I developed an interest in wildlife photography or wildlife in general, due to my father K.S Manju Mohan, who also happens to be a wildlife photographer. We always used to go to National parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries for all my vacations. I finally started wildlife photography in the year 2014. I attended a ‘Kids photography Workshop‘ at Toehold and learnt the basics.
I started off by shooting Elephants, Langurs, Deers, Tigers and Leopards. A few years back, I went on a Western Ghats Exploration tour with Philip Ross, who introduced me to the world of Macro and Herping. And ever since, frogs and snakes are my favourite subjects to shoot.
Over the past 8 years I have been to various National parks across India. Among these, Corbett national park will always remain my favourite. It is the landscape of this park that attracts me the most.
Other than this, I have recently become a member of youth photographic society and with the guidance of the senior members of this club and Mr. H Satish, I have been exploring other genres of photography like glassware, landscape and astrophotography
In 2018 I won the ‘Special Mention‘ in Nature in Focus awards. In the same year my image was exhibited in the ‘Macro Trails‘ exhibition organised by Paws trails in Dubai. In 2019, I won the emerging talent award in Canon Wild Click Live Photography contest. In the same year I won the Askary Award.
For my photography, I use Nikon gear. I mainly use the Nikon D5 with the 500mm lens and the 105mm lens for Macro photography.
Photography has become an integral part of my life. It has changed me as a person and has taught me patience, courage, perseverance, dedication, quick thinking to name a few. But, the real teacher for me is nature.
Nature and animals have a lot of lessons to offer and being in the wild one can learn and observe many things. But some people are destroying this pristine natural habitat for monetary benefits.
I want to contribute towards the conservation of lesser-known species like frogs, snakes, fishes which are bio indicators and tell us about the quality of environment we are living in.
In order to do this, we have to spread awareness about these species. A lot of people do not know that these species exist, so they will not try to conserve them. So, the first step towards conservation is educating people. The photographs we click are great educational tools. I also aspire to explore the western ghats for many more species of frogs and snakes.
This has been my journey so far in wildlife photography. I wish to pursue this passion and achieve my goals, and hopefully be able to educate people about the smaller lesser-known species.
