Varun Aditya is the winner of Nat Geo’s Nature Photographer of the Year for Animal Portraits. It landed him a cash prize and got him covered by YourStory. We reached out to him and found out more about where he comes from, what a remarkable individual he is and we showcase some of his work along with the winning photo.
Photography became an addiction and a stress buster for me.
Tell us a little about yourself and your beginnings.
I studied in a famous school from Coimbatore that focused on studies and didn’t give as much weight to art and other talents. I wasn’t particularly studious and hence was highly discouraged by the teachers and what they taught. It made me want to avoid my studies but I still managed to pass all my exams. During these troubling times, only my parents supported me. They worked in Indian Bank and some of the travel benefits offered by the bank helped me travel through India and develop a taste for nature.
It got him loving everything naturally visible in our world.
My photography journey started when I moved to London to get my MBA degree.
Once I was there, I fell in love with the city and started clicking photos on my mobile phone. These pictures were shared with my parents and friends back in India. I persuaded my parents to get me a DSLR and continued clicking pictures which I then posted to Facebook (which was just booming back then) and to my delight, I would receive about 10 likes per picture. For someone who had been discouraged by teachers and society my whole life, this made a huge difference to my confidence. I began to enjoy clicking everything I saw in London. YouTube and Google became my new teachers from whom I learned everything. Even when I faced problems from the local ruffians and gangs abroad, it didn’t stop me from setting targets for myself in photography and achieving them too. I started following famous photographers on 500 px and Nat Geo from 2012 and would regularly be inspired by them to push myself further.
Further meaning closer to lions. Lions!
Photography became an addiction and a stress buster for me. Slowly, I developed an interest for action photography which turned into a craze to freeze anything that moved. Freezing a moment was only possible in photography for me which got me visiting every park in London to capture flying birds. It’s very challenging to get a picture of a flying bird that people appreciate. The action photography I indulged in was literally for the birds.
Can’t disagree with that. This picture of our national bird is captivating.
There must have been a turning point to sustain your passion
In 2013, I won a place in a competition conducted by Nat Geo which earned me the chance to travel to Costa Rica and Panama. I was fortunate to travel with Michael Melford, a landscape photographer with Nat Geo for the last 40 years and learnt a bit more photography during the trip.
Learnt enough to capture stunning images like this.
It got you to good places but isn’t photography an expensive hobby?
Yes, photography is an expensive hobby. My parents were very supportive and bought lenses and camera for 10 lakhs through bank loans. I have travelled for 3 years now(2013-2016). I would travel twice a month after investing a lot and facing extreme challenges but when I look at the photos clicked, I forget all the problems and hurdles encountered.
If you had a picture this good, you would also forget the problems you faced.
Is photography something you do on a full-time basis?
No, I’m well-versed in share trading strategies with technical analyses of the shares. I was a business student after all, so I chose share trading as my primary source of income.
He deals with shares and lions and who gets the lions share.
So now you’re in India and still winning awards. What was it like to shift back here?
I had to come back to India after my studies. 9-5 jobs did not appeal to me and I wanted to continue photography but while I was in London, I had no clue about the photography industry in India. After watching the movie, ‘3 Idiots’, I though I could join as an assistant to a big photographer after which I could join BBC or Nat Geo. I then realized that 90% of the photographers do not need assistants and that the photography career in India was so tough with immense competition. I decided to develop a proper portfolio and hence I started my travel in India. I started it on a trip with parents at Thekkadi and then travelled to Bandipur and Kabini.
Eventually reaching out to the rest of the world to continue capturing wildlife.
Wow, 3 years of travel for photography, where have you been so far?
Avalanche, Ooty, Bandipur, Kabini (Nagarhole Tiger Reserve), Amboli, Agumbe, Tadoba National Park, Kanha National Park, Bhandhavgarh National Park, Pench National Park, Anamalai Tiger Reserve, Gangtok, Sikkim, Shimla, Sattal, Pangot, Masai Mara National Park (Kenya), Serengeti National Park (Tanzania), Costa Rica and Panama (With Natgeo Expedition), Scotland, UK, Ireland and Florida.
Can you guess which place this was clicked at?
What’s your approach to and your philosophy for photography?
Break the rules.
Never be scared to get out of your comfort zone and start something new. Everything will be difficult in the beginning and getting scared will never allow you to move further. In general, teachers and parents don’t recognize the value of the dreams and passions of kids but I strongly believe that everyone has a speciality and an inner talent. Everyone is adept in doing something that others find hard to do. We have to listen to our gut feelings and start working right away. Imagining what we could achieve at some point in the future will never work until we move right now and plunge into action.
The kind of action that would terrify most of us.
Don’t you feel like you got lucky a lot?
I am not a believer of luck but I am a firm believer of trust.
Trust your camera,
Trust the weather,
Trust the light,
Trust your subject
And finally, have immense trust on yourself.
I am driven by my passion for photography which gives me all the kicks I need and I believe that a strong passion will never leave you sitting idle. I wish everyone could get the encouragement I got from my parents and friend because this gave me happiness and the drive to move forward. This victory, after all the hardships, tastes very good. I thank my parents for all the support they have given and I sincerely thank Google and YouTube.
Now that we know a lot about you, tell us about the winning photograph.
It was shot at Amboli, a Maharasthrian hill station located in the Western Ghats of India on the 24th of July, 2016. The land is known for its unique flora and fauna. When I went with my friend, a wildlife photographer from Bangalore named Arvind Ramamurthy, the monsoon season was in full swing and it would rain for almost 10 hours a day! If you are an amphibian and reptile lover, it is a paradise.
The main purpose of my trip was to capture the “Malabar Gliding Frog” which is native to the Western Ghats. On the day I took the prize-winning photograph, I found the Malabar Gliding Frog on a tree and shot it. I then began to look for its tiny fluorescent green tadpoles on the forest floor.
This is what a forest floor looks like.
While looking, I spotted this ‘Green Vine Snake’ on a small dead branch next to our walking path. When I spotted the snake, I was standing behind it where it couldn’t see me. I gingerly walked around and approached it from the front where I could clearly see its face. It was my first encounter with a snake at such a short distance. I began to take pictures of the snake with the macro lens on my camera as it was the same one I had been using to capture the frog. However, the beautiful habitat of the thick forest and the deep pathway visible through it triggered a spark of creativity in my brain. I switched to a wide-angle lens (16-35 mm) and knew I needed to change my approach to take a good picture. I lay my body down on the muddy ground which enabled me to get to the snake’s eye level and very slowly, inch by inch, I started moving towards it.
I noticed it was a young snakelet around 10-15 cms in length. I had to gather my courage to get really close because this snake was mildly venomous and I didn’t want to get bitten. I got as close as I could and composed my shot with the wide-angle lens. Then I took a few more shots and left the place.
This is the award-winning photograph. Click to see it on the Nat Geo Website.
Here are all the technical details of the shot:
TIME: 11:54 AM
CAMERA – Nikon D4s
LENS – Nikon 16-35mm f4G
ISO 1000
SHUTTER SPEED: 1/125
APERTURE: f/9
EXPOSURE COMP : (-1.0 EV)
Thank you, very much, Varun Aditya for talking to us and providing us with some great wildlife photography including your prize-winning picture. Also, welcome to IndieFolio, we’re happy to have you on board. To contact Varun Aditya and see more of his work, follow the links below:
Facebook profile : https://www.facebook.com/adithbabloo
Facebook page : https://www.facebook.com/varunadityaphotography/
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/varun.aditya/
NATGEO PROFILE (Awards) : http://yourshot.nationalgeographic.com/profile/131673/#awards
Natgeo profile : http://yourshot.nationalgeographic.com/profile/131673/#photos
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