It is a November morning. Photographer Thomas Vijayan is lying on the ice at a penguin colony in Antarctica. Several feet away, an Emperor Penguin and his wife stand behind a baby penguin, their beaks almost touching as they look down on their newly-hatched baby. The moments last just a few seconds, but Thomas is able to capture it. “I knew those were rare shots,” he says on call while vacationing in Mexico.
After the female penguin lays an egg, she immediately leaves in search of food and stays away for the next two months. During that time, the male balances the egg on its feet and covers it with a brood pouch—a layer of feathered skin. When the mother returns, she feeds the chick by regurgitating the food stored in its stomach. Soon, the father goes out for food. “It is quite rare to get three of them together. The shot is unique,” says Thomas, who uses a Nikon D5 camera.
Last month, out of 2,000 entries worldwide, the judges at the Bird Photographer of the Year conducted by the Society of International Nature and Wildlife Photographers picked Thomas’ picture named ‘My family’ for the first prize. 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 of 2,500 km. From there, he took a Twin-Otter plane and landed on sea ice in the Weddell Sea. “Going to the penguin colony was difficult,” says the Kottayam-born photographer. “It took me eight hours of walking in soft snow to cover 14km. You are knee-deep in snow.”
But when he reached the colony, the penguins showed no fear.
“It was their first time around humans, so they were curious and friendly,” says Thomas. “Though many of them tried coming close, I kept my distance. I didn’t want to infect them with germs I may be carrying,” he said. On his third visit to Antarctica, Thomas got to see the effects of global warming first-hand. “Each time I visit, the glaciers would have melted up to 500m. Many of the ice sheets have vanished,” says Thomas, implying an impending disaster.
“We have destroyed the planet. It is too late for any course correction. All we can do is try and slow down the process. Soon, it might get too hot for humans to live here,” he says. Nevertheless, Thomas, an architect, is doing his bit to preserve the planet by taking beautiful pictures of everything we are endangering.
He has clicked photos of the critically endangered crested black macaque on Sulawesi Island in Indonesia. He has also spent months in Siberia to capture Amur leopards, the rarest cat in the world. “They are critically endangered and less than 40 of them are believed to be left in the world,” he says.