Why do you spend so much time in the jungles and why do you need so much of equipment?

While anyone and everyone can take photos, Photography is an art and is all about story telling through your frames.

I will try and answer the same in a few simple words below:

First lets try and understand what is the difference between taking photos and photography,

While anyone and everyone can take photos, Photography is an art and is all about story telling through your frames.

It has three main simple elements to it,

o Light – contrast, colour, tones, patterns etc

o The Subject

o Composition – vertical, horizontal, depth of field etc

There are two steps involved in photography and both hold equal importance, first being taking photos and second processing these frames as per the style suitable to your taste and liking. In the film days processing was done in darkrooms but with the advent of digital cameras now we process them on a computer using different software’s like lightroom and photoshop.

There are many types of photography one can pursue like Landscape, Portrait, Wedding, Sports etc. but Nature photography, according to me, is one of the most challenging forms of photography as the environment we work in is dynamic and cannot be predicted or setup which leads to camera settings being altered at the spur of the moment. It may also take hours or days or weeks of waiting in the heat, rain or chill to take the particular frame we want hence patience is key.

It becomes an expensive proposition as the equipment and travel requirements are endless; the events in the wild happen so quickly and changing lenses on cameras take time hence we have to work with multiple camera bodies ( full frame, crop sensor, bridge ) and lenses ( wide, zoom, fixed primes ) to click the moment that we have envisaged or planned in our head. Since we are dependent on natural history or captivating moments to occur, we have to make multiple trips to same or different wildlife parks and sanctuaries to take the required shot.

But having said that it is still a big big addiction and when u get the shot that you desire it all seems worth it. Each trip has the ‘masala’ of a blockbuster; emotion, action and drama and you are the cameraman, producer, director; in the driving seat for everything.