Archive for February 2010
Moonlight on The Peak
Moonlight on the eastern face of Sri Pada
As is inevitable for so many of us I’ve found that parenthood is a wonderful but rather taxing period of life that has had a significant impact on my creative instincts and need to be in the wilderness. Now that our son Lenny is becoming more independent there have been new possibilities to combine family getaways and passion pursuits in the hills. In January we returned to the Fishing Hut with several friends and enjoyed two nights and three days in the shadow of Sri Pada. On the first night the full moon of the Poya illuminated the peak in dreamlike hues. The lights of the temple and pathway lit up a crown of mist that hovered over the summit. The next day, our group ascended the scared pinnacle along the Peak Wilderness forest path. In contrast to the first day’s cloudless skies we walked through mist and intermittent showers. Lenny was a champion hiker and made it to the summit temple with few complaints and a resilience that surprised me. If I’m correct he is one of the youngest OSC students to make the pilgrimage on his own steam.
Lenny on the trail to Sri Pada
Lenny & his father at the Sri Pada summit temple
In Geo A Year Ago
A year ago Geo published a photo-essay and article of mine in their February English issue. This sumptuous magazine is produced by Outlook India in New Delhi and is the only English edition of the reputable European magazine group. I have now posted PDFs on my High Range Photography site for easy viewing and sharing.
The piece is significant in that I produced all of the black &white and color pictures (and also wrote the text). It’s the first time that I have been able to successfully fuse the two mediums together to paint a more vivid picture of this endangered landscape. Kai Friese’s editorial team did a fine job with color reproductions and the ingenious vertical layout. The text was cut down significantly from the 4,500-word piece that I originally submitted and there are a few obvious gaps. Nevertheless it represents the sort of effort that I am now working on putting into a book proposal for prospective publishers.
Color foldout on endemic species of the Western Ghats (Geo, February 2009).All images by Ian Lockwood
