About shyamaldatta
Born in a remote corner of India’s North Eastern frontier state of Assam, I was a water colour painter in high school. In 1980 I graduated in engineering and subsequently painting vanished from my life, as I embarked on a corporate career that brought me to the far flung shores of United States and Canada. This was a dream come true, mainly because in my childhood I had dreamt of the stunning grandeur of the American and Canadian landscape and their astonishing plethora of wildlife - which I feasted on, mainly through old copies of National Geographic that used to come to India months after being published. Those were the seventies. Now I had begun to live the dream. Having logged thousands driving miles with my camping and photo gear in the back of my Subaru station wagon I soaked in the fresh oxygen of Denali National Park in Alaska and felt the saltwater spray on my face in the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.
Some years later photography was no longer just a hobby. It became a heartfelt passion, an obsession for me. But, in addition to this, writing took an equal prominence - I was in a desperation to log a journal of my travelogues. There was an urgent need to write down what I was experiencing - a la Marco Polo. Be it watching Orca Whales in Telegraph Cove in Vancouver Island, Canada or following Sandhill Cranes from Canada through Nebraska to Bosque del Apache in New Mexico. What if something happened to me in my travels - I imagined. Where would all these stories go? Who would know and share all my experiences should an accident befall me in my extreme journeys. Each trip became a chapter, each journey a book and all these books became volumes. Therefore I concluded I have to write down all of my experiences. This is a work in progress.
Having crisscrossed the North American continent in search of snow capped peaks, wildflowers, alpine lakes, deserts, rock formations, ocean fronts and wildlife - I began to publish articles and photographs in small magazines and journals. The beauty and joy of this entire story was not the actual travels but watching the reaction of the people who sit and listen to my escapades. Their astonishment and my feeling of sharing almost myth like situations was incomparable.
In 2008 one of my photography and travel forays I flew all the way to Kaktovik, Northern Alaska in the Beaufort Sea, Arctic Circle to photograph and write about the impact of receding glaciers on polar bears in the Arctic Circle in frigid subzero conditions. I followed it up with an article that was published in a vernacular language journal in India.
I was always mystified by the phenomenon of the Aurora Borealis and was waiting for an opportunity to see it action. I finally could get to plan a trip to Yukon Canada to do just that. In freezing winter weather I set out to capture images of Aurora Borealis in Yukon Canada.
In 2009 I undertook a 15 day expedition circling the Galapagos Islands on a catamaran boat and photographing wildlife in the islands. Later that year I travelled to Peru and hiked up the trail to Macchu Picchu to capture images of the iconic ruins of the Inca kingdom. A few years later I crisscrossed Latin America and reached Bolivia to photograph the world’s highest navigable lake in the world - Lake Titicaca.
Gradually the concept of photographing and writing only about grand landscapes or pretty wildlife pictures began to erode in me - something different was elbowing its way into my mind. People and cultures. How could I completely disregard people living off the land. I could not possibly ignore the fascinating diversity of ethnicities, races and religions in this planet. How about waterscapes I thought. Rivers in flood, rivers drying up, water and communities, human pressure on national parks worldwide. The scope of my canvas was widening and my photography genre was evolving gradually.
Until this point in time I was an amateur since my income was from my corporate job. But time had come for me to devote myself completely and quit my corporate career. And that is what I did finally in 2011.
Today I am based in Guwahati, Assam, with my family, where I am actively engaged with one of India’s premier biodiversity and wildlife conservation non-governmental organization working to photograph endangered wildlife and vanishing cultures.
Photography and writing is the spiritual light of my life now.
