Biking for 2800 Miles!

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. Three crazy bikers arriving
at the dunes of Jericoacoara Beach
Photo: © Pantanal Vai à Praia Project, 1999

Exactly eight years ago my first “official” photo assignment and one of my life’s greatest adventure was ending. During four and a half months, from April to August 1999, my buddies Tietta Pivatto, Guto Bertagnolli and I traveled 4500 km (2800 mi) by bicycles along the coast of Brazil between Vitória (Espírito Santo State) and São Luís (Maranhão State). We carried an itinerant exhibit about the Pantanal with pictures, music and other typical items.

Our main objective was to promote cultural exchange between two regions located in opposite extremes of the country. As we traveled presenting material about the Pantanal, we collected photo and written records about Northeastern Brazil, which would then be used during the project’s second phase, when we planned to do the opposite: go biking throughout the Pantanal floodplains showing the culture from Northeast. Unfortunately this stage was never accomplished – or at least not so far...

Nova Tatajuba, one of the most
beautiful beaches that we cycled by
Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 1999

By then, the internet - as well as digital photography - were virtually unknown down here, so that the great majority of our records were done on film, pencil and paper. We took approximately 3400 pictures, 250 of which using a Nikon Coolpix 100 camera with stunning 0.3 Megapixels (!) and 1 megabyte (!!) of storage capacity lent by one of the project’s 30 sponsors.

The trip lasted 145 days, during which we made 71 exhibits, 16 lectures and 15 environmental education activities in schools. We were interviewed 33 times by local TV and radio stations and had 21 printed articles published.

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Find more on our Trip Diary
In Portuguese only – you can just look at the pictures
or try out this online translator
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Our Logo!
Artwork © Ronald Rosa, 1999
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Pantanal: 2007 Gallery

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. "Come visit us!"
Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 2007

This year’s first gallery with photos from the Pantanal is already online. The images were done in July and August, the peak of the dry season in that region, after we moved to São Paulo. Enjoy!

See the pictures
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Birds All Over

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. Hyacinth Macaw is in for a winter banquet in the Pantanal
Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 2007

Winter in the southern hemisphere is about to end - it’s time for all critters to start getting ready for another breeding season. Birds, mammals, reptiles, bugs – ultimately all those guys who were kind of hidden from the cold – start to show up again. From now and throughout next months we Brazilians will start seeing more animals in the woods, fields and cities.

Following this “collective awakening”, two articles published in Brazilian magazines during the past weeks (both using my photos) talk about fauna – more specifically about guide books and birds.

July’s issue of the Ciência e Cultura (“Science and Culture”) magazine, published by the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC), brings an article about field guides, the books used for identifying fauna and flora in a given area. The text is written by my postgrad colleague Murilo Alves Pereira. Almost at the same time, the Globo Rural magazine (August) published a 10-page special about birdwatching, signed by journalist Sérgio Túlio Caldas.

Still on birds, I also cooperated with some publicity material, this time for Avistar 2008 (the upcoming third edition of the Brazilian Bird Fair). Next week, our friend and idealizer of Avistar, Guto Carvalho, will be in the UK participating in Birdfair 2007, the world's first and largest international birdwatching event! Long life to our birds…

"Whatcha looking at?!"
(Rufous-bellied Thrush in the Pantanal)
Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 2007
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The 40-feet long Jaguar!

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. First draft of the panel created by Competence...
(Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 2007)

The Competence Agency (Brazil) has just created and installed a 12 x 7 meter (40 x 23 ft) billboard for Itaipu Binacional using one of my jaguar pictures done on assignment. The huge panel is part of the publicity material for Bela Vista Biological Refuge. So, if some day you happen to be driving by... Beware of "my" Jaguar!

... and the final result of the billboard
installed by an avenue in Iguassu Falls (Brazil)
(Photo © Maikel Silva / Competence, 2007)

(This made me think about the “battle for megapixels” brought up by digital camera advertisers. It seems kind of exaggerated to feel that your brand new 6, 8 or 10 megapixel camera becomes “obsolete” after a couple of months, as some will try to make you believe... Obviously, a higher resolution will allow larger prints with less interpolation and more possibilities of cropping your image, but how much money is this really worth?)

* The photo of this jaguar was taken with a Canon EOS 30D camera
and Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens*

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