03

Friend, filmmaker and longtime collaborator Mike Rogers and I just returned from an amazing adventure assignment to Indonesia.  We spent two days with the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) Elephant Flying Squad, living in their camp at Lubuk Kembang Bunga Village on the outskirts of Sumatra's Tesso Nilo National Park while shooting an editorial print and digital video feature for SilkAir's inflight magazine, Silkwinds.

According to the WWF website, "In 2004, [the] WWF introduced the first Elephant Flying Squad to Riau Province in central Sumatra, to a village near the newly established Tesso Nilo National Park.  It was a way to bring short-term relief to the intense conflict between people and elephants there and to create support for elephant conservation among hard-hit communities.  Because the region around Tesso Nilo is being logged so rapidly and the forest converted into agricultural plantations, elephants with no place to go are forced to wander in search of food, making farms and commercial plantations an irresistible temptation for elephant-sized appetites."

The mission of the Elephant Flying Squad -- consisting of 11 mahouts and seven trained elephants (four adults, two youngsters and a one-month old baby) -- is to "drive wild elephants back into the forest whenever they threaten to

enter villages.  It has proven to be very effective in reducing losses suffered by local communities near Tesso Nilo" as well as successfully reduced the number of wild elephants killed by angry farmers or scared villagers.

Perched high on the backs of the giant pachyderms, and holding tight to a bare rope that wrapped around the elephants' bodies, Mike and I were fortunate enough to accompany the squad on a typical patrol through the Sumatran rainforest.  It was a magnificent experience to trudge through the jungle on the back of these majestic creatures and document how the Elephant Flying Squad helps preserve the wild elephant population in Riau.

At the end of the assignment -- after my cameras were put away and while Mike wrapped-up his video interviews -- I sat with the 11 mahouts and their leader outside their small cabin in Tesso Nilo.  As we joked and laughed I pulled out my iPhone (which, amazingly, nobody seemed to have ever seen before) and, using the LomoLomo app, started to shoot a few portraits of the Elephant Flying Squad members.  It was a hit, and before long everyone wanted their photos taken.  This is the series we made.

See more of my iPhoneography elsewhere on my blog or on Flickr.