This week we welcomed back Jean Manson to the club to tell us more about her passion for wildlife conservation through the medium of photography. You can see some of Jean’s work in her gallery site and her Zoological Photographic Club page:
https://www.jeanmanson.gallery/browse/
https://zpc-naturefolio.weebly.com/jean-manson.html
Last time, Jean spoke to us about the wildlife in Alaska in “A Fragile Wilderness”, where she had remarked on the sparseness of the human population. This time, we learned about her recent visits to India, where the human population is much denser but there are still national parks devoted to preserving the natural wildlife. In 1973 the Indian government initiated Project Tiger, which set up wildlife reserves to protect the endangered Bengal tiger. Due to the success of that project, India now has the largest tiger population in the world. Jean visited two of those wildlife reserves:
Jean explained how her guides would track the tigers by looking for pugmarks, scratches and tell-tale alarm calls from other animals. She explained how tigers and leopards are in competition with each other, so you tend not to see both at the same time. During her visits she had seen more leopards in Satpura and more tigers in Bandhavgarh. She showed us photographs not only of the majestic tiger and leopard, but of birds, elephants, chital deer, monkeys, giant squirrel and a very rare grey wolf. Jean brought some of the prints and display boards from her recent exhibition at the Biggar Little Festival, and we finished the evening chatting and browsing through the prints. Thank you Jean for a very entertaining and enlightening evening.
- This Thursday, 4th December, we have our Black and White print competition, judged by Malcolm Lind.
- It’s also time to prepare entries for the Human Portrait print competition. The hand-in date is 11th December.
Musselburgh Camera Club 