My first published photographs appeared in Sciences et Vie, one of the most popular illustrated periodicals in the French language. During the 1980s, my photos appeared in Pacific Fishing, The Kodiak Fisherman and the prestigious Alaska Magazine which also featured an article about my graphic work.
I love taking portraits, especially of people at work like the fisherman on Lake Victoria (above), or a seller of wines made with ancient medieval recipes disguised as a jester in the suburbs of Paris (Below, left) or my student Ammanuel showing the late President of France Valéry Giscard d'Estaing how to use the latest version of a smartphone (below, right). There are moments of passion and joy in whatever activity they are exercising and that the camera can catch. For women at work, see the gallery on the Russian North.
My first camera was a vintage box that looked like something out of the 19th Century. In 1975 for my graduation I received a pocket Rollei 35 24x36 (fixed 35mm objective) and began shooting in Kodachrome, Ektachrome and 3M (see Kodachrome slide - above, left, and all three portraits below below, Belgium, 1976). I was then offered my grandfather's Leica M5 which I took on extensive trips around France and all over Alaska in 1982 (above - middle, St. Paul Harbor, Kodachrome). I then bought two second-hand Nikormat EL 2 (my favorite to this day), and worked with them for decades until, beaten, wiped by wind, dust and sand, soaked in rain, fog and sea foam, they finally gave up. Not comfortable with digital photography, I continued working with slides for twenty years, progressively switching to Fujichrome, more available in stores (above, left, Helsinki, 2002), until 1) it became increasingly difficult to find, 2) prices soared, and 3) labs lost the original technique of printing from slides to paper in high quality and at prices no more expensive than regular Kodacolor film.
My first attempt with digital photography was in 2006, when I had to admit that both my EL2 were definitely, indubitably, indisputably dead. So was the photoelectric cell of my Rollei. I could have continued to use only my eyes, my brains and my gut to measure light, and calculate aperture and speed, using my Leica M5---a great lesson photography, but film, by then, was far too expensive to make so many mistakes before you got the right balance of light and color. Plus, with the Leica, I could only use 35mm, 50mm and 120mm lenses. So I decided to buy a $25 second-hand point-and shoot touristy camera as long as I could use a photocell and a decent zoom, and find film for slides. Uh oh! Slides? Really? Are you kidding? I immediately found out how difficult it now was to find reversal film elsewhere than with my professional guys on Avenue Mac Mahon in Paris (their wonderful little shop is still there!). What didn't help was loosing my camera less than two days after buying it. So my former student, hostess in Istanbul, friend and guide in Turkey, offered me the use of her little 3 Million pixel digital camera. And you know what? I liked the result. Only 3 Million pixels? Hey, look at the four photos below. Not bad for so few pixels!
"So many women wearing veils! What happened to my country?!" was the reaction of my friend, Zeynep, a Turkish expat living in Paris for several years already when she saw these and my other photos from Turkey.
Still, i was alergic to digital. After I was offered a superb digital Nikon for my birthday, it stayed in its box for two years
The Silver Springs, central Florida (where I have so many childhood and, later, adult memories), is a zone submerged with the purest and most transparent freshwater on the planet. This wetland area seems so quiet most of the time and you would think that even the alligators, sleeping on the banks or quietly flowing on the rivers and connected ponds have found peace as if they were in Eden, until suddenly... (scroll for action!)
Below, you can observe the differences between an alligator on the left (Silver Springs, Florida), and a Crocodile (right, Nile river, near Murchison Falls, Uganda)
Two photos where I was at my most vulnerable position. Above: Saint Paul Island, Bering Sea, August 1987 (mating and birth season) - Ektachrome 400. Hundreds of thousands of fur seals on the beaches. I love close up shots (literally portraits) of wild animals and got as close as possible to this pup with my zoom (set at approximately 80mm), in the middle of a harem. Luckily the big male guarding his females and their babies did not consider me as a threat. But my local Aleut (Unangan) hosts told me to be more careful!
Left: driving in a fully open SUV in Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda. Suddenly, the driver stops. A pregnant lion is looking at me straight in the eyes. The battery of my camera is dead (where is my old Leica M5 in moments like these!?). I shoot with my telephone. Not such a bad result... But the driver was told never to take such risks again, no matter how great the photo op! |
So here's a lesson for photographers shooting animals that can be dangerous. Stay safe! Be sure to be in a vehicle, well protected from the animals (it's for their own good too! If they harm you, they might then be euthanized to avoid further accidents!). On the left, at Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, Uganda, with my students from my PO 3033 International Politics of the Environment class at the American University of Paris, I was safe on a boat, close enough for great photography of chimpanzees (f/4, 1/2000 sec, ISO-800); chimps are five times stronger than a human being and can become extremely aggressive, but they cannot swim, so even this close (my zoom was at 39mm and the photo is only slightly cropped!). On the right, I was comfortably shooting with my 300mm lens from a well protected bus provided by the rangers at Denali National Park.
Or let yourself be guided by professionals or competent local inhabitants who will tell you where and when it is safe to walk up to the animals ---- like below, in Silver Springs (again) - below, left, and Ziwa Rhino sanctuary (below - right, and second row below). Oh, and by the way, we were on foot! The adventure in rhiono habitat was made possible by the rangers at Ziwa thanks to whom we knew how close we could get without disturbing the animals. (BTW, this quasi-spiritual experience with rhinos completely ruined for me one of my favorite films---Howard Hawks' Hatari! How can you harass these beautiful peaceful creatures into a frenzy so that, pursued by jeeps and trucks, they run like mad and smash their horns into the vehicles, just so you can get a special action shot?!) A great salute to the heroic Ziwa rangers whorisk their lives to protect the rhinos from poachers and are succeeding in repopulating Uganda with this species that was already annouced as extinct in the wild.
More from Uganda:
More from Florida: birds and other creatures
Wildlife in Alaska
Should zoos be banned? A few of these photos illustrate the article I co-wrote: as Alan Aftonfalker (aka O. Kobtzeff) with Yaroslav Rovenskikh.
A walk along the banks of the Neva in St. Petersburg, my favorite city (will I ever see it again?...)
More of St. Petersburg
Helsinki
Miscellaneous towns and cities
Ukraine
More of Alaska
More to come (this page is still in construction...)