Krishnan Photography

From my 23rd floor apartment today evening 6PM. A quick, four shot hand held pano which I  stitched.

Sometime in the early eighties I had read Peter Mathiessen’s book “The Snow Leopard”. The book is about the legendary biologist George Schaller and his efforts to know about the Snow Leopard in its habitat.

Early nineties I met for the first time, my good friend Ajeet Bajaj. At that time, Ajeet had just started his adventure company called “Snow Leopard Adventures“. In 1992 March, I was attending the “Basic Mountaineering course” at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute (HMI) Darjeeling. Thats when I saw the magnificient Snow Leopards for the very first time in my life, at the Darjeeling zoo.

A few days ago, I started to plan some of the trips for the next season and the Snow Leopard was right on top of mind. Today I got back from work and switched on the telly and guess what I saw, the documentary “The Snow Leopard - Beyond the Myth”. Now that got me googling the International Snow Leopard Conservancy programme in India.

Check these pics from an NG photographer Steve Winter > Snow Leopard
Steve’s Popular Photography interview
Follow Steve on his NG trails > Follow Steve

Yep…got them Snow Leopards again on my mind and, I have always loved Ladakh ….

Picked out slides from my collection and scanned them in today. These slides are from the years 1996 thru 1998 .

Teasers below. You can view them all here> Ladakh.

This is the “basha” or hut I used to stay in

I also scanned in one really old Delhi Zoo slide ( 1985 ) of a Puma. Love this one

And the Black Panthers @ Delhi zoo in the year 1985 !

Today, after a long gap, I pulled out some old transparencies for scanning.

The 1994 Original Roadies

We had done a Pune-Cochin bike trip way back in April 1994 . Four guys ( Sandeep, Salil Shailesh and myself) on three bikes, a Rajdoot, a Yezdi and an Enfield Fury [ a Zundapp Kardan Sport 175 ( KS175) actually], on the Konkan coastal roads for eleven heavenly days. The trip was planned to coincide with the “Trichur Pooram“, the traditional mega Kerala Temple Festival which has a more than a few number of caparisoned elephants and only a few, hundred thousand people to watch the show

I still remember the bike silhouette pic. I shot that twisting back while riding pillion, helmet and all with the camera focussed at infinity. I had the “Pentax - ME Super” back then. A wonderful camera for sure.

Keeping with the theme of Kerala, I also scanned in a few slides of a temple that I do really like, the Ernakulam Shiva Temple. I happened to click a few frames duting the Temple festival in Dec 1999 enroute to my Diving holiday to Lakshadweep Islands.

During the temple festival the Deity of the Temple is brought home on an elephant and an offering is made to the God right at the house gates. Thats the two pics here. On the pic on the right is my maternal uncle making the offering with the temple elephant right outside my maternal home.

I also pulled a few landscapes shot whilst in the Andamans in 2004.

Finally pulled out some of my Military shots.

This shot of the National Defence Academy, Pune, India was taken in 1990 when I was part of the “demo jump”. My divisional officer, from my NDA days, was the pilot and, I took this pic as we came into Pune and over flew NDA for a recce . The rear ramp was down and I was strapped in while i took this pic from an AN-32 aircraft.

This pic below was shot at Agra while on a Para get-together “command jump”. Those were the days !

I will add more pics as and when I can scan my old slides. Tons of stuff, so selection is a pain. A few more pics here