Riza Marlon captures wildlife on film

Bambang M, Contributor, Yogyakarta

Walking for hours in the Central Sulawesi wilderness makes Riza Marlon visibly tired, but his eyes won't stop looking around for animals worth photographing.

Suddenly he stops. He spots red-and white grasshoppers gathered in the grass ahead of him.

"These grasshoppers are endemic to Sulawesi," he exclaims, fixing his tripod and placing his camera on it. He takes a few shots of the insects.

On another mission, he spends more hours in a special tent waiting for a Sulawesi bird locally called kipasan ((Rhipidura teysmanni) to appear in the bush. He has found one of the bird's nests, where the chicks await its mother for food.

Riza secretly takes several shots of the bird from a small hole he cut in the tent.

Riza is one of a few Indonesian professional photographers specializing in the environment, especially wild animals.

He says the biggest challenge of taking good shots of animals in the jungle is the complex lighting system. Great patience is required to wait for the desired objects.

A sound knowledge of animals is another requirement that the photographer should have.

"For example, we should have the information on when and where the desired animals are there to be had," Riza told The Jakarta Post.

In addition, good stamina is a must to work for an extended time in the jungle.

Now, the alumnae of the National University, Jakarta, has become one of Indonesia's few first-class professional wildlife photographers. His works have been used by international organizations on the environment, such as the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), Birdlife International and the Gibbon Foundation.

His photographs have also been widely used in books on Indonesian wildlife and used in posters used in campaigns aimed at saving endangered species.

Riza began to be interested in photographing wildlife while he was studying at National University's school of biology.

"I used to read a lot of books with illustrations of flora and fauna but most of them were the works of foreign photographers," said Riza, a father of two children.

This reality motivated him to become a photographer of wildlife, believing that Indonesians, too, could take good pictures of the country's rich biodiversity.

He has not found any significant difficulty to see his dream come true. He happens to be an animal lover whose hobby is photography, a hobby he has cultivated since he was a senior high school student. He recalled that then he did not have a camera and had to borrow one from his friends whenever he needed one.

He sharpened his photography skills by participating in expeditions to a number of places, such as Ujungkulon National Park in Banten and Seram Island in Maluku. Beside photographing animals, he also takes shots of beautiful landscapes.

"Books and a strong motivation are my best teachers", he says when asked how he learned the art.

Riza has a large collection of wildlife photographs from numerous forests across Indonesia. He would offer the photos to various organizations on conservation. Then he began to make a name for himself as a professional wildlife photographer.

A number of conservation organizations, such as WWF Indonesia Program assigned him for its Slide Program of Kerinci Seblat National Park, Sumatra, between 1994 and 1995.

He used the money he earned to buy his own cameras.

"I would buy used cameras and sell them for new ones as soon as I earned more money," he recalled. Now, he has a collection of a wide range of cameras. "They are worth hundreds of millions of rupiah."

Riza always buys the latest camera technology to improve his performance.

"You cannot tell the wild animal to strike a pose for you in front of a camera. A good pose will happen only for a second and you cannot tell it to repeat it. So it needs sophisticated equipment to record the moment," he says.

"The animals' behavior is part of nature's history that will not repeat itself."

Riza says a photography mission to the jungle is an expensive one. Aside from the photography equipment, he/she will spend a lot of money on logistics and porters. To cover the expenses, he often will have to find a sponsor.

"Often, I have to save money to finance my own expedition to enlarge my photo collection," he says. Riza is often invited to speak at seminars on photography.

The value of a photograph of an animal will depend on the level of shooting difficulty and the rarity of the species.

After years of numerous expeditions, Riza says he has photographs of about 400 rare animals in his collection of 20,000 framed slides that he keeps in an air-conditioned studio in Depok, West Java, where he also keeps his photo equipment.

One of his unfulfilled ambitions is to write a scientific book on a particular forest and its inhabitants as well as write a book on wildlife photography.

"I am looking for a sponsor," he says.

A profession like Riza's is even more important now when more and more of Indonesia's rich biodiversity is lost due to unchecked logging and poaching.