FEATURE
25/12/2017
Jayaprakash
Joghee Bojan, who is National Geographic’s Nature Photographer of the Year
2017, talks about his award-winning shot a and love for wildlife photography
He was a point-and-shoot photographer for 10 years. Four years
ago, his wife got him a DSLR and today Jayaprakash Joghee Bojan is the National
Geographic’s Nature Photographer of the Year 2017 for his photograph of an
orangutan crossing a river in the wilds of Borneo.
Excitement ripples through his voice as he talks about his
award-winning shot. “In August, I was in Kalimantan on the Indonesian side of
Borneo and heard about this orangutan that crossed the river. I found this
amazing because orangutans normally avoid water. They’re arboreal creatures.
And, there were crocodiles in the river.”
So he made for the area but didn’t see anything for a couple
of days. But he decided to wait. “I had a hunch this would be special.” On the
third day, he heard that the animal had been spotted on the other side of the
river and rushed to the spot. “When the orangutan appeared, I climbed into the
water.” Didn’t he remember the crocs? “Yes but I had to do it if I wanted that
truly unique shot.” His appearance made the orangutan nervous and it retreated
behind a tree. They played peekaboo till the animal decided that it could
ignore him. “I got around 25 shots of it peeping out from behind the tree and
retreating,” laughs Bojan. “Then he came out and began to cross the river and I
got this shot.”
Bojan, who is from the Nilgiris, says his interest in wildlife
came naturally. His grandparents lived in a village just a few kilometres from
Dodabetta. “I was surrounded by birds and lot of wildlife.” He also lived in
Bengaluru so he got in a lot of “backyard birding” and travelled to all the
National Parks in India (one of his favourites is Nagarhole). But he started
taking wildlife photography seriously when his wife was transferred to
Singapore two years ago and he quit his job to move there. A visit to the
Singapore Zoo triggered his interest in primates. “It was the first time I had
seen them and I wanted to see them in the wild.”
He began to research and reach
out to people across Southeast Asia. “Southeast Asia has approximately 25% of
the most highly endangered species of primates. You don’t have the usual
photo-safari destinations here and it was hard to find people who knew where to
spot them. Slowly my connections grew and I’ve been able to photograph around
eight or nine species.”
Bojan’s photos were earlier picked as the Editor’s favourites
in the National Geographic Nature Photography Awards but he’s glad it’s the
orangutan that won. “More people will see this and there will be more
visibility and may be more people will be willing to help. The orangutans need
more help than they’re getting.”
His favourite subjects apart from primates, and organutans in
particular, are the tiger and otters. “My first tiger shot was in Bandipur,” he
reminisces. “It was a female called Gauri and she had two cubs.” On the subject
of otters, he has a lot more to say. While he has photographed otters in the
wild in Kabini and Corbett National Park, it is a family of wild otters near
his house in Singapore that currently has him captured. “They’ve figured out a
way to live in an urban place like Singapore. There’s a community called Otter
Watch that tracks the otters across Singapore. They post updates on social
media and recently celebrated the birth of new pups. The otters roll on the
sand or the grass to clean their fur as the humans watch and even take food
from them.” One of Bojan’s photos of a couple of elderly men reaching out to
the otters won an award from the Indian website Nature in Focus.
Going forward, Bojan hopes to do a photo-story book on
primates. “Some of these species number just 50-100 in the wild.” He’s also
looking forward to a trip in Japan in February to shoot the snow monkey, the
red fox and migrating raptors. He hopes to get some sightings of the elusive
snow leopard from a trip to the Spiti Valley later in 2018. Towards the end of
the year, if his permissions come through, he’ll be tracking a rare monkey on
the Vietnam-China border. “I have lots of photographs to come; many more
stories to tell,” he says.
A tough
battle
Halfway through the story of his award-winning shot, Bojan
gets side-tracked into the story of a ranger-turned-conservationist who is
trying to buy land around the periphery of the national parks to ensure that it
doesn’t fall into the hands of palm oil companies. “He’s educating the local
people about habitats and the animals there and training them to be guides. The
profits from guided tours are being invested into ensuring that land around the
forest stays wild.”
While Bojan admits it’s a tough call to choose between preserving habitats and finding employment, he hopes they can sustain this initiative. “Obviously they cannot pay as much as the bigger companies. I am donating a part of the award money towards this cause. They’ve managed to buy around 12 acres in the last year, which is a great feat.” Around 30% of Indonesia’s income comes from palm oil, so it’s a “tricky affair for all concerned: the government and the people on the ground.”
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