Picture Stories by Stephen Alvarez

Guest Blog: Rosalie Winard

Avian Primitives by Rosalie Winard

Sandhill Cranes and Canada Geese

This is an image of great paradox for me. During the sandhill cranes' spring migration, I spent the night in a blind on a tiny island in the middle of the Platte River near Grand Island, Nebraska. I was surrounded by the voices of sandhill cranes, thousands of birds calling out simultaneously in an ongoing exchange of varying pitches and rhythms – a cacophony of communication throughout the night. By dawn, I could discern the call and response of individual birds above the buzz. As the light broke the symphony became a visual one as I saw the thousands of birds spread out before me…utter joy…

The North Platte Basin has always been a major migratory stop-over for cranes. But this great density of crane life I witnessed, this beautiful spectacle, is not natural or good for the birds. It has been created by the damming of the Platte River. Cranes’ population numbers have not significantly changed, but their riparian habitat has been so impacted the birds are crowding into smaller and smaller safe, viable roosting areas. Sandbars in the Platte, no longer scoured by seasonal flooding, have become forested and birds that historically nested on the temporary sandbars can no longer find open nesting areas and are plagued by predators on the wooded islands. Further crowding of roosting areas and changes in agricultural practices could have serious impacts on the cranes’ food resources…

I take these pictures because I love birds, I love watching their behaviors, their antics, their lives. But this wonderful ‘photo opportunity’ and ever expanding tourist attraction is imperiled.

Rosalie Winard

www.birdfactory.org

Wild Birds of the American Wetlands

Buy Wild Birds of the American Wetlands at B&N

Today's Guest Post

A confession: My internet reading is shameful, in quantity at least. But I adore a totally righteous wave of electronic information. So one day last month a dreamy little set led me to Rosalie Winard, via the New Yorker'€™s Book Bench.

I could smell the salt air and earthy marsh in her images. We exchanged cautious emails and eventually a 2-hour conversation that covered everyone/everything from Errol Morris to James Tanner. Rosalie, quite simply, takes pictures of big giant birds (in infrared,€“ I mean who still uses that? I asked her.) She talks intelligently about being in nature, habitat loss, and getting back to the things satisfying to your soul. I asked her to pick one picture, from her new book, Wild Birds of the American Wetlands, and tell us the story behind it.

April Alvarez

Good Bye to Digital Railroad

After much thought I am giving up my digital railroad account (www.archive.alvarezphotography.com).

It is a good company with a promissing service, but after 3 years I've concluded it just does not make financial sense for this business. When people want my photos they go to National Geographic Image Sales.

In fact in, in 3 years of service I have delivered exactly one photograph to a paying client. While I like the idea that people can search through my old pictures, it isn't worth $600/year to me. The last couple of times I tried to use it to deliver photos it was too cumbersome for the client to figure out and I ended up posting the images to my regular website.

It would be great to hear about other photographer's experiences with DRR or other image delivery sites.

It is too bad, I like the company, but with stock prices in a free fall the archive is a luxury I can't afford. As of Sept 21 the archive comes down.

-Stephen Alvarez

AWOL

Last time I heard from our tech Guru he was headed toward a hot tub in Santa Fe so no posts this week. It is hard to get good help, particularly given what we pay here, NOTHING.

I think that Geof will be back next week posting till his fingers are raw.

A quick note about help for free. My iphone was acting up (not charging), I took it to the Apple store in Nashville, sat down at the Genius Bar and 15 minutes later had a NEW PHONE. No worries, no hassle, no money. I was amazed by the customer service.

-Stephen Alvarez

Faith Healing: Pabbo Camp, Uganda

I am thinking about the Uganda-Sudan border a lot lately. Toward the end of August I am headed back to Gulu to work on my project there but also to teach -with Sara Terry- a group of students from Tufts University. The students are looking at the aftermath of 20+ years of war along the border. It will be interesting to see what they come up with in the week that they are spending in Gulu.

This picture sums up a lot of Northern Uganda. Here a former rebel soldier is being prayed over by people that she used to fight. They are literally praying out her demons. There is no sense of guilt for her past deeds as long as she is ready to be accepted back into the community.

-Stephen Alvarez

Don Beni part 7: "I have all this Gold"

This is #7 in a serialized post about one of my first assignments. It comes up most Mondays.

I didn't get really scared on this whole long weird trip until Don Beni offered me 2 kilos of gold. But I am getting ahead of myself....

We left Fabion's house and walked the 1/2 day to Don Beni's. At this point we had been on the trail a couple of weeks and were used to walking. But this was different. Previously we had walked up mountains, down mountains, across rivers, through the jungle. Now we were walking on level ground for the first time, through pasture, past Don Beni's herd of cows. THIS was the piece of flat land he had seen as a boy and decided to buy! The story was true after all.

Arriving at Don Beni's house he simply looked up and said, "ah Gringos" as if it were the most natural thing in the world that we would show up and want to talk with him. Almost the next thing from his mouth was that he had a calf he was wanting to kill.

That was a project that we all jumped into with gusto. Fresh meat and lots of it. Over the course of the next few days Don B was very forthcoming with his story. He described his life in the jungle, his decision to keep going after his wife quit, killing his son in law. In his version of the story the son in law was going to kill HIM in order to put a clandestine drug airstrip on his pasture.

Sometime during our visit 2 strangers showed up from Fabian's direction. They were there, they said, to look at one of his cows. They were very interested in what we were doing there, very friendly with the guides who where planning on extorting more money, very curious about what my cameras were worth...

By now, given how weird things were with the guides and the strange inter-group dynamics, I had a creeping sense of paranoia. I knew we were about to walk through the MRTA controlled valley to leave. I knew the guides were trying to figure out how to get more money out of me...

About then, the writer and I got left alone Don Beni. Everyone else had gone off to look at the level of the river to see if we could leave the next day.

Now my Spanish at the time was practically nonexistent but Don Beni and I talked through the writer. We talked about exploration, and my inexplicable drive to visit caves and find new passages. He thought about that for a long time then said something that made my heart stop.

"Tengo mucho oro" I have much gold perhaps you could take it with you, sell it and we could use the money to start an exploration company.

How much gold? Several kilos but I can get more. Where is it? Buried here and there. It seems that when Don B first explored the jungle he came across Inca sluice boxes in the rivers that were collecting ore.

This generous offer on Don Beni's part played straight into my paranoia. I was certain that if the guides got word that I had 2 kilos of gold in my pack they'd sell me out to the MRTA in a heart beat. I excused myself, went for a walk alone in the cornfield and started to bargain with God. "If you get me out of this alive, I swear I'l be a better person." Then I thought, next time fewer cameras and more guns...

Tunichil Muknal: Belize, pictures you have to make

Everyone's gotten a song stuck in their head that they can't shake.

Sometimes it is like that for me with images. The difference is that the image doesn't exist yet. A picture will appear inside my skull and haunt me until I manage to make it real. The only way to release this thing that is like a splinter in my mind is to give it a life of its own, set it free.

Do other photographers out there know what I mean? Surely you do. What about writers and musicians? Do you get ideas that float around inside you until you find a place to put them?

This picture of Jaime Awe swimming into Actun Tunichil Muknal is an example. I had been thinking of a photo of someone swimming into a cave for the longest time. I'd bought a special underwater housing that I carried on many assignments without using because the opportunity never came up. Eventually though, the perfect place, the perfect time came.

Jaime was a great subject, he swam through the water till we both turned blue from cold and I got to make my picture.

Of course, the magazine that hired me never ran the photo, they used the one below.

thats life...

Have a great weekend and if anyone has images they can't shake ratting around in their head lets hear about them.

-Stephen Alvarez

Guest Post: Sara Terry

I was surprised when I saw his picture -- I didn't recognize the man who had
been one of the world's most sought after war criminals for more than a
decade. But there he was, Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb former
political leader who had been the architect of the brutal "ethnic cleansing"
campaign that led to the killing of thousands of Bosnian Muslims during the
country's 1992-95 war. Wanted for war crimes by the international tribunal
at the Hague, he had been on the run for thirteen years -- disguising
himself, most recently, behind a long beard and glasses, while working at an
alternative medicine clinic in Belgrade.

I'd been in his shadow many times during my four-year project about the
aftermath of war in Bosnia. I'd shot in an Orthodox monastery in the eastern
part of the country, which had reputedly been one of his hiding places. I'd
spent countless hours with the Muslim widows of Srebrenica, who'd lost some
8,000 husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers in a 1995 massacre at the hands
of Bosnian Serb forces. And I'd wandered many times in cities that had
become Bosnian Serb strongholds -- unrepentant even in post-conflict Bosnia,
determined still to delusionally portray Bosnian Serbs as victims and
Bosnian Muslims as their victimizers.

It's an aftermath story, alright. A huge step towards bringing a reckoning
to the people of Bosnia. Few people that I knew during my time there cared
when former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic was caught and sent to the
Hague for his part in fomenting the war. The man they wanted to see on trial
was Karadzic, the insane architect of the catastrophic conflict. They are
still waiting for one more man to be found and brought to trial -- Ratko
Mladic, the Bosnian Serb who was Karadzic's right-hand, the leader of
Bosnian Serb military forces who carried out so many atrocities. The
aftermath goes on. . .

Sara Terry, photographer and founder of The Aftermath Project
www.bosniaaftermath.com
www.theaftermathproject.org
Aftermath. Bosnia's Long Road to Peace

SPLA outside Kajo Keji, Sudan

This is the SPLA, the Sudan People's Liberation Army as they were based outside of Kajo Keji, Sudan in 2003. Now they are deployed around Kansuk to "protect" the locals.

Its nice to be wrong sometimes. Back in June I had posted about the LRA's move toward Kajo Keji, Sudan.
I just received this email from my friend Tom Reeder who is returning from a visit to Kajo Keji.

He writes

"Hey Stephen, Was just catching up with your blog and saw the bit on the recent LRA attacks in Kansuk. Wanted you to know that we (DeeAnn and the kids and I, plus a team from my church) just got back from a three week trip to K-K, and all is well there. True, everyone’s “LRA radar” is up, but contrary to the published reports that the LRA was “headed toward Kajo-Keji,” they never showed up there. They definitely did some damage in Kansuk (we met a little girl whose dad was killed in the raid), but they moved on...just kind of evaporated into the bush as usual...

You wouldn’t believe how different K-K is... so different from when we first went there years ago. It’s full of people and building and development. The roads still SUCK but hey, one step at a time. Nearly all of those camps that we visited way back when in Uganda (Magburu, Mongalla 1 & 2, etc.) are nearly empty... most everyone has gone home. I hear Rhino camp is still pretty full though."

That is all good news. I am headed back in August.

-Stephen Alvarez

Don Beni part 6: "We'll give you a Machine Gun"

This is #6 in a serialized post about one of my first assignments. It comes up most Mondays.

"We'll give you a machine gun if you join us" is what the Tupac Amaru rebels told one of Don Beni's sons. At least that is the story he told us as we hacked through the jungle in search of a lost "Incan temple."

The son, Fabian I think, was not sure what he would do with a machine gun so declined the offer. When did they ask you this? Recently. Where were you? Oh right here at my farm...

2 days before we had shouldered our packs and headed out from La Morada. Some of us happy, the writer, the historian and I. One of us indifferent, our body guard, and two distinctly unhappy porters. We had survived crossing a river, climbing a mountain and a night spent up guarding against jaguar attack only to be told we were in Rebel controlled country.

Great...

The Incan Temple turned out to be a Chachapoyan temple. Chachapoyan, wasn't Indian Jones looking for Chachapoyan artifacts in the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark when he was betrayed by his guides? The temple had been discovered years before by Don Beni's family as they cleared land for a farm.

That night back at Fabian's house I went to the porter's packs to pull out some of the freeze dried food I had brought to share with the family. I found their packs amazingly light and the food was not there! It seems that our porters had been dumping food along the way. It seems they were planning to extort more money from us when we ran out of food. The historian had found out about this plan earlier and told them to get serious. Betrayed by your guides indeed...

The good news was that Don Beni was only a day's walk away.