Posts by: Kalyan Varma

Tigers in BR hills

One of the exciting things about wildlife is the unpredictability. When you least expect it, you are rewarded by an amazing wildlife sighting. Yesterday, along with two of my friends, I had been to BR hills. We left in the morning, reached BR hills by lunch time, finished some work and went to K-gudi (the tourism zone of BR hills) and decided to go on the evening safari. Two weeks ago, a mother tiger with 4 cubs were sighted near a water hole and we decided to drive straight to the place and wait there. As soon as we landed…

Photo-constipation

Here is a lovely term coined by Deepa Mohan Photo-constipation: It is what many ‘serious photographers’ suffer from as they have to edit the images. Its usually when after one trip, it takes three months, sometimes, for just a few images to emerge out! I, for one, have been suffering from it the last few month. What about you ?

Colugos from Singapore

Benjamin Lee has a very interesting Job. He works for the Singapore National Parks Board. He is responsible for maintaining the tree cover in town and also the National parks and watersheds. I was introduced to Ben as he was the best person to show me Colugo in the wild in Singapore. He called me last evening and said he has a very special surprise for me. A Colugo had entered one of the buildings next to the park and we had to go pick it up and release it back in the national park. It was dropped off at…

Photoshopping news ?

Looks like Times of India is not only good at violating copyrights, its also good at photoshopping images to exaggerate the content. I am all for using photoshop to enhance the photograph, but not in journalism to enhance the news itself. And for those of you who think this is a printing issue, its not. The other photos in the paper including all the Page 3 photos have the right contrasts and saturations.

The Andaman Islands

This is the image that everyone has of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Clear blue waters, white sandy beaches which transform into lush rainforests as you move onto the land. The truth however is quite contrary. There is very little of original, undisturbed, pristine rainforests left. The Andamans were the timber source for mainland India for many decades. In fact till recently, the largest saw-mill in Asia was operated out of there. People in mainland India were given incentives like 10 tons of wood every year to settle down in the Andamans and ‘colonize’ the islands. Burmese people even today…

Times of India steals Creative Commons works

On Feb 6th, I got up early for my workshop and sat to glance through the Times of India while having breakfast to catch up on the morning news. On the front page, I saw a headline Bhimgarh now wildlife sanctuary (if the link does not work, here is the article without the image) and when I looked down, I was shocked to see my bat photograph of the rare Wroughton’s Free-tailed Bat. Now I had to work real hard to get permits to enter the cave and spend a lot of money to just access it and photograph it….

Andaman Islands

Munda Pahad – The southern tip of South Andamans After waiting many years, I’m finally at Andaman Islands. Spent the last 3 days exploring the mangroves, chasing the endemic birds and snorkeling in some of the most breathtaking and clear lagoons of the islands. Tomorrow we leave to go up north to middle and north Andamans to check out the Edible-nest swiftlet caves. More soon …

Masai Mara in Black & White

About two months ago, while I was on a shoot, I suddenly get a call to be on a luxury east Africa safari four days later. I finished the shoot, rushed to Bangalore, got my yellow fever shot and jumped into a plane to Nairobi. Till the day before I got into the plane, I didn’t even know where I was going in east Africa. From Nairobi, we took a charter to Mara over the great Rift Valley. The minute I landed, I got out and kissed the Earth under my feet. In the next 8 days, I saw, experienced,…

3 of 5
12345