Martin Gray is an anthropologist and photographer specializing in the study of sacred architecture, holy places, and pilgrimage traditions around the world.
During his career, he has traveled widely, visiting some 80 countries to study and photograph more than a thousand holy places of prehistoric, historic, and contemporary cultures.
In his travels, he recognized that the sacred places he saw were repositories of many of the world's greatest artistic and cultural treasures. But because of their out-of-doors locations and their resulting exposure to industrial pollution, these structures do not receive the protection given to paintings, sculptures, and other museum art. In light of this, his research and travels took on greater purpose. Public attention needed to be drawn to the degraded condition of these art pieces to preserve them for the benefit and education of future generations. To this end, he created a multi-projector slide show of his work, which has been presented at museums, universities, and conferences around the world.
Gray has conducted extensive studies of sacred site mythology and the history of religions and anthropology, and he is an expert in the subjects of ancient religion, sacred geography, archaeoastronomy, and ecopsychology. In 2004 National Geographic published the book The Geography of Religion, for which Gray was a principal photographer.
Although I’ve been shooting an overabundance of wildlife, I thought it might be a good idea to talk about my experience shooting people on this trip. I do love and appreciate nature, but I’ll admit my style of documentary filmmaking predominately comprises of intimate portraits. My work focuses on people with the visuals driven by strong cinema vérité and compelling interviews. It’s been interesting shooting wildlife because you don’t necessary have a human connection. While there’s definitely an energy and rush I get when I film animals, especially during an action scene (I shot vultures devouring a rotting elephant carcass the other day and it was magnificent. If only we had “smellavision”. The stench was beyond pungent!), you can’t interview the animals…
Thus, my solution was to also film as many people as I could on this trip in order to get some sort of background, knowledge, and voice that could guide the superb wildlife visuals. So far, I’ve interviewed the Chief Park Warden, two park rangers, and the Tourism Park Warden of Tarangire National Park. I also interviewed two chief leaders of a local Maasai Tribe near Tarangire. On the AWF side of the spectrum, I’ve interviewed students and teachers from the AWF funded Manyara Ranch Primary School and a guy named Rama, who runs an AWF WMA (Wildlife Management Area) in Burunge. In case you’re wondering, WMAs are community lands operating as a protected area and typically comprised of a collection of villages. These villages agree to follow certain conservation agreements as a means of obtaining wildlife tourism revenues or other benefits that may come about from conservation.
I’ve been learning tremendously about the importance of conservation from these people who make it their life’s work to protect and nurture the wildlife and wild lands of Africa. While everyone has a different take on the various conservation issues within the Maasai Steppe Landscape, the overall consensus is that conservation is absolutely necessary not only for the livelihood of wildlife and the economy, but more importantly, “for the sake of future generations.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that line said over and over again.
Although meeting and interviewing this eclectic mix of people has been absolutely rewarding, there have been many challenges throughout the production process. First off, one must understand that filmmaking is a collaborative art. Shooting and even photographing wildlife can easily be managed by one person, but when you’re one-band-manning an interview…it’s quite a hilarious site to see. You’re doing the job of three people: managing sound, while managing the camera, while managing the subject, and asking the questions. It’s especially exciting when the interview is in Swahili. Thank God for my driver/fixer/interview translator, Dickson. I don’t know what I’d do without him. If there’s one talent I gained on this trip, it has definitely been the art of multi-tasking. Never thought I’d play the role of director, producer, sound mixer, and DP.
However, it’s all in a day’s work and what I enjoy most about documentary filmmaking. Not only do I love wearing multiple hats, but also, I take pride in being a voice and platform to people who would otherwise never get the chance to tell their story. Nonfiction is my favorite type of filmmaking because you are confronted with real human emotion and challenges. More to come about my last week here with Bob Poole!
Dan Duran is the winner of the first annual Wild to Inspire short film contest, launched last year in partnership with the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) and the Sun Valley Film Festival. As the winner, he’ll be documenting Tanzania’s dynamic Manyara–Tarangire ecosystem, which includes Tarangire and Lake Manyara National Parks and the AWF-managed Manyara Ranch Conservancy. This is the first post in a series where he’ll spotlight Africa’s wild side and share his experiences from the field as a wildlife filmmaker.
Want to follow in Dan’s footsteps? Enter the second annual Wild to Inspire short film contest through January 17th – visit natgeowild.com/wildtoinspire for more details.
An ecologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society and an explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, Mike Fay was an early naturalist, exploring the Sierra Nevadas and the Maine woods as a boy. He later took on Alaska, Central America, and North Africa. For the past few decades, he has explored the depths of central Africa's forests and savannas.
Fay was born in September 1956 in Plainfield, New Jersey, and grew up in Pasadena, California. He received a B.S. degree in 1978 from the University of Arizona and then spent six years as a Peace Corps botanist, working in national parks in Tunisia and in the savannas of the Central African Republic. In 1984 he began working with botanist Peter Raven at the Missouri Botanical Garden, first to do a floristic study on a mountain range on Sudan's western border, but ultimately studying the western lowland gorilla. It was at this time that he first entered the forests of central Africa.
Doctoral work was put off several times—he graduated in 1997—while he surveyed large forest blocks and worked to create and manage the Dzanga-Sangha and Nouabale-Ndoki parks in the Central African Republic and Congo.
In 1996 Fay started flying a small airplane low over the forests of Congo and Gabon and realized that there was a vast, intact forest corridor that spanned these two countries from the Oubangui River to the Atlantic Ocean. In 1997 he decided to walk the entire corridor—more than 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers)—systematically surveying trees, wildlife, and human impact on 12 uninhabited forest blocks in a project he called the Megatransect (covered in National Geographic in 2000 and 2001). His objective was to bring to the world's attention the last pristine swaths of forest in central Africa and the need to protect them. This work led to a historic initiative by the Gabonese government to create a system of 13 national parks in Gabon.
For a year, Fay worked at setting up park management infrastructure in Gabon's Loango National Park and wrote an article for National Geographic called "Land of the Surfing Hippos."
In 2004 he conducted an eight-month aerial survey at 300 feet (91 meters), flying across the entire African continent on a project called the Megaflyover. He logged 800 hours and took 116,000 vertical images of the human footprint on associated ecosystems. The Megaflyover is the subject of "Tracing the Human Footprint" in the September 2005 issue of National Geographic.
Recently Fay has been working in Chad and Sudan, working to establish a new conservation initiative. In 2007 he began a new mission to help study the redwood forest and to get Americans thinking about global warming. He plans to walk the entire range of the redwood tree, more than 700 miles (1,100 kilometers).
Horses and humans have an ancient relationship. Asian nomads probably domesticated the first horses some 4,000 years ago, and the animals remained essential to many human societies until the advent of the engine. Horses still hold a place of honor in many cultures, often linked to heroic exploits in war.
There is only one species of domestic horse, but around 400 different breeds that specialize in everything from pulling wagons to racing. All horses are grazers.
While most horses are domestic, others remain wild. Feral horses are the descendents of once-tame animals that have run free for generations. Groups of such horses can be found in many places around the world. Free-roaming North American mustangs, for example, are the descendents of horses brought by Europeans more than 400 years ago.
Wild horses generally gather in groups of 3 to 20 animals. A stallion (mature male) leads the group, which consists of mares (females) and young foals. When young males become colts, at around two years of age, the stallion drives them away. The colts then roam with other young males until they can gather their own band of females.
The Przewalski's horse is the only truly wild horse whose ancestors were never domesticated. Ironically, this stocky, sturdy animal exists today only in captivity. The last wild Przewalski's horse was seen in Mongolia in 1968.
Moose are the largest of all the deer species. Males are immediately recognizable by their huge antlers, which can spread 6 feet (1.8 meters) from end to end. Moose have long faces and muzzles that dangle over their chins. A flap of skin known as a bell sways beneath each moose's throat.
Moose are so tall that they prefer to browse higher grasses and shrubs because lowering their heads to ground level can be difficult. In winter they eat shrubs and pinecones, but they also scrape snow with their large hooves to clear areas for browsing on mosses and lichens. These hooves also act as snowshoes to support the heavy animals in soft snow and in muddy or marshy ground.
In summer, food is far more plentiful in the northern regions of North America, Europe, and Asia. When the ice melts, moose are often seen in lakes, rivers, or wetlands, feeding on aquatic plants both at and below the surface. Moose are at home in the water and, despite their staggering bulk, are good swimmers. They have been seen paddling several miles at a time, and will even submerge completely, staying under for 30 seconds or more.
Moose are similarly nimble on land. They can run up to 35 miles (56 kilometers) an hour over short distances, and trot steadily at 20 miles (32 kilometers) an hour.
Males, called bulls, bellow loudly to attract mates each September and October. The usually solitary bulls may come together at this time to battle with their antlers for mating supremacy. After mating, the two sexes go their separate ways until the following year. Though they may occasionally feed in the same grounds, they tend to ignore each other.
Females give birth to one or two calves in the spring—each weighing some 30 pounds (14 kilograms). These calves grow quickly and can outrun a person by the time they are just five days old. Young moose stay with their mothers until the following mating season.
The angry-looking deep sea anglerfish has a right to be cranky. It is quite possibly the ugliest animal on the planet, and it lives in what is easily Earth's most inhospitable habitat: the lonely, lightless bottom of the sea.
There are more than 200 species of anglerfish, most of which live in the murky depths of the Atlantic and Antarctic oceans, up to a mile below the surface, although some live in shallow, tropical environments. Generally dark gray to dark brown in color, they have huge heads and enormous crescent-shaped mouths filled with sharp, translucent teeth. Some angler fish can be quite large, reaching 3.3 feet (1 meter) in length. Most however are significantly smaller, often less than a foot.
Their most distinctive feature, worn only by females, is a piece of dorsal spine that protrudes above their mouths like a fishing pole—hence their name. Tipped with a lure of luminous flesh this built-in rod baits prey close enough to be snatched. Their mouths are so big and their bodies so pliable, they can actually swallow prey up to twice their own size.
The male, which is significantly smaller than the female, has no need for such an adaptation. In lieu of continually seeking the vast abyss for a female, it has evolved into a permanent parasitic mate. When a young, free-swimming male angler encounters a female, he latches onto her with his sharp teeth. Over time, the male physically fuses with the female, connecting to her skin and bloodstream and losing his eyes and all his internal organs except the testes. A female will carry six or more males on her body.
The giant panda has an insatiable appetite for bamboo. A typical animal eats half the day—a full 12 out of every 24 hours—and relieves itself dozens of times a day. It takes 28 pounds (12.5 kilograms) of bamboo to satisfy a giant panda's daily dietary needs, and it hungrily plucks the stalks with elongated wrist bones that function rather like thumbs. Pandas will sometimes eat birds or rodents as well.
Wild pandas live only in remote, mountainous regions in central China. These high bamboo forests are cool and wet—just as pandas like it. They may climb as high as 13,000 feet (3,962 meters) to feed on higher slopes in the summer season.
Pandas are often seen eating in a relaxed sitting posture, with their hind legs stretched out before them. They may appear sedentary, but they are skilled tree-climbers and efficient swimmers.
Giant pandas are solitary. They have a highly developed sense of smell that males use to avoid each other and to find females for mating in the spring. After a five-month pregnancy, females give birth to a cub or two, though they cannot care for both twins. The blind infants weigh only 5 ounces (142 grams) at birth and cannot crawl until they reach three months of age. They are born white, and develop their much loved coloring later.
There are only about 1,000 giant pandas left in the wild. Perhaps 100 pandas live in zoos, where they are always among the most popular attractions. Much of what we know about pandas comes from study of these zoo animals, because their wild cousins are so rare and elusive.
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