Archive for October 2017
Naraikadu- The Grey Forest
Amy accompanies a Dhonavur sister on a walk through the community campus.
In a few weeks the Dhonavur Fellowship will celebrate 100 years of Naraikadu-the grey forest in the southernmost Western Ghats that they have been the guardians of for the last century. I have had the privilege of being their guest and visiting Naraikadu with Dhonavur communities on several occasions. This week to help mark the event and acknowledge the unique conservation effort by non-state actors and citizens working with the Forest Department I have contributed a short photo-essay and narrative on Naraikadu in Frontline, the respected newsmagazine of the Hindu newspaper group.
The association that I have with Naraikadu is very personal. Over the last 25 years I have been fortunate to make several visits to Dhonavur, Naraikadu and parts of the Kalakad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR) with my friends in the community. I first wrote to David Rajamanian in 1995 about visiting. Through his sons Jerry and Ezekiel and their families I got to know the area and its history and made my first visits to Naraikadu. We have taken unforgettable journeys into the area, notably two epic journeys to Pothigai (Agasthyamalai) in 2002 and we are planning further forays into this little understood area of the Western Ghats. I have also had a chance to take several members of my family there including my wife Raina who fell in love with Nariakadu after cursing me on the hike up (with good reason-she was carrying 1.5 year old Lenny on her back). When our daughter Amy Zopari was born 11 years ago we named her in honor of Amy Carmichael in recognition for her remarkable personality and dedication to the wilderness area of Naraikadu.
Earlier this year, during our April Sinhala and Tamil New Year break, Amy accompanied me on a week-long adventure to Kodai, Dhonavur and Naraikadu. The season of heat had set in on southern India and the area was experiencing a severe drought. The highlight was a three-day hike to Naraikadu. It was this visit and the experience of taking Amy back (she had visited on two prior occasions) that set in motion the conversations that led to the article being written. You can read the full article on Frontline’s website.
The photo essay in the Frontline article utilizes a variety of evolving camera technology: there are 6×6 black & white film and digital SLR pictures but most of the key images were taken on a phone. I created two maps of the area for the article. The first shows elevation and utilizes high resolution digital elevation models and Swiss shade tints in ArcGIS. There was too much information in it for the article so I simplified it. The first map is included here.
The physical geography of the area plays an important part in the story of Narikadu. To understand the southernmost Western Ghats one needs to appreciate the diversity of geography and consequently ecosystem diversity that exists in a relatively small area. The Tirunelveli plains are flat and separated from the wet western coast of Kerala by the rugged Ashambu ranges of the Western Ghats.
FURTHER READING & REFERENCES
Carmichael, Amy. Lotus Buds. Dhonavur, India: 1909. Web version on Gutenberg
Ganesh, T. et al. Treasures on Tiger Tracks: A Bilingual Nature Guide to Kalakad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve. Bangalore, ATREE 2009. Print. Web Link.
Gazetteer of the Tinnevelly District. Madras 1917. Web.
Johnsingh, A.J.T. “The Kalakad–Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve: A global heritage of biological diversity.” Current Science. February 2001. Web.
Johnsingh, A.J.T. Walking the Western Ghats. Mumbai: BNHS & Oxford, 2015. Print.
Lockwood, Ian. “Kanyakumari and the Ashumbas in the South West Monsoon (Part 1)” July 2010. Web.
Lockwood, Ian. “Kanyakumari and the Ashumbas in the South West Monsoon (Part 2)” July 2010. Web.
Updates to High Range Photography
Old (2007) and New (2017) versions of High Range Photography.
Over the last several months I have been working at overhauling the www.highrangephotography.com website that showcases my fine art photography and published work. The website was originally designed in 2006 and went live on January 1st 2007. Over the last 10 years much has changed: most significantly, while still working in black & white, I have shifted to digital tools and no longer use film and a wet darkroom. The focus of my work remains South Asian ecology, landscape, conservation and culture with a focus on the Western Ghats/Sri Lanka biodiversity hotspot. Web design has become more sophisticated but easier to do for non-design novices like me. People are using larger, high definition monitors so small images just don’t cut it anymore. It was the right time for a change on the site.
The Colombo-based web design company Vesses, led by Prabhath Sirisena and Lankitha Wimalarathna, had helped me set up the original website back in 2006. We designed the pages to be minimalist and to highlight the photography. Most of the images were black & white low resolution scans of 8×10 prints. Vesses was an excellent team to work with and it was natural to go back to them to help with the updated content on an overhauled website. There efforts were led by Amila Sampath over the last year.
- For the 2017 changes, Vesses once again helped me out with ideas and setting up templates and the layouts. My goal was to be able to learn how to make a necessary changes myself. WordPress has a great platform to work with but it did take tinkering and some basic coding to get the pages to look like what I had visualized. There are several news changes:
- The Galleries have been overhauled and updated with new content at a larger, higher resolution. I rescanned many of the images from the original 6×6 and 6×12 negatives. Several important galleries (Bangladesh, for example) are still in the process of being updated.
- There is a new Stories tab to highlight in-depth photo-essays and writing on themes from the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka. These are built on a WordPress template similar to what was used by NIF to present my panchromatic to multispectral photo story (metamorphosis of a landscape) in 2016.
- The Blog page has thumbnails of recant blog posts using a RSS link (featuring content from this WordPress Blog page).
- The About page combines the old Biography and Technique pages
- A new page about Exhibitions has been added.
- I redrafted the logo and had it converted into a vector image to use as a watermark on new content. An exploration of the site will give you a good sense of the view that inspired my sketches that I used to draw the logo.
- I plan to use the site to highlight geospatial work that I have been learning about and experimenting with. I have started adding simple Google maps to the Stories but hope to have either ESRI maps or OpenStreetMaps embedded in the near future.
- The Sales page has been taken out (at last until I can set up a better printing and marketing system)
To accompany the website changes I have also set up a Facebook page and I have a Twitter account (that I struggle to find time to use).
High Range Photography Facebook page (click on image to access page)
