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Sarpanch Sanju's Tigerland - Stories of Wild India
  • On my last business trip to India I stumbled across fascinating stories about the local people and wild animals sharing the same territory when visiting Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve. These people together with the Indian Government show us, how India's rich heritage of wild animals like tigers, leopards and bears can be successfully preserved in their habitat while at the same time local people gain new possibilities to make a living, such that both can live together and grow.

    I only had two days to film there and in no way can my little film give an accurate representation of the fascinating fauna and flora of this amazing Tiger Reserve, which streches over 2000 km².

    Nevertheless I consider myself very lucky as we have seen a tigress with her 3 cubs already on the first day - I heard people say that over the course of 10 days they have not seen anything.

    Also, a very big thank you to my colleague and friend Parag Aklujkar who introduced me to this fascinating side of wild India, having all the local contacts (e.g. to Sanjay Mondhe and Nilkanth Magare) and opening up the world of wildlife photographers of India to me, of which he is a very active member. From his friend Yuvraj Patil he was able to get photos of the tigress when she herself was still a baby, thank you Yuvraj for allowing me to use these photos in the film!

    Music by AJ Hochhalter "Jessamine", licenced from themusicbed.com

    Shot on my new Sony A7s II, all dayscenes in SLOG2, all nightscenes in SLOG3, using the Sgamut3.cine color profile. Graded in DaVinci Resolve. The difficulties in shooting this was that you are not allowed to leave the car, and on the car you cannot use a tripod as the car is constantly moving and shaking. Hence I had to do this handheld, and here the new IBIS of the Sony A7s II comes perfectly into play. Even up to 300mm I find the footage still usable. All shot in 4k for FHD delivery. One mistake I made was that I bought a cheap 10€ Tamron 60-300mm lens which I found too soft for 4k. Additional lenses uses was a Canon FD 28mm f2.8 and a Canon FL 55mm f1.2.

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    Let me know what you think!