Photo credit: Sudhir Shivaram

A few months ago I wrote about the RAXA Collective and Pixetra Photography master bird photography class held at Cardamom County. It was an amazing experience in and of itself, but it also gave us the opportunity to meet the instructor, wildlife photographer Sudhir Shivaram, and some talented participants, one of whom is now a contributor to our site. (I’m always keeping my hopes up that others will join her!)

During the 3 day workshop, between treks in the Periyar Tiger Reserve, the Megamalai Wildlife Sanctuary and a private 200 acre cardamom plantation, I spoke with Sudhir about his experiences as a photographer and an ambassador for Indian wildlife conservation.

He’s been photographing wildlife in India for well over a decade, so I asked him to describe his most memorable “capture”. He shared this experience from 2006 in the Bhadra Tiger Reserve:

10 years of wildlife photography and I had never seen a tiger in the wild, let alone photographing one. Many of my friends advised me to go to Bandhavgad if I wanted to see a Tiger. But I always had the wish to see my first Tiger in the wild in the south Indian forests. On March 17th 2006, I had seen my first tiger at BRT Wildlife Sanctuary- just the body and the tail. That too for a fraction of a second. And this visit to Bhadra along with Vijay and Yathin proved to be a lucky one. I had shot my first Leopard at Bhadra on 31 Oct 2004 (which is my website logo). And 2 years later, I was seeing and photographing my first Tiger at the same place. Here’s the sequence of events which followed then. Continue reading →