Acing it on the ice

The Kottayam-born and Toronto-based photographer Thomas Vijayan has just won the Bird Photographer of the Year contest with his shot of penguins in Antarctica. He also says that global warming is irreversible

Pics: The prize-winning photograph; Thomas Vijayan

By Shevlin Sebastian 

It is a November morning. Photographer Thomas Vijayan is lying on the ice in a penguin colony in Antarctica. Several feet away, an Emperor Penguin and his wife stand behind a baby penguin. They have almost joined their beaks together, as they look down on their newly-hatched baby. The scene lasts a few seconds but Thomas is able to take several shots. “I knew these are rare shots,” he says, via phone from Mexico, where the Toronto-based photographer was on a holiday. 

When the female penguin lays an egg, she immediately leaves and goes looking for food for the next two months. During that period, the male balances the egg on its feet and covers it with its brood pouch, a layer of feathered skin. He stands still even when the temperatures go down, and there are icy winds and powerful storms. When the mother returns, she feeds the chick by regurgitating the food stored in the stomach. Soon,.the father goes out for food. “So, it is rare to get all three of them together,” says Thomas, who uses a Nikon D5 camera. “It turned out to be a unique shot.” 

The judges at the Bird Photographer of the Year contest conducted by the Society of International Nature and Wildlife Photographers concurred. Last month, out of 2000 entries worldwide, they said the shot taken by Thomas was the best. Incidentally, this is not his first win. Over the course of his two-decade career, Thomas has won over a thousand medals.     

But the Antarctica assignment was not an easy one. He flew from southern Chile to the Union Glacier Camp, a distance 2500 km. From there he took a Twin-Otter plane and landed on a sea ice in the Weddell Sea. “Going to the penguin colony was difficult,” says the Kottayam-born photographer. “To cover 14 km, it took me eight hours of walking in soft snow. The leg sinks till the knee.” 

But when he reached the colony, the penguins showed no fear. “They had not seen human beings before, so they were curious and friendly,” says Thomas. “Many tried to come close but I kept my distance, as I felt that my germs would be fatal for them.” 

This is his third visit to Antarctica. And tragically, he is seeing the effects of global warming first-hand. “Each time I go to a glacier, about 300 to 500m have melted,” says Thomas. “Many of the ice sheets have vanished. So, I do not doubt that it is leading to a disaster.” 

He says that in places like Alaska, Brazil and Australia, forest fires are happening because of the increase in temperature. “Last summer, I was in Alaska, and there were 60 incidents of forest fires,” says Thomas. “The whole sky was filled with smoke.” 

Thomas pauses and says, “We have destroyed the planet. It is too late for any course correction. What we can do is to slow down the process. I am 110 percent sure the planet will reach a stage where it will be impossible for humans and animals to live, because of the extreme temperatures.” 

Nevertheless, Thomas, an architect, feels he must do his bit to preserve the beauty of the earth through his photographs. He has travelled to the Arctic, Tanzania, Kenya, Japan, Russia, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Indonesia. 

Some time ago, he had gone to the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, where he took photos of the critically endangered crested black macaque. He also spent months in Siberia to take shots of the rarest cat in the world called the Amur leopard. “They are critically endangered and believed to be less than 40 in the world,” he says. 

Thomas says he feels recharged after each trip. “There is no luxury in wildlife photography,” he says. “It makes a man very simple.”