or photography
it’s about telling a story and I decided
today that I wasn’t going to bombard you
with any more beautiful pictures because
around every corner in National
Geographic you’re seeing amazing images
so why bombard you with more of them but
then that was a problem I couldn’t get
past this slide
but I realized that I’m not the only one
handicapped through this problem
recently I was photographing a tribe on
the border of Burma the Naga tribe and
these are you know they were known as
headhunters and they live in a pretty
remote part of India and very few people
have been to these places and I realized
that they too couldn’t tell a story
without images and here you see in the
background is a huge panel of wood
probably the size of the screen and on
that are carved these incredible images
of a Pangolin in the center an elephant
on the side what looks like a wild dog a
Gibbon a skull and the story of
humankind
of course people back then didn’t have
fancy cameras so they used carvings to
depict stories to tell their stories
because that’s how you can capture
imagination and that’s how you can
fascinate people and that’s how they can
tell the stories to their children as
they sit in what’s called the more on
the dorm where they tell stories are
around the campfire hundreds of miles
away up in the Himalaya the Buddhist
monks drew beautiful paintings on the
walls of these monasteries to fascinate
you to capture the audience to capture
the imagination of course a raptor
carrying a snake away not very different
from what I attempt to do today with my
photography of course my pictures aren’t
as beautiful as what you just saw
earlier but I can’t paint and
photography is is in many ways more
challenging and and in many ways it
conveys that same message of what the
paintings trying to do so seeing all of
this I realized that even a hundred
years ago people were using the tool of
paintings of art sculpture to document
biodiversity and to tell the story of
life around them through images because
at the end of the day what we’ve all got
to realize is that these images
transcend boundaries of lang
which culture and all these things that
are difficult to get your message across
and images just go across all those
boundaries because what we are at the
end of the day we are very visual
animals we’re primates
and to that end we’re very visual we use
our eyes to see things it’s probably one
of our most acutely developed sense that
of sight and I was influenced like I
said by magazines like National
Geographic and if you can imagine the
power of one image having such an impact
can you imagine the power of a moving
image and when my father brought back
documentaries like trials of life by Sir
David Attenborough I was just I mean I
used to replay those tapes over and over
again until they were worn out because
that was a world I had never seen before
and what I was seeing on screen just
absorbed me fully and my father seeing
my interest in in all of this and him
being an amateur photographer himself
decided to give me his 25 year old my
Cormac stills camera while I was about
14 years old camera was far more
experienced with of course with no light
meter no autofocus of course wasn’t
digital and we used to use these things
called film back then if some of you
remember and what happened was that my
world was transformed I had suddenly
found a tool a little magic box where I
could go out there photograph things
around me and take them home and that
was what how photography started it
started as a documentation tool because
I could take these pictures and then try
to get them identified but the
consequence of that was that my
academics took a nosedive so my father
very quickly confiscated the camera from
me and sent me across the oceans
to a place called Brownsville Texas
shows up on the weather map when the
Hurricanes come up in the Gulf of Mexico
to go study Hotel Management
like any good Indian oh if it wasn’t
hotel management they would have
probably sent me to study to be an
engineer or a doctor but the best part
about it was that it allowed me the
freedom to be away from the family but I
had to work three jobs to earn my first
camera so I became a staff photographer
at the college newspaper so that brought
in a little bit of journalism into my
photography I started working as a lab
assistant and also as a receptionist at
the local wildlife sanctuary on weekends
and I earned the first camera and I set
off to explore Mexico in the cloud
forest and that was one of the most most
incredible experiences where I met this
person
John Beck’s a Belgian filmmaker who used
he made documentaries for discovery in
Animal Planet and he was fantastic with
capturing birds that was his specialty
and I convinced him that we have a
forest in India the Western Ghats a
mountain range similar to this cloud
forest which has an even more incredible
amount of biodiversity and why not he
come to India and and and and I be his
apprentice and he said yes and being an
apprentice was the best thing that could
have happened to me at that point
because I didn’t want to be in college
anymore so we decided we planned this
whole expedition and I was going to be
the one carrying his tripod and taking
him to all of my special places in the
mountains and a week before the trip
John calls me up and he says son dish I
don’t think I can make this trip my why
what happened I think I’m too old to go
to India I was his wife Alice telling
him that so I was shattered that was the
end of my dream but my director called
me to his office and he said son I used
to want to make this documentary and I
said yes and he invested a huge amount
of money about ten thousand dollars and
bought me my first video camera I had
never known head or tail which way to
use but I went back to India the
instruction manual of the camera was my
reading material for the flight back and
I did this documentary it was a supposed
to be a three-month summer college film
project but much to my parents dismay I
dropped out of college
and it turned into a three-year affair
because I couldn’t watch the first three
months of my footage and we made a
documentary called Sahyadri
mountains of the monsoon luckily the
documentary garnered a few awards and
then later on a person who saw the film
said that while we need to now convert
this into a book and then we went about
and we created a book a coffee-table
book about the Western Ghats and put in
a lot of science there have been a lot
of research that had been done in this
mountain range we combined science we
combined art and we put this together in
a beautiful book which is popular as
well as scientific for policy makers and
decision makers to think about the
Western Ghats and in the end what
happened was that most recently the book
in the documentary were used to declare
the Western gods as a unesco world
heritage site so that was the most
incredible thing and I was very
encouraged by what happened because you
were able to combine all these different
elements and bring about something that
could make a difference and encouraged
by that most recently we went into the
Himalaya and completed another book
project mountains of life but it’s not
easy going out there and taking pictures
and I thought I’d put together a short
clip of what it feels like to actually
be out there to go out take these
pictures and to bring it to all of you
so here’s a short clip from that scene
you where the tiger left off bronze ring
jacanas go about their daily business a
pied kingfisher feeds on little fish I
sit and wait
six days sitting in the hide and all
I’ve had is one brief glimpse of the
tiger reviewing the footage I see that
he’s not very happy with the camera
traps being there he snarls at one of
them before disappearing I decide it’s
time to remove all the camera traps
being being a wildlife filmmaker
photographer it’s a very very boring and
frustrating job
it’s not easy sitting there for hours on
end trying to get an image and even
after six days of sitting there I wasn’t
quite able to get the image I wanted
although I got a beautiful sequence of
the whole thing and my camera trap
technology captured this image of new
animal behavior Tiger feeding on a rhino
carcass for example and one thing I need
to mention is that the advent of digital
technology has allowed us to explore
push the boundaries and tell stories in
different ways earlier to this you had
to have a video camera and a still
camera but now you can do both with one
contraption and thats the beauty of
being able to harness all of this new
technology to tell your stories and I
like to not just documenting new
behavior it’s new technology I also like
to go after new species most recently we
did an expedition to a remote part of
northeastern India where we found this
little guy
a lizard without a name and new species
of course new species in that region are
not very new there’s been over 353 new
species over the last decade discovered
and described already in that part of
India so I love going to places where
you know that there are more new species
to be found to document them and put
them together in a way that connects the
outside world
to the natural world and just brings
these two things together and it’s like
I said earlier it’s not just about
taking great pretty pictures but it’s
also about spending the time packaging
it all combining the story of the
natural world
with the cultural world and putting it
together in a way that connects you with
people and that’s what I do as a
wildlife filmmaker and photographer and
a long time ago
while watching television another factor
that had a great influence in my life I
I read a quote a quote that many of you
here may have heard that in the end we
will conserve only what we love we love
only what we understand and we
understand only what we are taught and
to that end we put together an app also
because now I realize television isn’t
doing what it used to so we need to be
innovative in our storytelling to get
that message out to a larger audience
and with this what we’ve been able to do
is combine different elements of
filmmaking photography and tell a story
and as storytellers we need to keep
exploring these boundaries and harness
modern technology and tell stories in
different ways thank you
you
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