Telling stories through pictures

An expert nature photographer, Shivakumar L Narayan has spent close to a decade capturing beautiful landscapes around the world. At some point, he realised that there is more to the genre than just taking pictures of tigers and birds. That’s when he and 4 others started a website called ‘Landscape Wizards’, which is the first online platform in India that exclusively showcases landscape photography. With an aim to showcase ‘unseen landscapes’ in the country, they even started a landscape photography festival called ‘The Confluence’.

In a chat with Ananya Revanna, Shivakumar talks about the festival and his affair with photography.

A little about ‘The Confluence’.
It is a platform for people from different parts of the country to come together to celebrate landscapes. In this year’s edition we are having talks from landscape photographers who have specialised in specific sub-genres of landscape photography like fine art landscape photography, arial landscape photography and landscape photography for conservation. We will showcase our annual ‘Unseen Landscape Documentary’.

What is the documentary about?
It’s our work from Gujarat where we shot a very rare natural phenomenon called ‘Chir Batti’ (Ghost Lights). Fireballs emerge out of earth’s surface after the monsoons in a place called Banni Grassland in Kutch. It’s 15 minutes long that showcases the planning, effort and the story (local and scientific) behind this phenomenon.

How did you get interested in nature photography?
In 2003, my sister gifted me a Canon Film SLR (until then I was using a Yashica Film Point and Shoot camera to take casual family pictures). But it wasn’t until late 2004 that I was introduced to nature and wildlife photography by my mentor, Rajesh B P who took me to Bandipur over a weekend. I got to try his tele lens and DSLR during the trip which changed my perspective of nature and what one can do with nature photography. Over the next couple of years, while working in the UK, I shifted to a digital camera and spent every single weekend polishing my technical skills and improvising.

What about it do you like?
I have spent time trying out almost all genres of photography over the last decade but primarily stuck to nature photography. Wildlife and landscape photography as first choice, closely followed by travel photography. I like to witness and learn the way the ecosystem interacts with itself. And visiting these places also means seeing different cultures. Hence it is a way of documenting different aspects of life that go hand in hand with nature.

What do you look for when you take pictures?
Emotions. If an image can’t convey an emotion and make you get attached to it then there is something missing in it. With the technology we have it’s easy to get the sharpness and colour in a photograph, but the emotional value is more difficult to capture.

Your favourite travel story...
On a recent trip to Meghalaya, while my friend and I were working inside some caves, we asked our guide what happens if our headlamps die and we have to retrace our route in absolute darkness. He told us that there is no way of getting back up unless someone decides to search for us. We were petrified for a moment, then we realised that our guide was well prepared with backup solutions and we were in safe hands. But those few moments are really worth a chuckle (now).
‘The Confluence’ will be held on 2 April, from 2 pm to 7 pm, at Satish Dhavan Auditorium, Indian Institute of Science. Entry is free.