Amazon- Yanayacu
I just heard from a friend and colleague that the Amazon Basin in Peru has experienced unusually heavy rainfall. This has inundated parts of Iquitos, the regional capital, as well as countless villages like San Juan de Yanayacu, which some of you and I have visited.
Here is the message Davarian sent me:
Our Amazon Refuge Wildlife Conservation Center is currently dealing with an emergency that affects the San Juan de Yanayacu Indian Community. Every year the Amazon River rises as rainwater comes down from the mountains, in turn flooding a significant part of the rainforest in our area.
This year more water than anyone expected came into the Amazon River and the flooding has displaced Indians and even residents of Iquitos city.
A non-profit organization, Amazonas Project, is providing their boat for us to take emergency supplies/volunteers to the San Juan de Yanayacu Indian community. A community of 200-people hit hard by the flood, living on rooftops and on makeshift tree platforms (125 are children).
Small boats are taking things now and we hope to leave Iquitos with a large boat May 16. Your support and/or passing this information on to anyone interested in helping the Indians is greatly appreciated.
There is more information about the situation and a link to the donation page of Amazonas Project, USA tax-deductible 501(c)(3) on our site: www.amazonrefuge.com/help/help2.html
Best, Davarian Hall
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Even if the Amazon is often a spectacularly beautiful environment, it is also a difficult place to live – even in the best of times. When annual floods rise much higher than the normal 30 feet or so- as is now happening now – countless factors make life even tougher. Imagine clinging to the top of a thatched roof that might already be filled with rats, watching swirling water destroy your crops and homes, while at the same time ferrying disease, hostile reptiles, electric eels, piranha and the like. You’d need any help you could get.
Although the broader consequences of this flooding are monumental, the discreet task of steering a boatload of food and supplies to the people of one village is both tangible and achievable. I’m going to pitch in and hope that some of my friends will join me.
In hopes that it will inspire you, I have attached a photo gallery of the village, its people and the environs.
The Reindeer Herders
As I was recently framing a print of this picture from one of my favorite assignments, I started thinking about whether it could ever be taken again. Like so many of places and cultures I have been fortunate to document, the spirit of this scene may have finally evaporated into the modern world.
When writer Gretel Ehrlich and I visited far northern Russia on an assignment for National Geographic Adventure Magazine just five years ago, we chanced upon this last nomadic group of Komi reindeer herders. While these Caucasian people are not the only culture still chasing these antlered creatures across various tundra plains in northern Europe and Asia, they have a far different heritage, lifestyle, language and culture from either the Sami (Lapp) people to the west or the more Mongolian Nenet and Tuvans to the east.
Out of uncounted Komi who once eked out a living in the tens of thousands of surrounding square miles, only this one small group continued to live on the land. When we visited the sole thing that held them together was a bond between three elderly women and the tundra they loved. Each was as tough as most people half their age and had convinced various offspring to assist with them with the sometimes brutally hard work of arctic survival. Otherwise there were no married couples or children – all of whom now pursued a more modern life in scattered villages.
“Maybe if we had TV they would have stayed,” one of the sons wryly cracked.
As I pondered the question about recreating this scene, I realize that the three old women may now have passed away, taking with them a simpler way of life that many will miss in the future. I would love to know, but but probably never will. To answer the question I would both have to mount another very expensive expedition and once again get permission from the KGB. Someday, someone else will have to figure it out.
Also in thinking about this, I realize that I have to be careful about taking sides concerning modernization, no matter where people live. Sure, if someone knew nothing about an outside world – which is now virtually impossible – they might remain happy living just as they always have. But once tempted by cell phones, television, heated houses and running water, who wouldn’t want them?
For more information and pictures of the Komi click here to visit an illustrated interview I did for Adventure, another entity that has sadly disappeared in the wake of changing times.
The Photo Society
One of my favorite parts of being a National Geographic photographer is meeting not just the people who pass in front of my lenses, but also my colleagues, who gather annually – akin to a family – for a meeting in Washington DC. Now, as well, they also have finally joined together in a group called The Photo Society, a group of contributing photographers for National Geographic Magazine that is committed to telling the world’s stories through pictures.
You can learn much more about them at http://thephotosociety.org/member .
My own pictures are at: http://thephotosociety.org/member/gordon-wiltsie/
Long ago I thought of some of my fellow photographers – especially adventure ones – as competitors. Today I number them as some of my closest friends. Who else in the world shares the same kinds of worries about staying alive both on our assignments and in the rapidly changing marketplace of photography today? Who else but one of these characters could I meet for the first time and talk all day without either of us repeating ourselves once?
As I think about many of the other sometimes-crazy photographers featured on this website, I am awestruck by the breadth of photographic potential they display. For those who are observant, you often don’t even need to see a photo credit to identify the artist, and, few of us could – or even would want to – copy another’s style. Even if we stood shoulder to shoulder, the pictures would be different.
Ironically, many Nat Geo photographers get their first assignments not because they stunned the editors with breathtaking pictures, but rather that they were passionate both about photography and also something completely different. I am always surprised by how many have PhDs in the subjects they photograph. Even I got my first project that way. A friend of mine just happened to mention to an old cohort-turned-photo-editor about a journey we were making to Antarctica. The magazine just happened to need some adventure pictures to round out a broader survey of the continent and suddenly I was hired – albeit on a tiny project.
To each our own, too. Consider the underwater specialists. No way would I want to carry fifty pounds of lighting equipment and underwater housings while sharks circled or I dove under polar ice. Nor do I want to rappel into active volcanic calderas or claustrophobic caves, sit for weeks in a wildlife blind, shoot one-handed as I steered a motorized paraglider, crawl through snake infested jungles in search of specialized ants, brave wartime bullets, or do so many other things that make National Geographic photographers particularly special.
This beautiful new site – which is reserved only for people who have published at least one feature story in the “yellow magazine” – shows a wonderful collection of visions. But beware. You could get stuck for hours.
Young Explorers Grants Workshop by National Geographic Expeditions Council
On Saturday, February 11, 2012, at Montana State University, Bozeman, the National Geographic Expeditions Council will be hosting an informative and exciting workshop for young people interested in exploration. Previous National Geographic young explorer grantees, staff and grant committee members (including myself) will be hosting a day of presentations and discussion, as well as break-out group to pitch field project ideas.
Then on Saturday night, the EC will host a free evening presentation about Field Research and Exploration, during which Dr. John Francis, Vice President of Research, Conservation and Exploration at the Society, will introduce talks by Expeditions Council grantees Dr. Mike Fay and Conrad Anker.
Both events are free of charge. For more information visit: www.nationalgeographic.com/yeg-workshop
Background:
The National Geographic Expeditions Council, which was founded just over a decade ago, awards grants to noteworthy expeditions pursing a wide variety of scientific, cultural or exploratory goals. Last year they allocated $825,000 to 185 different grantees.
In the past, projects have been widely diverse, including Himalayan mountaineering, quests for the world’s deepest caves, studies of tornadoes and lightning, archaeology, underwater research, documentation of vanishing cultures or species, glacial studies, polar journeys and much, much more. I, myself, have photographed a few of these expeditions and they remain among my favorite projects. (See accompanying pictures.)
Perhaps the most exciting and fastest growing part of the Council’s sponsorship is the Young Explorer Grants (YEG) program, through which people between 18 and 25 can apply for up to $5,000 to participate in endeavors of their dreams. Past grantees have accomplished a broad variety of their own expeditions, from kite-skiing across Greenland to kayaking rivers in Borneo, to tracking antelope in Wyoming.
Daytime events at the MSU event will focus on YEG grants and how to get them, and will be held in Room 101 of Gaines Hall between 9:45 am and 3:00 pm. Speaking together with EC staff and grant committee members, former grantees will discuss their own projects. These include Neil Losin, a photographer, filmmaker PhD candidate in evolutionary biology at UCLA; Andy Maser, a professional kayaker and filmmaker whose most recent film, SPOIL, won Best Mountain Environment film at Banff Mountain Film Festival; and Amy Higgins, a Master’s student at Yale, studying artificial glaciers in Ladakh and their impact on agriculture.
During the 7:30 pm evening program at the Strand Union Building, where doors open at 7:00 pm, Expedition Council grantee Mike Fay will discuss his recent 1,800 mile trek through the entire redwoods range and Conrad Anker will show highlights from his EC-sponsored, 275-mile journey through Tibet’s remote Chang Tang region, in search of the calving ground of the elusive Chiru antelope.
If you are in the area, sign up quickly because this event is certain to fill.
Gordon’s Pictures of EC Sponsored Expeditions:
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After a National Geographic Expeditions Council grant meeting, Director Rebecca Martin descends a staircase below N.C. Wyeth paintings and the Society’s hallowed board room.
Subtle Shifts Part 2: Photo Tip
- Subtle Shifts Part 2: Timing
This can be similarly true about subtle shifts in timing. When you press the shutter, especially when photographing people can make a huge difference. Not long ago Meredith and I visited the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Memorial in Southwestern Montana. I liked the bleak setting and vanishing point of the road, but the woman and child were more problematic. I shot the first frame even though I knew it wasn’t perfect, just in case the girl ran off or something else suddenly changed. Then, in the second frame, I noticed the play of their shadows, but the relationship of their actual bodies wasn’t very interesting. Finally, the girl stepped left, and both the shadows and the people clicked in a perfect “moment.” Especially with people, it pays to just keep shooting.
Photo 1
Photo 2
Photo 3
Subtle Shifts: Photo Tip
Subtle Shifts
Sometimes it only takes a very minor shift in time and or space to dramatically change an image. This effect can be especially dramatic when shooting water or people. I saw this very clearly during a recent hike in the Sierra Nevada, when I shot two pairs of nearly identical pictures. For the first frame of each pair, I was standing up. For the second, I was simply squatting in exactly the same place. What a difference! Without keeping in mind how much things shift when you move even subtly in any direction, I would have missed the frames I like the best.
How did that get there?
En route to a big wall climb in remote Queen Maud Land, where I assumed that nothing but birds and occasional people ever visited, we discovered this mummified crabeater seal – more than 100 miles inland and 5,000 feet above sea level. There is no way any Antarctic predator could have carried it here, because anything big enough can only swim, and neither could it have blown here, because the incessant winds here almost always howl away from the South Pole (hence the polished ice.) The only explanation is that it propelled itself this far just through sheer perseverance and flipper-power. Talk about being tragically misguided!
© Gordon Wiltsie
4th of July
Sometimes I just get lucky. On the Fourth of July I joined friends for a picnic at their house above Bozeman and the sky celebrated with a light show. Every one of these pictures was shot between 8 and 11pm without even leaving their back porch (except for lighting our own fireworks.) They do have a pretty nice view!
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Weekly Photos 7/18/11
During a miserable 6-week climbing expedition to peaks above the Chilean fjords, violent storms sometimes trapped us with little to eat in cold, dripping snow caves. At our hungriest, we rationed freeze-dried eggs and triple brewed tea bags off the floor.
Pickings were better at sea level. Once, we spotted a fishing boat and traded a bottle of pisco for some shellfish gathered by a SCUBA diver. But there was a deadly Red Tide. “How do you know these are safe?” we asked.
“We have a laboratory!” exclaimed the captain proudly. Inside his filthy wheelhouse was a big tin can containing three mice. “We feed them the mussels and if they die, we go home.”
Another time we caught our own fish, which no one has yet been able to identify for me. It might have been endangered.
In both cases, though, little matter. When you’re hungry, you eat what’s there!
Welcome to AlpenImage Photography Blog by Gordon Wiltsie
Hello everyone! I am excited for the opportunity to share more of my favorite photography, stories, tips and thoughts. I will do my best to update this with some of my favorite photography. Especially little know or never-published images. In fact, I have just recently rediscovered some of these images after years of sitting in the AlpenImage stacks. I would also like to share some of the interesting and unique stories behind these images. I would love any feedback and will do my best to answer any questions. Thank you for your support and the more importantly in your interest in the art of photography.
Weekly Photo 7/15/11
It seems fitting to begin my new series, “Photo(s) of the Week” with one of my earliest published images: “Songs of the Vertical Desert.” I made this in 1974 in a tiny bathroom/darkroom while I was still a student UC Santa Cruz (way before PhotoShop!) The climber is near the top of Half Dome, morphing into Tibetan Buddhist monks from Nepal.
