Elephant Carving

Today I've chosen to blip a beautiful little ornament (only 4 inches high) that was made in India. As a backdrop I've used a colourful cushion, also Indian, that I bought from the excellent Internet store Natural Collection which specialises in ethical products. The ornament is lit by flat light from a large window so I needed a tripod for the one second exposure using the telephoto setting to narrow the angle of view.

Like many people I feel we are the richer for sharing our planet with elephants, although I'll never see one. I could go to a zoo but I find them too depressing. I'd much rather see wild life films. When I was a child they were linked in my mind to circuses and being chained up pitifully most of the time . Thankfully, that practice is now banned in this country. Indeed, the perception of the natural world has been transformed in my lifetime.

Through filming, the complex family life of this largest land mammal is better understood. Yet herds have been reduced to groups in scattered areas south of the Sahara and in isolated patches in Asia. It is one of the great tragedies of our species that human beings exploit all manner of animals in a ruthless way for profit - if they can get away with it. Just today I have read that two poachers have been caught with a dead rare Siberian tiger in the back of their van in China. Animal body parts are widely used in Chinese medicines.

Anyway, I love this little ornament which sits on the mantelpiece beside some ancient fossils millions of years old. They remind me that we are part of a wonderfully diverse four and a half billion year old planet. We are only passing through it, and in evolutionary time all species will disappear, including us!