The Last Day

This was the last hurrah... and it was a bit of a roller-coaster.  First, when I went in the water early today, I quickly realized that the housing was flooded.  (I lost a camera and lens last year this way)  In any case, this put an abrupt end to my underwater work, forcing me to abandon the "feeding piranhas to the botos" project (not a bad thing, I think) and to do something else.  (UPDATE : looks like the camera survived the bath...)

What ended up happening was a complete surprise - and a delight.  We went back to a location I had scouted 2 weeks ago, with huge buttressed trees rising out of the water - to my eye the perfect vision of the flooded forest.  I had bombed here several times before - no light, or no botos - but today it was perfect.  Soft overcast light (rare in this land of blazing sun) and a wealth of dolphins.  I hesitate to say it, but I nailed the one single shot I had been looking for.

Now I can go home feeling like I did what I needed to do.  It is up to the NG to see if they have what they need, but whatever happens, this has been an extraordinary experience - equal measures of hard work, boredom, fun, frustration and exhilaration.  

Thanks to all of you for coming along on the ride.  I'll let you know when/if the story gets on the NG schedule!

Love to all ; I'm heading home!

Kevin

Piranhas

OK, the first question a lot of people ask when I say that I am swimming in the Amazon every day is this... "what about the piranhas?"  Fair enough, and the fact is the river is teeming with them.  Happily, they have plenty to eat this time of year, e.g. when the water is high.  It is during the dry season that they get stressed - and dangerous.  

Having said this, my staff was busy today catching piranhas to help me get a shot of a boto actually catching a live fish.  This involved using about 30-40 live fish and a nearly endless series of comic disasters, from fish that just swam away (and beyond the reach of my camera) before a boto could catch them,  to Wellingthon losing part of his fingertip, trying to grab one for me. 

In the end, I got a handful of modestly successful shots of dolphins with live piranhas in their jaws.  But who knows if they ever eat piranhas?  I certainly don't.  But this is my only hope of getting dolphins catching fish...  Don't be surprised if they don't make it into the magazine...

Love to all,

Kevin

Near the end...

I have only two field days left before heading home.  This is both welcome news (I miss Marty something fierce) but also a bit daunting since I have little time left to make magic happen, and play out some lingering, untested ideas  ...  

One of my daily challenges is that I have to work around the fact that tourists are using the same location to see/feed the wild dolphins, but sometimes there are so many that it makes my work nearly impossible...  

Still, I managed to get shots of dolphins throwing wood and picking up leaves...  Doesn't sound like much, but both are natural behaviors that I am pleased to have captured.  Tossing things, in particular, seems to be part of courtship, as if throwing stuff around shows that you are strong and sexy and....?   I need to research this, but it is quite possible that no one knows enough about Botos yet to be sure what this behavior means.  

My friend and Boto Researcher, Tony Martin, has written a paper about boto "carrying" like this and it is possible that what I am seeing is related.  The fact is that there is still a lot we don't know about these animals...

OK, enough for now.  For comic relief, here is a picture of my boat driver  "Touch" (a.k.a. Toti) pretending he is a Boto.  Very funny guy despite the fact that we hardly share 3 words of vocabulary.

Love to all,

Kevin

Finally!

One of the most difficult things to arrange here has been a charter helicopter to shoot aerials of the flooded forest habitat.  Between the changeable weather and the difficulty with dealing with a company in a different city, and a different language, this has been a real headache.  It has been scheduled 3-4 times and cancelled.    Thank God for Christoph's help! (And thank C. for the photo...)

Today, however, we flew - for over an hour with the door open so I could hang out over the Rio Negro and shoot pictures of the marvelous Anavilhanas Archipelago, long strips of forested islands as far as the eye can see.  I wish I could share pictures with you - but look at Google pictures: it is one of the most amazing sights I have ever seen.  

Only three days left, meanwhile, time to fill some holes and wind this up.  I'm tired, but feel like I've done pretty well...

Love to all,

Kevin

The Missing Fish

A few days ago I paid some local fishermen to catch - and keep alive - a few hundred small fish.  My plan was use these to try and get realistic dolphin "hunting" shots underwater.  (Getting the real thing is impossible in water with 2 foot visibility)  Good plan, I thought, although I had no idea whether I could make it work.

We even came up with a floating cage designed for keeping fish alive until we needed them.  Then, yesterday morning we checked - and found the cage inhabited by a 6-foot caiman - who was defending the few fish he hadn't already eaten...  How he got in there remains a debate - the top door was missing.  But there is even more debate about how to get him out!

Today Christoph will try and buy some more live fish...this time we'll use them right away....

Love to all,

Kevin

Eye Level...

Yes, that's me, sitting in a chair on an underwater platform trying to get surface shots of dolphins - and that's Wellingthon holding my tripod to keep  $10K worth of camera gear ending up in the drink!  Didn't produce much, to be honest,  since it is almost impossible to predict where or when a dolphin will rise to the surface...

Love to all,

Kevin

Dolphins in the Treetops

The river level on the Rio Negro rises and falls 14 metres (ca 45 feet!) every year between the dry season and the wet.  I am here at the beginning of the dry season when the water is just past its peak.   Today, I photographed a small group of Botos swimming through the leaves and branches of a couple of small trees - essentially swimming through the canopy.  It was an underwater solution to my persistent problem - photographing dolphins in the forest!

Unfortunately the sun was out and the water especially murky and filled with debris (made more pronounced by the sun and a phenomenon called "backscatter") , so on the next cloudy day I will try and do it again.  It was really very cool.

Meanwhile, my helicopter charter flight was cancelled today - hopefully we can do it tomorrow : time is running out and the aerial perspective is ESSENTIAL.

Love to all,

Kevin

Breakthrough

As you know, I have been struggling this entire trip with illustrating the notion of "dolphins in the forest".  Although I knew that Botos forage in the flooded forest, I was no less stunned last year when I actually heard them rising to breathe in the middle of jungle thickets, and stands of inundated trees.  Amazing.

My challenge, then, has been to photograph this phenomenon.  Toward this end, I had a platform built in a tree in an area where we hoped they would swim.  Today I climbed up into the platform and, voila - they came.  I shot a few dozen shots, but the light was not ideal  (e.g. DARK  : ISO 2000 for those of you who know what this means...)

Still it gives me a tangible goal for my last week....

Christoph took this shot of me in the tree after dropping me off by canoe.

Love to all,

Kevin

The Wall

There comes a time in any creative project when you run smack into "the Wall."   It is the feeling that you are exhausted of ideas, and have followed every conceptual trail you can think of.  I'm feeling that way now, although I still have another week to climb over, dig under - or smash through it.  I have done all the pictures on my "hit list" and many more I had never thought of ahead of time.  But there is this nagging feeling that I have not THOUGHT of something, that if I were cleverer, or more creative, a new approach would occur to me.  

Most of my new ideas have come to me - as they so often do - in the middle of the night, having abandoned any hope of sleep.  "What if I....?"  

Anyhow, today is cloudy, after days of blazing sun.  This alone might prompt a new idea, who knows.?   Today's picture is by Christoph, of me getting chummy with a Boto underwater....

Love to all,

Kevin 

Full Moon over the Amazon

The moon rose full tonight over the flooded forest : the same moon that you would have seen wherever you are.  It is probably hotter here, and the howler monkeys were howling as if at the setting sun, but it was just a reminder that the world is small after all.

The photo today is a snap of my fish-wrangler Wellingthon, a 17-year-old local boy that works with the dolphins and loves them deeply  (and knows them all by name) .  He may also be the most relentlessly cheerful person I have ever met.  I asked for him by name when I knew I was coming down, and Christoph was lucky enough to snare his help for three weeks.  Just a great kid, always anxious to help.

Meanwhile, today was mostly spent underwater again, pulling myself down the rope to about 6-8 feet down - far enough so that I look up underneath the dolphins and can photograph them in silhouette against the sky.  Exhausting work, but great results. 

 Tomorrow or Friday I will be chartering a helicopter to shoot aerials of the flooded forest eco-system.  Should be exciting.

Love to all,  Kevin

Over the Hump

Today is just about the mid-way point on this assignment, and a good time to assess what I've done - and what I have yet to do. I feel I have pretty much all the underwater material I will need, including what I shot on my two trips last year.  In the past two days I have gotten some sensational material from my fixed rope, shooting from underneath the dolphins, but otherwise I have exhausted al the possible angles one can have of an animal that you have to be within about 12 inches.  (e.g. front, back, side, top, bottom!)

The single biggest challenge is still to get them inside the forest.  I have two or three locations chosen but have only modest success in luring the dolphins into my potential pictures.  I have roughly 10 days left : this will take everything I've got.

Love to all,

Kevin

Other Critters

I am forced to be pretty single-minded on this trip : focusing all my time and energy on dolphins.  This is a pity in some ways since there is a lot of other wildlife around.  Three species of monkeys live all around my little cabin, and there are birds everywhere, including a huge, white, owl-like bird called a Great Potoo that roosts every night in a tree by the path I take to dinner.  I may take a few afternoons off to photograph monkeys like these Capuchins - but I always feel as though time away from the Botos is time wasted.

Having said that, this morning was one of my best yet, with some great opportunities and fresh ideas.  I am gradually ticking pictures off of my "master list" , but just as quickly adding new ones. ..

Love to all,

Kevin

A Tail Tale

Every day I go out with a picture in mind that I want to get, and for a week I have been wanting a shot of a boto from BEHIND, e.g. with their flukes filling most of the frame and their body swimming away.  Don't ask me why I want this, it has just been an obsession, and I have been struggling to get it. Until today.

After Wellingthon and I finished a session in the river, we were swimming back to the platform.  A couple of botos followed us -- not for our sparkling personalities, but because they thought we might have fish...  They followed W. along the surface, like eager puppies begging for a treat, and I suddenly discovered that I could just hang back and take shot after shot of their flukes as the swam with him.  It never occurred to me that this might work, but it worked like a charm.  Wow!.  I already have several workable shots, but I have warned W. that tomorrow I will make him swim back and forth across the river about 100 times!

Christoph took this photo of me coming up from a rope dive and spouting like a whale....

Love to all,

Kevin

Successes.... and friends

Today's news is that my underwater "rope trick" worked better than  I could have imagined.  By dropping an enormous hunk of scrap iron to the bottom of the river attached to a rope, I have a quick, easy, highly non-technical way of getting down BELOW the dolphins to be able to photograph them from below, either silhouetted against the sun or in any of the graceful poses they take (non-fused vertebrae in their necks allow them to coil and twist in ways other dolphins cannot.)  Anyhow, this opens up the possibility of new kinds of pictures, my constant obsession - and the source of many sleepless nights.  

Meanwhile I have enjoyed a visit these past 4 days from Regina Ribeiro, a Brazilian friend of Marty and mine.  She has had a chance to swim with the dolphins, and it's been great to have company.  If any of you are in the neighborhood, drop by!

Love to all,

Kevin

Getting Help

I really couldn't do all this by myself...  My primary help is Christoph Berquet, a German guide here who I met on my first trip last year.  Over the intervening months, we have corresponded and made all the preparations for this trip.  He designed and oversaw the construction of the platform, chose a boat driver and arranged for an another assistant.  Every day he makes things possible.  "No problem" seem to be his favorite 2 words despite whatever outrageous idea I have.  

 The photo is of Christoph sitting on our canoe from underwater - he was standing by while I tried to shot Botos from below.

Meanwhile, the weather has changed.  After a week of intense sun and heat, today it is cloudy and what passes for cool here.  A great opportunity to shoot inside the forest and get some things I have not been able to do in full sun.

Love to all,   Kevin

Thank God for Digital

There was a time when a photographer would shoot an entire story like this without the benefit of seeing what worked - and what didn't.  Now, however, digital gives instant feedback about the light, the composition and the action. 

 I have now spent most of 3 days trying to perfect the "over/under" shot until I am satisfied with it, trying different locations, working on technical challenges (described below) and generally trying to produce a single, self-sufficient, story-telling image.  

But feedback is not enough.  The greatest gift any photographer can have is TIME.  Time to work on an idea, time to re-think original assumptions, time for luck to kick in.  Three weeks is now starting to seem barely enough.  

Meanwhile, yesterday we discovered that dolphins genuinely like to play with anything they find floating in the river.  So late in the afternoon we threw everything we could find into the river as inducement : seeds, clumps of floating grass, gnarly sticks : anything.  Did we succeed?  Not entirely.... the dolphins investigating EVERYTHING but only once or twice did they pick them up and toss them, which is what I was after.  And when they did it, it was inevitably on the other side of the river.  So here again, it's that TIME thing...  Try it again tomorrow!

Love to all,

Kevin  

Challenges

You always know things are going to go wrong.  You just hope it is a simple fix or somehow inconsequential.  I brought extra almost-everything on this trip : extra batteries, extra camera bodies, extra toothpaste.  I even brought two laptops and two backup drives.  I also brought extra lenses, but naturally, the one lens I use a lot stopped functioning yesterday - so I am trying to have it repaired in Manaus (two hours away by boat) and having Marty send me down a replacement, which will probably take a week...  So it goes.  

Short post today : I have my hands full.  But here is a shot of them delivering my shooting platform on the second day.  It is like a two-level Olympic diving board with planks at 9 feet and 15  feet above the water.  This allows me to shoot straight down on the dolphins, and hopefully will let me get natural behavior and interaction. 

Love to all.

Over and Under

There is a time-honored technique in underwater photography of shooting "over/unders" which are essentially pictures that combine an underwater subject and the above-water landscape.  The trick is to hold your underwater camera in such a way that half the lens is above the water, and half below.  Well, as I discovered today, this ain't easy...  I was trying to shoot verticals, e.g. with the camera turned sideways, of dolphins swimming under some flooded trees.  But between dolphins moving, me treading water, a strong current, and having to float on my side, it was a comedy of errors.  

I have a staff of three helping me, but all they could do was laugh at my contorted positions.  Fortunately, being Brazilian, they couldn't understand my swearing through my snorkel.  (But I think they got the gist.)  Having said that, by mid-afternoon, exhausted from effort, I had several dozen rather terrific shots : with above-water rainforest in the top half of the picture, and an underwater dolphin in the bottom half.  

Back at it again tomorrow.  By the way, I cannot post shots I have taken here : it would violate my NG contract.  But I can show you one my German asst. took today of me getting ready to get in the water.  This, believe it or not, is my UW getup.  The hat is to shield my viewfinder from the sun so I can see what the hell I am getting.

A Sense of Place

When I presented this Amazon Dolphin story to the National Geographic, I presented a selection of dramatic underwater images I took last year on an exploratory trip with my friend Mark Carwardine from the UK.  Months later, the idea accepted, I had to endure what is known as "the Pitch" - a phone conference call with all the editors at the Magazine to propose how I would tell my story and what pictures I hoped to get.  

Although I felt like I was defending a PhD, the process was less agonizing than I had expected, but I was left with just one admonishment - "give this story a sense of place."  In other words, my close-ups of dolphins, good as they were, would not be enough : I needed to get shots of the flooded forest where they live.

Well, that was my goal today.  I found some trees and lured (with copious amounts of fish) some dolphins to swim through them.  Only trouble is, I couldn't see the trees.  Visibility here is about 12-16 inches, so I could barely see the dolphins, much less what was behind them.  In the end, I shot through a "V" in a tree trunk and got dolphins with a bit of bark.  Not ideal.  

Thank God I have three weeks to get this done.  But that is the lesson : getting great images is one thing -- telling a visual story is something else again....

Love to all,  

Kevin

Uncomfortable Surprise

OK, last time I was here my guide assured me, as I was spending 8 hours a day in the water, that there were no piranhas in this river.  (I suppose I should have been skeptical when I noticed that he was missing several toes...)  Today, however, I have it on good authority, that there are INDEED piranhas all through this river system.

However, piranhas usually have plenty to eat, especially during this - the flooded season.  They apparently only get nasty during the dry season when they get stuck in shrinking pools and get very, very hungry.  

So the word is that I will be FINE.  Good to know since tomorrow I start getting in the water again.  My goal, to get shots of dolphins swimming between the flooded trees underwater. This is absolutely essential for the story I want to tell.   Wish me luck.

Love to all.

Getting Started

Rio Negro, Brazilian Amazon

Getting here is no part of the fun.  Two full days of travel, with delays, crowded flights, and bad food combined to make the journey as unpleasant as it usually is.  I was particularly concerned about getting all my luggage with me, intact.  Last year, I had gear stolen out of my luggage at Miami airport, so this time I retrieved it at every stop - no point in arriving in the Amazon without my underwater housing, or tripod.

Now, after 48+ hours of traveling and a combined 5 hours of sleep, I am in the Amazon.  The water is as high as I have ever seen it, which will work perfectly for trying to get pictures of Botos in the Igapo - or flooded forest.  

But first things first.  I have arranged for a special wooden floating platform to be built, and my first order of business on this my first afternoon, is to make sure it will work.  The idea is to be able to move it to photogenic areas and be able to shoot dolphins from 3 levels - 1 meter, 3 meters and 5 meters.  It looks like a handmade Olympic diving board set-up and my chief concern is how I'm going to haul my gear up to the top with my legendary fear of heights

More soon. Love to all.

Kevin