Discovering Beauty In Life - Bactrian Camels

Nubra Valley, Ladakh

I’m a wildlife photographer who has just one partially domesticated animal species in his gallery here, the Bactrian Camels. Interesting part though is that of all the Camels in the world, some of these guys are the only Camels running around wild still. Go Figure ! Well, here’s how that went down.

It was almost a decade ago when I decided to take my first guided photography tour. I thought I didn’t need to learn photography as I was working that out fine by myself. I was lost though and what I thought I needed was an out. Circumstance was such that no one including myself wanted me to be travelling alone at the time and I didn’t want anyone I already knew around me either and so I ended up on a photography tour to Ladakh. I wasn’t into wildlife at all back then and Ladakh seemed just right. It wasn’t as well travelled as it is now and seemed different and unique. Well, we were mostly doing landscapes, light painting and such on that tour and Ladakh has the only resident population of Bactrian Camels in India who are the last remnants here of the silk route. Our tour organizers hired some of those beasts of burden for a photo shoot and that’s how we ended up leading those camels to the mountain side and taking these photos which were taken on a Canon Rebel by the way, my first kit. Hindsight’s always 20/20 but these set up shots are the only photos from that trip on this website cause these photos probably sparked something in me. That and also the realization that so many people come back from Ladakh every year with the same landscape shots. Not many have these now do they? I’ll admit happily now that I hadn’t seen the beauty in animals before these photos either. That’s what changed for me thanks to these Bactrian Camels.

I didn’t even know that double humped camels existed. We found em at a rancid smelling field where they congregate in Nubra Valley and while our tour organizers struck a deal with the handlers for our models for the day, the rest of us took the liberty to take pictures. Come to think of it now, I also didn't have much experience with portraits before that day when the Camels were all packed in tight and I kinda learnt how to pull off portraits out of necessity at that camel parking lot ( Pics : 1 – 5 ). People usually take these Camels for rides over the Hunder sand dunes. Not us though, we took em to the field under a mountain where we’d tried to photograph stars the night before and had ourselves an animal photography basics class of sorts ( Pics : 6 – 16 ). That short experience totally opened my eyes and the rest followed like an avalanche that’s set off by that one little stone. Well, turns out that I did need exposure to animals and that was something that this tour gave me.

Camels are tall and I learnt to try to get low on tall animals for pictures if possible that day especially when they’re close. In time, I’ve learnt that the lower you go, the more balanced the perspective gets with most animals if they’re close. Doing it isn’t always possible from vehicles and with moving wild animals but it’s a pretty neat trick to have in your arsenal. I also noticed how these guys always seemed to have that knowing and mischievous smile on their faces which had to be the main event for their photos. I now know that knowing look. It’s the look that Elephants also give you. I’d had pets and yet realization of the obvious is such a sack of bricks to the head usually for me. I realized that all of these camels were differently beautiful. Sure every one of the streams that we were photographing during that trip was beautiful as well but to me, this attracted a lot more maybe because being from from Shillong, I had been making little road trips to do landscapes for a while. This was new and brought out the yearning to try out the real un staged thing which I did pretty soon and with the same tour organizers when I took a wildlife photography trip to Kabini which I’ve written about in “Down But Not Out”. So I guess this is pretty much the prequel to my getting into wildlife story.

Cause and effect, or causality as “The Matrix” called it is all around and significant to so much if we look at the the planet in general and even our lives specifically. Now, some people tell me that anyone with average enough intellect can be average at pretty much anything that they set their mind to which basically also infers that if you do something long enough, you’re bound to start liking it. True perhaps to some degree but, consider this. When I was doing landscape photography, I was also searching simultaneously. Adding to my camera kit with new lenses and fiddling with filters and what not. It was like something was missing. With wildlife, I haven’t added a second lens to my kit in almost a decade. I’m doing more and fiddling less. I guess it’s good to leave markers as you walk down a trail but yet, beyond a certain point they’re bound to fade away cause you didn't turn back.

I started seeing amazing beauty that day with these camels and that got the stone rolling I guess. That’s what it is and I’m so much better for it.  Here's to hoping that I get to see and learn a lot more.