Getting tigers on camera with a wide angle lens

Hyderabad: June 29 is International Tiger Day, an annual celebration to raise awareness for tiger conservation. And rightly, city-based photographer Anjani Singamaneni used the occasion to showcase his documentation of tigers in the Nagarjuna Sagar- Srisailam Tiger Reserve (NSSTR). His work, supported by the AP Forest department, shows the big cats in their natural habitat.

He improvised the camera traps technique to use a DSLR to capture the tigers in high resolution, and used ten such setups in the NSSTR.

A few sensors trigger the cameras. “We are not physically present to change the camera settings when the lighting conditions change. More than 90 per cent of the shots go waste,” he said about the difficulty level.

Tigers here are not used to the usual traffic of safaris seen in Bandhavgarh, Pench or Kanha tiger reserves. “Spotting a tiger in NSSTR is difficult. In other tiger reserves, there is a possibility to spot a tiger if you are on a 4-day safari,” he said. Documentation is not possible in the rainy season as most parts of the forest are inaccessible. He changes the camera locations depending on the ground situation.

Most of the pictures are clicked on aging crop and full sensor cameras. “If the skill is wanting, even the best of the gear will not get good pictures. There is damage to the gear due to the hostile climate. Some haze settles on the lens and renders the pictures useless,” he said. The post production is limited to bringing out the details or contrast and not adding or removing elements.

When he is not in the forests, Anjani Singamaneni is at his musical instruments business at Banjara Hills. He also dons the cap of a musician.

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