south-east asia 1986-1993

In 1986 I retired from my career in the oil patch and took up bird photography.

I took this selfie in 1986 to promote my pictures and articles about birds and nature in Singapore and the region. I never had a lot of equipment, I am far from a tool junkie, I like to keep things simple. I used the Nikon system and started out with this F3 and a 400mm F5.6 ED lens. I soon expanded to the 500mm F4.0 IF-ED lens for a little more power and the F3/T which was built like a tank. I also had a 300mm lens, a x2 teleconverter and some flash equipment, but basically I never bought new equipment after that. I used the same old stuff for the next 20+ years!

south-east asia bird work

Finding post-retirement purpose

As you might remember from the previous tab (‘SE Asia 1980-86, oil’), I quit my corporate job in the oil field services industry in June 1986. I never went back to work in industry after that, I was 33 years old. I was way ahead of the F.I.R.E. movement that global accommodative monetary policies have allowed to flourish among young people today. After a 2 ½ months break in Denmark, my X and I arrived back in Singapore 2 October 1986. I found a small apartment to rent on Orange Grove Road, just behind the corner with Orchard Road, that nice old walk-up doesn’t exist any longer of course. Then I started to set myself up as a wildlife photographer in South-east Asia.

While in Denmark in the fall of 1986, I spent much of the time at my mother’s old house at the West Coast of Jutland, and I revisited Agger Tange (see ‘1961-73’ tab) to test the bird photo equipment I had bought. Back in Singapore, I started going out to the coast around Serangoon and Ponggol for the shore birds, later also what is now Sungei Buloh. That area of course wasn’t a wetland reserve then (it became one in 1993) and there was no bridge across the Buloh River, to access I drove in from the west and found places where the wetland birds would gather to feed. I had to set up a small hide to photograph them, birds in Singapore were hunted and trapped then and shyer than they are today.

For the forest birds, I checked out the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve but found it difficult for photography. It was a nice and quiet place, you would spend a whole day there and never see another person in those days, there was no car park and no visitor centre, just the paved road up that the Gurkha guards used when they traveled up to the summit, they had a camp there then. I would leave my car at the bottom of the hill on a small patch of dirt, and if there was another vehicle I would wonder: ‘Who could that be?’ Today that forest is packed with thousands of people every day, and the large new car park is full. BUT … for birds, you simply didn’t see much, except at the fig tree on top of the hill when it was in fruit. For better views of forest birds, I would drive into the end of Sime Road, past the SICC and park where the Jelutong Tower is now, that was allowed in those days. The forest around Upper Seletar Reservoir was also good, as well as the pipeline trail through Nee Soon swamp forest down to Upper Pierce Reservoir, those trails were open to the public back then. My results are covered in the photo sections below.

For trips abroad, I would do day-drives up to Panti Forest Reserve in Johor for the Sunda subregion forest birds. From 4 November to 2 December 1986 I spent four weeks in Bali, Indonesia; I traveled up to the Bali Barat National Park to look for Bali Starlings, in cooperation with the International Council for Bird Preservation (the forerunner to BirdLife International formed in 1994). With special permission, I walked across the Prapat Agung Peninsula; I was supposed to have some rangers with me, but they opted to stay in the shelters and chat and smoke and relax, so I hiked on my own and much preferred it that way. You can check the ‘Bali’ tab for a couple of articles I did from that trip.

I traveled to Bali again the next year 10 Feb 1987 to improve my photo collection of Indonesian birds, and I was up in the Bali Barat National Park on my own, 18 Feb, when a car arrived at my losmen near Gilimanuk on the north coast. My X had sent the car all the way up from Kuta, some three hour’s drive to the south-east. The driver gave me a letter which said that my maternal grandfather in Denmark had just died. So I packed my stuff and went back with the driver; the next day I called my Mum in Denmark, took a plane to Singapore and caught another connection to Aarhus, Denmark that evening. I arrived at my Mum’s place 20 Feb 1987 and we drove down for the funeral in southern Jutland just in time 21 February at 2 pm. All my family was there; for me, it couldn’t have been much tighter, time-wise: you can see a photo from that occasion in the ‘My mother’ tab.

After the funeral, I arrived back in Singapore 26 February 1987 and started another one-week+ trip to Endau Rompin in Malaysia two day later, 28 Feb, the last day of the month that year. I was young then, and didn’t mind this busy travelling schedule.

But, in general, I wanted to stay and live in Singapore, so in 1986 I registered a sole proprietorship firm, Flying Colours Photography. As the rules were then, I needed a local partner to form the company. I approached an academic ornithologist, I forget her name now, but she worked for the government and declined. So I appealed to my birdwatching friend, Lim Kim Seng, and he agreed. It was a leap of faith for Kim Seng to support me like this and I will forever be grateful to him for that. During the following decades, Kim Seng went on to become one of the leading authorities on birds in Singapore and Malaysia. With a company here, I applied for Employment Pass (EP) for myself and Dependant Pass for my X with the Immigration Department, they are called ICA, Immigration and Checkpoint Authority now. It wasn’t a very strong application, but I hired a consultant to help me with the paperwork and my application was approved. I was now resident in Singapore and could settle in.

On a personal note, my X and I had an issue that we had been dealing with since the first few years of our marriage. We wanted a child, but my X didn’t seem to get pregnant; and believe me, we tried pretty hard! On closer examination, it turned out that my X’s Fallopian tubes were almost completely blocked; so IVF fertilization was our only option. In the mid-1980s, this kind of fertility treatment was still in the early stages, the first test-tube baby, Louise, was only born in 1978. There was one or two IVF clinics starting up in Singapore, but their results were poor then, under 20% success rate. There was a better facility in New Jersey, US; but the best was in Great Britain, where the procedure had been pioneered, one in Harley Street, London claimed almost 50% success rate, so that is where we went.

With a day’s stop-over in Moscow, my X and I arrived in London 5 May 1987 and I found a small apartment behind Piccadilly Circus that I could rent by the week. My X’s period started 17 May, so the new batch of eggs was in the making and that was day-one of my twin boys’ life! My X had five eggs extracted 28 May and four were re-inserted into the uterus two days later, by then fertilised in a Petri dish. It was a very invasive and intrusive procedure for my X, but I must say that the British staff was excellent about the whole thing. My only contribution to the proceedings was producing a sperm sample on the day of extraction/fertilisation. The pretty blonde nurse explained to me with a straight face that I should do my best to separate the sample into two cups, one containing the driving liquid from the prostate and the other one the important milky stuff with the sperms. It crossed my mind to ask her if she would like to give me a hand with this, but I thought she had probably heard that joke before. Oh yes, and apart from that I also paid the tab. I settled the bill on our last day in London, it was £1,300 for the whole package; I don’t know how they could do it so cheap. I wrote in my diary that day that was the best money I had ever spent.

My X’s pregnancy was confirmed with a positive blood test 13 June but we hung around London for another month+ to allow the pregnancy to settle before the arduous journey back. June is a wonderful time in Europe; I always felt good in the UK and enjoyed being back. Only the arrogant, dishonest and patronizing London cab-drivers sometimes got under my skin, but everyone else we met were great.

I spent most of my time around the Royal Parks of London; I put my photographic equipment to good use and later did a photo-feature for one of the travel magazines. I went down to see The Natural History Photographic Agency in Ardingly, Sussex; I showed them some of my work and we signed a distribution contract together. My mother (of course …) came across to see my X and me, she always did, everywhere I stayed! My Mum was a big shot politician by then and took me along when she went to see the Danish Ambassador to the UK, whom she happened to know.

19 July 1987, my X and I boarded SU 242 and flew back to Singapore. 17 May plus 40 weeks is 21 February, that was my X’s due date. Two of the four inserted eggs had latched on, so with twins, my X couldn’t quite wait that long; the placenta was eaten up by late January, and 2 Feb 1988 my twin boys were born at Gleneagles Hospital, we had the best gynecologist in town to help out. I never had a health insurance and paid for everything cash out of pocket, but I prefer it that way. You can see some more details under the ‘My kids’ tab.

But before that, my X and I had to find a more suitable place to stay. We shifted from the small walk-up at Orange Grove Road down the road a bit to Mount Elizabeth where I found a big-old spacious apartment with plenty of room, we moved in 30 October 1987. Our house-hold would soon grow from two to five people; Olivia, our new live-in maid from the Philippines, joined us the next day 31 October 1987 and helped us with the house work and to prepare for the babies.

As the kids grew up, even Mouth Elizabeth wasn’t really suitable; we needed more space and greenery nearby where toddlers could run around. 4 June 1989 the whole family boarded a plane to Denmark where we spent the summer. My old oil-field buddy, Wee, drove us to the airport and borrowed my car while I was away; Wee was between cars at that time. Does that date ring a bell? Right, that was the day of the June Fourth Incident, the massacre of protesters on Tiananmen Square, China where Wee and I used to jog around just a few years earlier. We heard about it on the car radio going to the airport and didn’t quite know at the time how it would all turn out. There were lots of revolt going on in Europe as well at that time, most worked out for the protesters, the one in China of course didn’t, but we couldn’t be sure of that then; even the mighty Soviet Union broke up shortly afterwards, but the PRC didn’t, they stood firm.

Coming back to Singapore from Denmark in late August 1989, I found a large apartment in a green area north of town at Mimosa Park and we moved in 3 September 1989, see below for a few photographs from that place.

Throughout this period, I was establishing myself as a bird and wildlife photographer in Singapore and South-east Asia; I started visiting important biodiversity areas in the region to improve my coverage. You can check the sections below for some of the results I produced in those years.

Something funny happened about a year and a half after we moved into Mimosa Park: My wife got pregnant! This time totally 'automatic' and somewhat unexpected, everyone thought she couldn’t conceive!? I can’t explain that, but I know that Adam was born 22 December 1991, just two days short of Christmas Eve, see ‘My kids’ for more details. After that, with three small children, my X was keen to move back to Denmark to spend more time with her family. In Singapore, she was active in the Danish expat community, the Scandinavian diaspora, apart from her staff and business associates she didn’t have many local friends; she wanted our kids to grow up ‘back home’ in Denmark. The next year, 1992, we bought a place in Skødstrup, Jutland; we had never been there, but trusted that it would be a good place for our kids to grow up. We arrived 1 June 1992, travelling with three small children and lots of stuff is not easy; I wrote in my diary for that day: “Terrible trip, but nice reception by our new neighbors in Skødstrup”. The new house was easy driving distance from most of our closest family, and there was a close-knit community of other couples our age and with kids all around us; see more about my life in Denmark in the next tab, ‘1993-99’.

I shipped most of our stuff back to the new house but stayed in Singapore myself for a while longer, living in that big, empty place near Seletar Hills all by myself. I had things to do here and a book to finish, more about that below. Every few months I would go to Denmark to check on the boys and help the family organise the house and settle in. On those occasions I could travel completely without luggage, as I had sets of clothes in both places; I didn’t even have hand luggage, I would just carry my passport in my back pocket! At the end of March 1993, I went to immigration, cancelled my EP and settled my back taxes – a nice young lady helped me with that and it was done in 20 minutes, everything settled. The civil servants in Singapore are amazing; it is such a pleasure to deal with the public institutions here! 29 March 1993, I went to the post office and changed my address, vacated Mimosa Park and the next day I caught a plane to Århus, Denmark. I was a Danish resident again.

settling in as a wildlife photographer

This is the walk-up apartment I rented in 1986-1987; it was on Orange Grove Road, just behind the corner with Orchard Road. Small, but quaint and easy to furnish and keep up.

The kitchen was simple and neat and there was a private car park behind.

It is hard to believe that you are 100 meters from bustling Orchard Road here, isn't it? Of course, this place didn't last, it has been 're-developed' into an over-priced, pretentious condo today, Treetops Executive Residences.

This is a postcard I sent to my Mum from Singapore, dated 23 December 1986. It was hard to find a card with nature motif then; I write and thank my Mum for all the Christmas gifts we had just received and wish her a Happy New Year. International phone calls were expensive back then, I would mainly communicate with my family by card and letter.

But I was working hard to establish Flying Colours, my bird photo business, at that time, and already the next month I could send this card to my Mum, homemade: The Olive-backed Sunbird female is from Bali.

This is the reverse side of the postcard above, dated 11 Jan 1987. It says in Danish that it has rained here in Singapore for 6 days in a row and everything is damp and wet. I wish my Grandfather all the best and hope to see him later that year, but that wasn't to be; he died the following month.

in london on a mission

May to July 1987 my X and I spent in London, UK. I rented this small apartment smack in the middle of the city, not too far from Harley Street where the clinic we consulted was located. The details are explained in the main text above.

I set up this little work station in the apartment, and when my X and I were not going to the clinic for fertility procedures and check-ups, I would sit here and plan my nature photography work. I visited the BBC World Service and was interviewed about the Endau Rompin expedition; 8 million people listened to that interview - I was even paid for it!?

This is a postcard I sent to my Mum shortly after arrival in London, it is dated 6 May 1987. It says my X and I stay at Tavistock Hotel, have had a first meeting with the clinic and are happy to be back in the UK. I think there is a chance that this might work (and as it turned out, it did!). My Mum came across to London to see me later that summer.

I had plenty of spare time on my hands in London that summer and enjoyed walking around the royal parks, May-June in Europe is magic! I found this nesting pair of Great Crested Grebe right off the foot-path in Kensington Park and spent many days there observing the pair and taking pictures, as they brought their chicks from the nest out into the water.

I even made a dollar on this material and sold the images many times. It is funny, because I NEVER saw one other person nearby looking at, let alone photographing, this spectacular scenery right in the middle of a gigantic metropolis. This is from Encyclopedia of Birds (1991).

This is a page from Fuglene i Danmark that came out in 1989. The caption says that the grebes ferry their young on their back to protect them from the cold water and that they can even dive with the young in place.

family and work in singapore

Back in Singapore, I moved from Orange Grove Road a few blocks down to Mouth Elizabeth where I found a big-old apartment, that building has been 're-developed' long ago of course and apartments there are now 1/2 the size and double the price. Here my X (heavily pregnant by then ...) step out for a Christmas party in late December 1987.

And less than two months later, early Feb 1988: Look what the stork just dropped on our doorstep ... twin boys! A lot of fun but also a lot of work.

The relationship between me and my X started breaking down gradually after that, we never really saw eye-to-eye on many things and we couldn't find common ground as parents either.

From 22 Mount Elizabeth #03-02, Singapore 0922 (today postal codes have six digits). 1988. Daniel is a few months old, I am 35: The hair, and with that my good looks, is going fast! My Mum took this photo out on the balcony during one of her visits to see her new grandchildren.

I might have been balding, but I was still in a pretty good shape: I ran the Singapore Marathon most years during that period if I was in town, 20 Dec 1987 was my best time: Just under 4 hours. That is not counting the almost five minutes it took me to get forward and across the start line, there were no electronic tags to keep the time in those days, but also fewer runners, some 5K would particip

The Mouth E place was only on the 3rd floor in a low-rise development, at night you could sit up on the roof and enjoy the sunset. So trees and palms were eye-level, and I took some of my bird pictures from the balconies and the roof. I shared my Flying Colours office space with my X who was running a clothes business at that time, see the 'Bali' tab for details.

If you look through the windows at the back of the room above, you will notice the palm-trees eye-level. I took this picture of a male Pink-necked Green Pigeon from a balcony in one of the other rooms that year (1988) and used it for the 1989 desk-top calendar I did with the Jurong BirdPark with the theme Birds in Action.

The endau-rompin inspiration

While still an executive for an oil field service company based in Singapore, I signed up to participate in the Endau-Rompin Expedition. This is March 1986, the Endau River in the state of Johor, Malaysia. We prepare to boat upriver into base camp. Massive rainfalls have swollen up the river significantly.

And this is EXACTLY the same stop one week later, coming back to the main road from the base camp upstream. Can you see the difference in water levels? This is the normal water level, some 2-3 metres lower.

Near base camp itself, this river crossing has been more or less washed out. The trip to Endau-Rompin, the work to produce a bird checklist for the future national park was an eye-opening experience for me. In my diary I write on the return 14 Mar 1986: 'Lifetime experience. Haven't felt like this since Alaska'. I retired from the oil patch a few months later, I wanted to do this instead!

The organisers of the expedition, the Malayan Nature Society, even gave me this fancy certificate to testify my participation!

As a budding nature photographer, the photos I took at Endau-Rompin also came in useful. This is from APA's Southeast Asia Wildlife that came out a bit later in 1989, the return trip back from base camp.

This photograph was used in APA's Malaysia travel guide page 289 that came out in 1990. No, it is not from Sabah as the caption says. It shows Lim Kim Chuah in 1986 while we were cutting a new trail up along one of the tributaries to the Endau River.

more malaysian travels

And about that ... the Panti Forest Reserve: After Clive Briffett and David Bradford introduced me to the place around 1984, it became one of my favorite places to go to find Sunda subregion rainforest birds, especially so after 1986 when I started taking pictures full-time. This is from 1990, I had replaced my old Ford Cortina with this Mazda station wagon, a cheap but pretty lousy vehicle. But s

The photo above is from the so-called Bunker Trail where you could drive in, but the better trail was actually 270 (km-mark to Mersing on highway 3). This is just north of here, I am with Subaraj and we find these morning-fresh Tiger tracks; we missed the animal by a few hours, I have never seen one of those!

This is from a stream-crossing a few km into the Bunker Trail. A logging truck is busy hauling out logs, the forest was going fast in those days; today they do less logging - for the simple reason that there are very few 'good' hard-wood trees left in Johor State to cut!

I used this slide many times over to illustrated rainforest deterioration. Much later it turns up in the Danish Ornithological Society's magazine special issue on Malaysia, 3/2002. The captions says something like: 'Another truck with logs is on its way out of the rainforest. Maybe this is wood for Danish garden furniture.'

I used the image myself later in this box from Colugo: The Flying Lemur of South-east Asia (2007), together with some other photos from Johor to illustrate the habitat destruction issue.

Malaysia has some important wetlands as well. This is from a trip to Perak state over Chinese New Year 1991 looking for migratory shorebirds and the resident Milky Stork with friends such as Sutari (in front of the boat) and Subaraj (at the telescope). The photo was used on page 28 in Birds (1993) featured below.

Mount kinabalu, the top of borneo

In Mar/Apr 1991 I visited another iconic Malaysia state, Sabah in East Malaysia (Borneo). The Nature Society (Singapore) which was then part of the Malaysian Nature Society organised a field trip to Mount Kinabalu. Here our little group is at the start of the trail to the summit.

And here we are the next morning having reached the peak. It was freezing and I wear my poncho to break the cold wind. I carried my big lens and my tripod all the way to the summit and never used them!

However, the landscape photos I took that day came in useful, I sold those many times. I did this travel story for the lifestyle magazine Accent that existed at the time, this is pages 60-61 of the February 1994 issue.

The story continues on page 62.

... and finishes on page 64, page 63 was an ad.

One of my clients at the time, the Japanese language Nanyo Elite lifestyle magazine, did a feature on Kinabalu in their 1Q 1993 issue, I didn't write this one but the magazine bought a few of my photographs, such as this view of the summit.

High and low in java

Here I am on the left during a trip to Java, Indonesia, I was there from 8-16 August 1992. Like in Perak and Kinabalu mentioned above, I tagged along with a group of Nature Society people. We walked up Gunung Gede and Pangrango and I was working to improve my collection of Indonesian nature photography.

After the hills we transferred to a beach forest reserve along the south coast of Java, the access road was closed to vehicles due to a fallen tree so we walked in.

There was a shelter with a water supply, but most of us just slept on the sand. I loved waking up in the cool morning air to the sound of distant splashing waves.

In the evening, Green Turtles would come onto the beach to lay eggs, it was the first time I saw something like this and I used my photos from that event many times over.

In those days I would never go anywhere without doing a photo feature article about the trip for one of the magazines I worked with at the time. This is Accent magazine, March 1994 issue, the editor made a nice spread of my material.

This stunning view captured on Kodachrome 64 film of Gede with Pangrango in the background became one of my best-selling landscape shots from Indonesia.

In KIWI COUNTRY

No, I have never seen a Kiwi in my life, and I certainly didn't take this photograph of one. It is a scanned postcard, one I sent to my Mum from New Zealand 9 November 1988. I mailed it from Auckland where I was in transit on my way to Nelson on the South Island.

This is another postcard I sent to my Mum from the South Island 15 November. It says that the kids cried when they saw me but quickly settled down. I drove out to see Mount Cook and find some endemic N.Z. birds that were new to me such as albatrosses, penguins and some honeyeaters.

The last postcard to my Mum is dated 25 Nov and says that I DID get to see and photograph this bird (the Kea) as well as some 30 other good species.

If you have seen the 'My Kids' tab, you will know that 1988 was the year my twins were born, and the whole event put a lot on strain on my marriage at the time. In November that year, my X packed up the babies and the maid and flew down to see a Danis

While in New Zealand for two weeks+ I rented a car on my own and drove south across the South Island. One day I stopped at this airstrip near Mount Cook in the Southern Alps and my wife's friend took me on a gliding trip. I did this feature for Changi magazine later, this is pages 24-25 in the August 1989 issue.

And here are the next pages, 26 and 27. I will try anything once, and I am so glad I did this. But honestly ... I don't really see the point. This was my first and my last gliding experience!

But I must say that the view from 2,000+ meters up was pretty good, we were lucky to come close to another glider so I could take these action photos of the planes and the landscapes in brilliant southern light. This is a translated re-run of my article in Japanese language Nanyo Elite that came out in Q3 issue 1990, pages 50 and 51.

lots and lots of magazine articles

As I mention above, my aim when I started bird photography in 1986 was to reach OUTSIDE the nature circles to show the general public the value of biodiversity. Those who read nature magazines by definition were already the converted, right? The big prize for all travel writers at the time was Silver Kris, the inflight magazine of the successful carrier Singapore Airlines. I finally broke into the

I went in person to the Silver Kris offices and met the Editor-in-Chief twice during 1987-88 with a bird feature suggestion. "We just did birds", he would say - "the Jurong BirdPark. Surely there are no other birds in this country?" Then the next time: "We are not a nature magazine, try National Geographic". Then I got a bright idea: Focus on the Singapore Bird Race. That worked!

Silver Kris Dec 1989 issue pages 62 and 63, page 61 above. My all-time favorites: The Crimson Sunbird on a flower and the Brahminy Kite fishing did the trick. The personal story of the bird race participation injected some pace and interest into the text.

Pages 64 and 65, the landscape is from Sungei Buloh which was then not yet a protected area. The Yellow-vented Bulbul I took from the rooftop at our Mouth Elizabeth home.

Page 66, I had found the key to Silver Kris and the editor and I worked together again after that. The White-vented (Javan) Myna I took from the car window somewhere off a rural road and the Pink-necked Green Pigeon in top of a fig tree near Upper Seletar Reservoir from the adjacent tree which was climbable.

Once I broke the ice with the Silver Kris editor he suggested that I do another feature, this time on Malaysian birds! He said his client (SIA) loved the Dec 1989 issue so much!? This is the August 1990 issue pages 110 and 111.

some articles 1988-1990 (no pretty pictures though)

When I did bird photography in the 1980s and 1990s I NEVER gave my material away for free. For me it was important that naturalists and their work was recognised as important and valuable. It helped of course that I was one of the only nature photographers in South-east Asia, so clients had nowhere else to go! The only exception was a few NGOs. The Nature Society (S) had a birding newsletter at th

The Singapore Avifauna, May 1988 issue. I describe how my birding buddy, Lim Kim Keang, found nesting Black-naped Terns in Singapore that month. The photos from that day will turn up further below as one of my favorite birds.

The rest of the story: Page 30, Singapore Avifauna May 1988 issue.

I was active in the Bird Group at the time and conducted guided tours for the NSS members. This is a trip report from Serangoon, Sep 1988 Avifauna issue.

Page 20, Avifauna September 1988. This part of Singapore is now a public housing estate, where can you see 17 different shorebirds in one morning today?

The Singapore Avifauna, March 1989 issue page 22. I led a walk around the Seletar Reservoir. Do you know something funny? I live just around the corner from that place today! The forest is still there, but you are unlikely to see Chestnut-bellied Malkoha, Little Spiderhunter, Purple-throated Sunbird or even Thick-billed Pigeon there today; those forest birds have crashed and virtually disappeared

REACHING out to the public

So much for preaching to the choir, i.e. communicating for free to other dedicated naturalists. Now back to my main aim during that period: Running a viable business reaching out to the general public! The Straits Times 13 March 1988: Promoting the virtues of birdwatching to ordinary Singaporeans!

This is the front page of the paper that day. Among all the hoo-ha about the opening of the MRT train line, officiated by the PM at the time, I get to squeeze in a small image of a Lesser Coucal in the Sunday Times, look for it in the bottom left corner!

Even before that, Straits Times 7 February 1988, I had the first section of this double-feature in Sunday Plus about my work.

And another one, some two years later: The Straits Times (Sunday edition) 20 May 1990.

Hey, I even supplied a wader and a drongo shot to the Chinese edition of the paper 4 December 1988 when they did a story on the bird race.

When I grew up in the 1960s, a naturalist in Denmark ran a series in the media about 'bird of the day' during spring, so I wanted to tweak this to 'bird of the week' in the Straits Times! 52 interesting local birds featured each week in a full calendar year! I couldn't get this idea past the editors, although I visited the Straits Times offices again and again. They prefered some ad-hoc little sto

calendars, posters, Phonecards,stamps, Postcards, books and more

As a photographer, I was always keen to participate in products that had a usefulness, in order to reach a wider audience. Desktop calendars were a popular product back then, and I did quite a few of those. By the end of 1987 I had a pretty strong material and I illustrated this calendar for the Jurong BirdPark with the theme: Birds in Their Natural Habitat. Fuji Film participated and enabled us t

The January page; I actually used Kodachrome film back then but later converted to Fuji which was (almost) as good and importantly: A bit faster. Development could also be done locally in Singapore, so that was another advantage, for Kodachrome you had to wait 2-3 weeks for your slides to come back from Japan!

March page, the Golden Plover from Sungei Buloh that I liked so much!

August, the Red-crowned Barbet near Sime Road where the Jelutong Tower now stands.

October, another wader combination - this one from the Ponggol River estuary which was a great shorebird spot at that time. Today it is covered in concrete and dammed up.

November, a Little Heron from a hide that I set up at the Changi beach area to get the sandy shore wetland birds.

The little red dot

All birds are equal, but some are a bit more equal than others (to paraphrase Orwell). The Crimson Sunbird definitely stands out from the crowd, the male especially, spectacular, isn't it? I took this series of the male feeding on a ginger flower inside the (now defunct) Mandai Orchid Gardens. This is a scan from a promotional postcard I printed for Flying Colours in 1987.

I sold this image again and again. In those days of course we used slides, so each slide is slightly different, although I also sometimes would submit exactly the same image to multiple clients over time, eventually the celluloid would get a bit worn, some frames got lost or never returned. This is a cover on SIA inflight magazine June 2000 Japanese edition.

Here the Little Red Dot makes the cover again, Malayan Naturalist Aug 1988 issue. Not many people now remember when B. J. Habibie (1935-2019) was president of Indonesia, but I do. Habibie was the one who coining the phrase Little Red Dot ( ... on the map) of Singapore. At the time, this was meant at a threatening insult to the country, but Singaporeans picked it up and embraced the phrase with som

In 1989, the Economic Development Board was looking for an image to visualize the symbiotic benefits of investing in Singapore, and my sunbirds was selected. I sold exclusive multiple-use rights to this slide for a handsome fee, so I never got that slide back, but I had other similar ones I could use going forward!

This is The Straits Times 15 Feb 1989 featuring the new ad campaign. I was never credited as the photographer, but I had agreed to that as part of the deal, EDB now owned this slide outright, and I was paid off well. I was also happy to know that this beautiful bird would pop up all over the world!

I used a similar shot on the cover of the 1989 desktop calendar I did with the Jurong BirdPark mentioned above, Birds in Action. Many years later, the Crimson Sunbird was voted the National Bird of Singapore, and I can only agree with that choice!

brahminy kite action

About the same time, in 1987, I produced another one of my best-sellers. I found a pond near Lorong Halus where the Brahminy Kites would come in every late morning to pick offal off the surface waters. So I set up a hide in the reeds there and spent three mornings in a row tracking the hawks as they came in.

Towards the end of that year (1987) I had operated Flying Colours for one year and I produced this postcard (front above ...) to advertise my work to old and new clients and to announce a new address: That was when I moved from Orange Grove Road to Mount Elizabeth to make room for the twins on their way (born 2.2.1988).

Remember the postcard of a Great Egret landing, shown above? NBC Post Cards Pte Ltd did two in that series - and this is the other one. My favorite action shot of a Brahminy Kite in nice mature plumage doing its thing.

I used the exact same slide for the January page in that 1989 Jurong BirdPark calendar where the sunbird was on the cover - except this time the designer didn't rotate the image so nicely to straighten out the horizon!?

The same image turns up again a little later the next year in APA's South East Asia Wildlife guide (1989), page 172 opposite my Yellow Bittern from Kranji Marshes.

Like with the sunbird, once APA had a scan on file that they liked, they would use it again in other products. And they were honest enough to keep track of it and pay me a bit for each subsequent use. This is Insight Pocket Guide Singapore 6th Edition (2001).

other favorites

In my Asian bird photo career, I had three clear favorite species, all of which sold more than 50 times; after that I sort of lost track and I am not sure which one was the ultimate winner. Two are shown above, this is the third: Rhinoceros Hornbill. Starting with this series of one male landing eye level near the tree tower at Endau Romin in 1987. Here one image is used in Encyclopedia of Birds (

Another shot from that morning, the male was jumping around the large tree next to the tower and posing nicely. I featured the hornbill in a Quest Insight strip in 1991.

I was alerted to this breeding record of Rhinoceros Hornbill up in Johor state, Malaysia and drove up there several times to photograph. The nesting tree was on a slope near an abandoned zoo development, and I could drive my car up next to it, almost eye level. This slide was used in a Thai calendar for 1994, you can glimpse the female and chick inside the sealed nesting cavity.

Same tree, the male posing nicely, used on the title page of A Walk through the Lowland Rainforest of Sabah (1994).

Here more or less the same image, although reversed, turns up - this time to illustrate Indonesia birds. From Birding Indonesia (Periplus Editions, 1997).

Of course I took plenty of extra slides while the male was at the tree, some I sent to my agent in the UK. They sold this image many times, here as a full-page spread in David Attenborough's The Life of Birds (1998).

our first asian bird book

In 1992 I was working with Sun Tree Publishing in Singapore; they used some of my picture stories for a series of general travel guide books they were doing at that time. So when Allen Jeyarajasingam in Malaysia wrote to me and suggested we did a bird book together, it was natural that I asked Sun Tree if they would be interested in publishing it.

I had a meeting with Aileen Lau (now Tan) at the Sun Tree office and Aileen right away said: "OK, let's do it". I said, "excuse me, but don't you have to check with the board of directors about something like this?". "No", Aileen said, "I own the company. You and Allen can share 10% of the sales, we will do the rest." It was that simple; is it any wonder I love to work with the private sector?

I took this selfie with my camera on a tripod and it was used on the inside back flap of the book when it came out: BIRDS: A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore (Sun Tree Publishing, 1993). My kingfisher from Panti was on the front cover and the Little Red Dot from Singapore was at the back.

Aileen supported the book well; here she has sent me up to Kuala Lumpur with her marketing manager who took this picture. Allen on the left joined me at the MPH bookshop and others in town to give autographs. The shops all had the new title plastered in the front window. Our timing was perfect: The interest in nature was growing at the time, and there were virtually no other local bird books avail

Allen and I promoted the book the best we could, here I give a slide lecture about our work; Allen is in front.

The media supported us as well; as all marketing people will know, the best publicity is the coverage you get for free! Here The Star newspaper in Malaysia features our book in the 8 May 1993 issue.