Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
Walking the wild
|
Sandesh Kadur is one who believes in conservation through education. He uses the lens as a means to get his message across
|
PHOTO: MURALI KUMAR K.
FRAME HUNT Sandesh Kadur: ‘There is always something new to be seen and found – there is a perpetual sense of looking for the unknown in photography’
Sandesh Kadur looks at photography as an identification tool. The U.S-based wildlife photographer and documentary filmmaker started experimenting with his father’s Nikon when he was 14 or 15-years-old. “There were no field guides and I wa
s curious when I started going on treks, hikes and camps.”
When he realised that he didn’t know many of the plant and animal species, he clicked images, took them back home and started researching. “It is a fantastic medium as I can document the natural world and also use it as an art form.”
Sandesh has also released a book in 2005 called “Sahyadris: India’s Western Ghats – A Vanishing Heritage” along with Kamaljit S. Bawa and made a film “Sahyadris: Mountains of the Monsoon”.
He feels that for environmental awareness and consciousness to be instilled in society, it not only requires education at the school level, but strict enforcement.
In the U.S., he was part of the Gorgas Science Foundation which strongly believes in conservation through education. It was here that Sandesh got his break when John Bax and Lawrence Lof encouraged him to film in the Mexican forests, and ultimately encouraged him to go back an explore the Western Ghats in 1997. “I had no idea about how to use the camera and I had no professional training.”
He didn’t want it just to be a three-month college project and instead became a four-year intensive one. “I didn’t want it to be a run-of-the-mill project, but meet the expectations of the foundation that had sponsored and invested so much in me.”
Then, he did what everyone would toy with during college-days – Sandesh dropped out of college and stayed back in India. “I had the basic photography tools but I could not figure out how to edit the story and put together a sequence.” So Sandesh went back to the U.S. and had to learn that still photography is quite different from filming. “I was shooting the video like I was clicking images and then I could not just put together snippets.” He realised that to be a better filmmaker, he had to think of a story. So with good contacts he tread on the path of filmmaking. “The toughest challenge filming was to keep the equipment dry in the Western Ghats, which receives six months of rainfall.” He notes that it’s also important to get all the permits required by the tourism board to be able to go ahead and shoot.
The wide-scale deforestation of the Western Ghats and the so-called developmental projects signed by the government has been devastating the biodiversity hotspot. Sandesh feels that while some areas have been taken back under protection, others have been lost to humankind’s selfish, unthinking ways. “All we need is good governance and it’s necessary that we project the last of the jewels, the backbone of peninsular India.”
The tribals in the Ghats, he says, are now affected by modernisation unlike the tribals of the North East or the Andaman Islands. “Their population is burgeoning and the forests are shrinking – they now have no idea of the traditional knowledge systems.”
His most amazing sighting was when as a teenager, he with a friend went to the Banerghatta National Park where they stood atop a tree under the moonlight and watched a leopard walking a moonlit path like something out a Jim Corbett novel.
“There is always something new to be seen and found – there is a perpetual sense of looking for the unknown in photography.” He finds that it is this quest and revealing it to a larger people is what gives him the greatest joy. “There is nothing like capturing the moment or the subject and sharing the experience with the audience, who might not get the chance to see or feel it otherwise.”
The coffee table book, which served the purpose of reaching the shelves of decision-makers who have the power to enforce laws, has also met with appreciation from PM Manmohan Singh and former President Abdul Kalam. “While we need to harness a grass-root level movement and awareness, it’s also people on the top level who need to have political will to make a change.”
As for the dwindling tiger population, Sandesh states, “It shows a lack of political will. This is our national animal and pride and if we lose it, then we don’t have anything to be proud about.”
Sandesh Kadur can be contacted on 94480094001.
This column features those who choose to veer off the beaten track.
AYESHA MATTHAN
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
|
