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Wild JourneyI’ve always had a sense of adventure and, had I been born a hundred years ago, I’m sure I would have been a big game hunter. Fortunately, I’ve been able to spend my life hunting with a camera instead. Wildlife photography and filmmaking require the same kind of cunning and ‘bush craft’ that a hunter must possess in order to outwit acutely alert wild animals. But unlike the hunter, who only needs to ‘fool’ an animal for the instant it takes to press the trigger, the wildlife filmmaker needs to remain ‘invisible’ for as long as possible, to record the secret lives of wild creatures, some of which can be incredibly shy.
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My Work TodayIn 2000, after producing and shooting yet another ‘blue chip’ natural history film for television, I began to question where I was going with my work. I had achieved my ambition of becoming a wildlife filmmaker, and loved every minute of it. But, after 15 years in the business, it was becoming more and more difficult to ignore the fact that, all around me, wild India was wilting under tremendous pressure.
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WOW MomentsIn India’s jungles tigers sometimes kill sloth bears. And eat them for breakfast – and lunch and dinner if there’s anything left over! Although the shaggy sloth bear, one of four species of bears found in India, has a fearsome reputation for unprovoked aggression, Baloo is obviously no match for Shere Khan. Bear hair in tiger scat is not an unusual sight in forests where the two species coexist. My friend, Dr. K. Yoganand, a wildlife biologist who studied sloth bears in the Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, not only witnessed many aggressive encounters between bears and tigers, he even photographed a tiger feeding on a fresh sloth bear kill.
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