I am currently ending a trip in the Brazilian Highlands, inaugurating my first digital camera (digital equipment costs 2.5 times the US price here in Brazil). I captured each image both in RAW and in JPEG, so I could post some images on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/jacques.jangoux). I am trying to post about one image a day. Back home in Belém I will work on the RAW files and post them on my website, jungleview.com. The images show aspects of the savanna biome, and of the geology and geomorphology of the area, including the Itiquira waterfall in the State of Goiás, and the Vale da Lua (Moon Valley) in the Chapada dos Veadeiros. So if you want a preview go to Facebook; more images will be on my website soon.
This post won´t be about a specific pilots, but about some flights I took on small planes, during which I took pictures. All happened to be in Africa.
The first of these occurred in 1962 in Niger, where I went after finishing botanical field work In Burkina Faso (then Upper Volta). A mining company offered me a plane ride from In Abangarit in the Sahara desert, which I had reached by truck, back to Niamey. We flew over the medieval Tuareg caravan city of Agadez, notable for its mosque (center left on photograph).
Another flight was offered by missionaries in Liberia after I had photographed tribal life for a textbook company. I photographed two villages of the Kpelle tribe, one village next to the Saint Paul River.
The third occasional flight was in Gabon, where I took a short flight around the capital Libreville. On this flight I photographed floating logs ready for export in the harbor, witnesses to the destruction of the African rainforest.
So there I was, on my first trip to the Latin America, specifically Central America. I flew from Brussels to New York, took a Greyhound bus to Miami, and flew to San José, Costa Rica, to join a volcano specialist who was studying the eruption of the Irazú volcano. We didn´t get along well, so I split and I went to Guatemala, a trip I will always remember. I first wondered around the lowlands. The highlights of that first part were the Maya ruins of Quirigua, and a colorful procession in one of three Ixil (a Maya language) villages, Nebaj. I went then to Huehuetenango at the base of the Cuchumatanes mountains. I had seen colorfully dressed Indians at the market. Showing a map to a local resident, I pointed to an empty space, and I asked him: “What is there?” He replied: “Nothing”. So next day I was taking a bus on a dirt road to nowhere… and to an experience I will never forget. I sked the driver to stop at the bifurcation of a smaller road going to Todos Santos Cuchumatanes. I had a 16 km hike to reach the village as night was falling. In the first few days I spent the night in the Catholic mission, eating in a local Indian “comedor”. Todos Santos lied in a beautiful valley among mountains, unfortunately I don´t have images online yet because I was shooting Kodachrome, which my Nikon 5000 scanner cannot handle; I will need to have drum scans made. A characteristic of Maya Indian villages (and of many Indian villages in Mexico) is that each one has its specific identifying dress, especially the women; in Todos Santos Cuchumatanes the men also wear very distinctive red and white striped pants (unfortunately my photographs were taken with Kodachrome, which my Nikon 5000 scanner cannot handle; I will need to have drum scans made). I will illustrate the difference in dressing of two neighboring villages speaking the Mam Maya language with images of two little girls, one from Todos Santos Cuchumatanes, the other from San Juan Atitan., the latter showing a beautiful handwoven huipil (a kind of poncho-like blouse worn by Central American Indian women) with a traditional pattern specific of the village.
A parenthesis here: I don´t remember if it happened in Costa Rica or in Guatemala: my Canonflex (a wonderful concept camera) had a problem, and I had to go by bus to Panama, where the Canon representative for Latin America was then, to have it fixed. While In Panama I bought a Miranda tape recorder, with which I later made recordings of native music of Guatemala, later published by Folkways Records (now Smithsonian Folkways): Music of Guatemala, Vol.1 and Music of Guatemala, Vol.2.
… more tomorrow…
Images featured in gallery: Nature, geology, geomorphology: Guiana, Brazil Shields: Angel Falls, Amazon, coast, USA: CA, AZ, HI (previously: Nature, geology, scenics: Venezuela: Angel Falls, Brazil, Chile, USA: Hawaii: Kauai, California, Arizona, Belgium; website page to be updated)
East South America geomorphology: I oversimplified a very complex geological system. Basically Eastern South America consists of pre-cambrian mountainous areas cut by sedimentary river valleys. The mountainous areas consist of an early Pre-Cambrian crystalline shield partially covered by lte Pre-Cambrian metamorphic sedimentary platforms. The complex of shields and platforms is called craton. For better definitions see the following Wikipedia link:
The Amazonia craton is divided by the sedimentary Amazon basin into the Guiana Shield (characteristic with its tepuis),
and the Central Brazilian Shield. It presents geological affinities with the West African craton. The São Francisco craton
(consisting of the Serra do Espinhaço mountain chain) is related to the Congo craton in Africa. A list of shields and
cratons with a Mesoproterozoic map, when Africa and South America where united, is found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Platforms,_Shields_and_Cratons
Most of the Amazon basin, the southern part of the Guiana Shield and the northern part of the Central Brazil Shield are covered with rainforest, whereas the northern Guiana Highlands and the southern Brazilian Highlands are covered with savanna (called cerrado in Brazil), with forest galleries (mata ciliar in Brazil) along the rivers ans saxicolous vegetation (called campos rupestres in Brazil) in altitude rocky habitats. This will help situate the geological periods mentioned in the other links.
Geology.com - Earth Science News, Maps, Dictionary, Articles, Jobs : articles on various aspects of geology.
Pangea Continent Map - Continental Drift - Supercontinent : maps showing the continental drifts from the original Pangea
Geologic time scale - Wikipedia : This will help situate the geological periods mentioned in the other links.GUIANA SHIELD a geological history of the Guiana Shield, informing that originally the Amazon was flowing to the Pacific Ocean, and that the raise of the Andes reversed its flow to the current one, into the Atlantic.
Amazon River Once Flowed in Opposite Direction : Another article indicating that he Amazon was flowing toward the Pacific
However… Researchers reconstruct Amazon River history - Headlines … I will need to continue research on the subject…
After commenting off-topic on Facebook with Jorge Parra on Venezuelan pilots on Gail Mooney´ page, I decide to write some anecdotes on flying on my blog (too long for the 420 character limite of Facebook).
My first pilot in Venezuela was Tex Palmer, being Texan he was a real cowboy bush pilot, working the diamond mines in the rainforest. He was the only one who could land at a small mine airstrip between mountains in cloudy weather. Others tried and killed themselves. I did only one flight with him, going from Caicara (where he lived) to San Juan de Manapiare with an anthropologist and his wife. For such classy passengers he put back the safety belts and did a complete check-up of his plane. After leaving us in SJM he did some acrobatics over the small town. A few years later during his annual checkup he had high blood pressure, and he was prohibited to fly. I visited him once in the small town on the Orinoco River where he lived a simple life. I didn´t hear about him for several years, but I learned later than, deprived of his life passion, he commited suicide. Quite a character… Next pilots: Boris Kaminski and Willi Michel in Venezuela, and “Cabinho” in Brazil.
Yes, I did the June-July trip and a November 2009 trip, always in the Brazilian Highlands. I will do a short trip there February 2 -8 2010, then a longer trip, always in the chapadas (plateaus) of the Brazilian Highlands in April - May 2010. Then certainly in August as the Rally dos Sertões this year will be in August. It will pass through northern Minas Gerais State, which is a beautiful region, it should be interesting. Starting, as always, from Goiania, it will end in Fortaleza (Ceará).
(post still being edited)
My website
For each gallery I will mention a few selected images or subjects.
Gallery collection: cultures
Babies, children, teenagers:
Brazil Economy (
Latin America: Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Guatemala, Mexico: Maya stela at Quirigua ruins in Guatemala; Bolivia: mother and baby at market in La Paz; Quechua Indians playing flute; Aymara Indian chewing coca leaves; Mexico: textiles, folk medicines on display
Indian tribes in Brazil (1)
Europe (Belgium: beech forest, Holland: tulip fields), USA (
Agriculture: tulip fields in Holland, sugar cane plantations, coconut plantation, tomato harvest, slash-and-burn agriculture by Indians of Venezuela.
Environment
Religion, Colonial churches, Shamanism, Social issues: hypnotic spirit possession transe during Afro-Brazilian religion ceremony; curing ritual by Brazilian Indian shamans; river procession, colonial churches in Brazil
Auto racing: historic (Le Mans 1967, Jim Clark, Enzo Ferrari); rally dos Sertoes 2009 in Brazil
Gallery collections: nature
Concepts and processes
Amazon floodplain, rivers, waterfalls, forest fire; Carajás Iron Mine;
Angel Falls / Salto Angel, highest waterfall in world; tepui; Kauai Island: Mount Waialeale, Na Pali coast.
waterfalls; Amazon River and floodplain; Brazilian and Venezuelan
Highlands; plateaus, brazilian coast; Atacama desert in Chile; Hawaii:
Kauai Island; California: Big Sur coast; Arizona: Canyon de Chelly;
Belgium: beech trees in Foret de Soignes near Brussels.
(in construction - more galleries to be added)
Additional pages are:
Scientific names of plants, animals
Recommended Books on biomes, rainforest, cerrado (Brazilian savannas), field guides, palms, begonias, books in Portuguese on the Cerrado and its flora (numerous photographs)…
Links
Business Networks
LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter
Rubicon Trail Off Road Community Network (social network)
COLOURIA CONNECT: Collective promotional blog for professional photographers
Two Brazilian artists: a lanscape architect, a photographer… and a Belgian “exiled”
This was first published as a post on LinkedIn <http://tinyurl.com/klxvzb>I recently was in Sao Paulo where I visited an exhibit of the
world-famous Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx. I was
never much impressed by his gardens and parks: I find them cold,
unrelated to nature. What I didn´t know is that before using plants as
an art medium he was a painter and sculptor (among many other things).
I liked very much some of his paintings. But then he thought of using
another medium for his creativity: plants. He expressed himself through
plants instead of through painting, so his landscape creations are an
image of himself, not an image of nature. As I love nature, I much
prefer to see plants in their natural landscaping. It is harmonious by
itself, with no need of a strong personality to modify it.
Another famous Brazilian artist is photographer Sebastiao Salgado,
famous for his images of people living in harsh conditions in northeast
Brazil and elsewhere. He also somehow transforms reality, but, in my
opinion, instead of imposing himself on reality, he multiplies reality,
giving it an emotional impact on pictures that might otherwise be plain
documentary pictures. Salgado is one of my favorite photographers
(along with Frans Lanting for nature photography).
And what about the Belgian “exiled” photographer? I wouln´t dare
to compare myself to any of the two artists above. I try in my
photography to show people or nature just as they are, trying to remove
myself from the photograph. When I work with people I may spend days
without taking pictures, until I am, to them, part of the environment.
For nature I may go for a hike without my camera, to get a feel of the
environment. Of course if I happen to carry my camera and I see
something unexpected and interesting I will photograph it.
My goals are to enjoy nature and contact with local people, photograph
what I enjoy, and selling it by necessity (to fulfill the first two
goals, and to sustain my family)
I enjoy going to remote, little known places, leaving the city stress behind. I
currently photograph the Cerrado (savannas) and rural people of the Central Brazil Highlands, in a region with no cell phone and no internet. If local people want to talk to someone they get on their horse and go there.
Once in Kisangani, I was in a friend´s car with my luggage. I must confess that after my military service I “borrowed” a few military clothes because they were good to go in the bush. And is it not that we were stopped at a military checkpoint? They opened my luggage, and found the military clothes. OK, I was a Belgian spy, and I was taken prisoner. They took me to the military base, where,whilegoing to the commandr´s office, the soldier´s wives were throwing earth at me. The commander started questioning me, I tld me I was just travelling around to know thecountry, but he didn´t seemto believe me and at a certain point he pulled his gun, made the sign of te cross and pointed his gun at my head. Then, for some reason (maybe he had never killed someone before), he changed his mind, but he placed three soldiers, each with a gun pointed at my head from a different direction so I couldn´t move, to guard me. Later on I was taken to the civilian Province Governor´s office. He looked at my notebooks, and concluded that I was really traveling and not a danger to the country, and he decided that I should go to the civilian jail. At least I was away from the military. Next day United Nations troops from Ethiopia had arrived, and itwas decided I would be expelled to Ethiopia. I was taken to the airport, ad while I waited, a Congolese military jeep arived and took me back. They said: “Today we will kill you”. But I was taken instead back to the civilian jail. A small historical interruption: a riot in which the now Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba participated had taken place in the Congo in 1959. Lumuma was imprisoned in thesame jail where I was. The Jail Director came to me and told me proudly: your cell is next to the cell where Monsieur le Premier Ministre was imprisoned. So I was there for ten days, having the right, being white and as in colonial times, to meals from the city´s restaurants. The Africans had just prison food. I was expecting all the time that the military would come back and execute me.Then on the 10th day, a surprise: I had a visit! It was a red cross representative, who had come to rescue me from jail. His name was Mr. Senn, a Swede living in what was then Rhodesia. He took me out, got me on a plane to the capital Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, flying with me, and staying with me all the time to make sure the military wouldn´t get me back,until I was on a refugee plane to Belgium. I learned later (from a Red Cross LinkedIn member, a connection of a friend of mine) that Mr. Senn had been head of the prison system in Sweden, and was now the Red Cross specialist in visiting jailed political prisoners and in taking people out of jail in troubled countries. The same person told me that Mr.Senn later visited Nelson Mandela in his jail, and that he was able to improve his prisoner´s conditions. So I was back in Belgium. But the story doesn´t end here. I read months later in a Belgian newspaper that, in the Congolese political and civil war turmoil, both the Province Governor and the military commander who nearly killed me were made prisoners by one of the fighting factions, taken to the Province of Kasai and executed, then… eaten. I got back to studying botany, which I had abandoned before my military service.
After coming back from my last trip to the Brazilian Highlands on April
30, I am already planning my next trip in early June, although I have a
huge backlog of Photoshop waiting on my hard disk. But my love for the
Highlands, its beautiful landscapes, the flowers in the savanna all
year long (but each time of the year different), the small farmers and
cowboys living in adobe houses covered with palm thatch, the dirt
mountain roads… all this beats my need to work on Photoshop. My 4×4
Ranger pickup is already being prepared by MENESES OFF-ROAD,
. The synchronization of 3rd to 2nd and 2nd to 1st has to be fixed, on
my last trip I had to double-clutch all the time on dirt mountain roads
(it added to the fun). A new gearbox is too expensive, and the
available third-party synchronization parts are of poor quality.
Meneses is still looking for a used gearbox in good condition.
Meanwhile he is preparing two cars for the RALLY DOS SERTOES,
probably the toughest rally after Dakar, which was run in Argentina and
Chile this year because of terrorist threats in Mauritania. Actually
the same team won the Sertoes last year and Dakar this year with a
Volkswagen Touareg. A blog showing the obstacles this year
(but not saying where: it will be revealed to the pilots and navigators
only the day previous to each stage) is worth having a look at. Don´t
forget to click on “Próxima” after scrolling down each page. I hope to
be able to photograph the preparation of the cars (they are completely
modified) and Meneses told me I would possibly be able to accompany one
of his support cars (which follow a parralel route) at least for one of
the stages. Before and after the
race I will be in the highlands with my small farmer and cowboy
friends, and enjoy finding my way among the rocks to take photographs
of the beautiful nature of the highland rocky savanna, finding flowers
I have never seen before. Hopefully the Vellozias will be in full
bloom. I am buying a car-top tent that opens automatically when you pull down the ladder, it will stand on a metal frame so
the rear cargo area of my Ranger can still be used (image at bottom of Meneses´site, without the added metal frame).
As I said on my post of 07/17/2008, some of my first pictures were “anthropological” pictures of gypsies near my parent´s home in Brussels. Someone asked me to publish them in this blog. These pictures were some of my first photographs ever. I don´t think I had taken more than 50 (perhaps even 20) pictures before. The first picture is a composite pseudo-panoramic using two pictures taken from a slightly different angle (the same boy appears on both) to give a general view of the camp. Can an expert recognize the cars?
.
Gypsy family near Brussels, c. 1957
Gypsy camp near Brussels, c. 1957
Gypsy girl with small boy and baby in trailer near Brussels, c. 1957
All pictures © Jacques Jangoux 2009
(these images are not ready for publishing: they were scanned with the discontinued amateur Olympus scanner at low resolution and are full of scratches (you can see them).Whenever I have time (when? when???) I may try to scan them with my Nikon 5000. I am not sure if Digital Ice will work with silver halide film; some say that it works if you scan as color negative).
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I will be traveling in the last days of March, 2009 again to the Brazilian Highlands, until the end of april or the first half of May. My Ranger 4×4 pick-up is being prepared in Brasília in a shop specializing in preparing cars for off-road rallies (they will have a 2-car team in the Rally dos Sertões, probably the toughest one after the Dakar rally), so it should be in top shape to go to remote places where small farmers and cowboys still live in adobe houses covered with palm thatch, and that can be reached only by mountain dirt or gravel (or mud!) roads. No internet, no cell phone. When people want to talk to someone they get on their horse and go there. Good place to throw away the stress of the city… I plan also to photograph the preparation of the cars for the rally, and hopefully get a ride with one of the drivers… You know, when the car pulls 3 feet high, or takes a turn completely sideways on dirt roads. The 10-day rally across central Brazil will be at the end of June/early July, but the itinerary has not yet been revealed. A soon as it is published, I plan, if Photoshop leaves me any time after the April trip, to locate a good spot to photograph it.
I hope to have a batch from my previous trip in the region online before the trip, but I had problems with my computer and now with my monitor (after “calibrating” it with one of these spider gizmos the colors are completely off). March 18: got a new monitor, but still tweaking the calibration, as I have to adjust to LCD. Jacques
I mentioned that after the Leica III F I got a Canonflex, in 1959, not long after it was launched. I used it during my military service in the Congo (then a Belgian colony). When my military service ended I stayed in the Congo, hitchhiking across the country from Katanga in the south-east to the Ruwenzori Mountains, the Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira volcanoes in the north-east. I was using the first Kodachrome which had an ASA (now ISO) of 10. I still have an image taken in 1960 online at the Getty Stone collection made with the combination Canonflex - Kodachrome I in the Congo:
Go to gettyimages.com, Image, Creative, Rights-Managed, and search for my name (TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/bea7zw). It´s the African woman with a lip ornament).
A thing I loved about the Canonflex was its bottom left winding lever. You didn´t need to take your eye off the camera to advance film. Apparently (from a Google search) some photographers didn´t like it because it made it difficult to follow-focus or to use on a tripod.
OK, back to the Congo. Independence day was coming. From Kisangani (then Stanleyville) I went to a small town in Central Congo to assist at more traditional festivities, essentially dance to the sound of drums. After a few days rumors started running that a revolt was happening in Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) - or was it in the Katanga, or both? Anyway I hiked a ride on a truck back to Stanleyville/Kisangani. To continue in a dramatic next chapter… (probably after my March - April trip)
Hello,
As I said on my post of 07/17/2008 some of my first pictures, and my first “anthropological” pictures, were of Gypsies in the Brussels suburbs where my parents lived. Those pictures were taken with a Leica F III with an Elmar 3.5 lens. A wonderful camera, but what I miss most is the focusing lever, that allowed you to preset your distance and with experience have very little focusing to do.Then some “genius” came up with the idea of a focusing ring. Previous to the Leica I had taken some landscape pictures with my father´s Rolleyflex. Somehow around the Leica period I got to like jazz music. I still do, especially the period starting in 1941 at Minton´s Playhouse in Harlem where, under the influence of Coleman Hawkin´s playing, Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian and others gave jazz a new form that came to be known as bebop. The apogee came, at least to me, in the fifties, best ilustrated, perhaps, by the works of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. It lasted into the sixties when it morphed into soul (some great soul music, by the way). But I was talking about photography, wasn´t I? So I started photgraphing jazz musicians giving concerts in Brussels: Coleman Hawkins, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Dizzy, Miles Davis etc. The most emotional moment was in a night club after a concert when Bud Powell, completely doped, gave a marvelous version of Round about Midnight. Everybody had tears in their eyes. I never heard something that beautiful and emotional. Then I did a first and last experiment at spelunking, and the Leica found its way into the center of the Earth. My next camera was a Canonflex, the first Canon SLR I believe. A very interesting concept, but that will be for another day.
Jacques
Yesterday and today I added LinkedIn to my contact websites, in an attempt to reach image researchers and to boost my Google ranking. Lately I have been working mostly on my website < www.jungleview.com >, using the templates of Photodhelter and of my host NetNation. Not a visual site, but a keyword site. I have neglected Photoshop lately, but now that I have a better online presence I will get back to it, as I have many pictures both from my recent trips and from former ones on my hard disk waiting to be edited and to be placed online. Well, that´s the routine of being a photographer these days… more time at the computer than being in the field with a camera.
Hello,
Welcome to my re-built website, www.jungleview.com. It is now functional, but
it needs some improvements: I don´t know HTML, so I had to use the templates
offered by my host and by my image storage server. I kept the visuals simple
but I attempted to have a structure as logical as possible, my pictures being
of a documentary / editorial / educational / travel nature, a market which needs easy
access to researched content. Short descriptions of the image galleries should
direct researchers to the content they are looking for. I will now concentrate
on adding new pictures, many of which are already on my computer hard disk waiting
for image editing. However I will constantly attempt to add improvements
to this site.
I hope you will find this site useful.
Jacques
The site jungleview is finally functional for e-commerce. Go to the Gallery Collections NATURE and CULTURE to consult my photographs. All I need now is add more pictures…