Long journey to capture kingfisher
India is the only place where one can explore wildlife and especially sight a mind-boggling variety of birds
By : v. palaniappan
Update: 2014-09-07 04:20 GMT
Coimbatore: He zoomed in his car for 2,800 km from Tirupur to Chiplun village, off the Mumbai-Goa highway, just to capture an Oriental dwarf kingfisher. From the knitwear town of Tirupur, 43-year-old S. Krishnamurthy has travelled to every jungle cranny in India with a mission to conserve wildlife.
At the age of 11, Krishnamurthy began to shoot wildlife pictures with a Click III camera. A commerce graduate, he loves the roads, his Bullet motorcycle, his camera and, of course, wildlife.
He has tried almost all cameras, from the most basic to the hi-tech digitals, to ‘shoot’ birds and animals. Starting with a Click III camera, he bought an Agfa Isoly camera, moved onto a Yashica Fx3 and a sophisticated Nikon F and is now exploring the jungles with a Nikon D 7000.
He has travelled to the Anamalai tiger reserve, Mudumalai national park, Bandipur tiger reserve, Nagarhole national park of Karnataka, Tadoba Andhari tiger reserve, Sathyamangalam and has completed exploring wildlife in entire south India.
His two mantras of wildlife photography is “shoot on the eye” while capturing the image of birds and “shoot on the head” while capturing the images of mammals. His message to wildlife photographers is, “India is the only place where one can explore wildlife and especially sight a mind-boggling variety of birds. First, explore India, then go to wildlife destinations abroad.”
On August 1, 2014, he was in Chiplun village in the fields to shoot an exclusive picture of the Oriental dwarf kingfisher. From morning to evening, he waited in the field to shoot the bird which comes from the forest to the farm to nest.
In December 2013 when he was in Kabini, he sighted a leopard tearing into a barking deer. For the next three days, he stayed in the deep jungles to capture the leopard in different angles, moods and actions. On an earlier trip to Kabini in 2009, he had images of an Indian wild dog and Indian sloth bear.
“The bear stood like a doll and posed for my camera,” he recalls. He has captured tigers in different locations and dimensions at the Tadoba tiger reserve in Maharashtra. “I took pictures of different tigers at Tadoba. A tiger standing near the river, a tiger quenching its thirst at the water tank, a tiger striding down the ghat road, a tiger ready to pounce on its prey.”
Smaller creatures also catch his fancy. He has captured different types of butterflies and grasshoppers. He has also taken part in wildlife exhibitions in Coimbatore, Cochin, Tirupur and almost all parts of India. His next mission is to explore wildlife of northeastern India and chronicle the lives of the one-horned rhinos in Assam.