Who’s the king?

Close encounters of the wild kind, as seen through M.K. Vasanth’s lens

June 09, 2014 05:38 pm | Updated 07:03 pm IST - Bangalore

Jungle Book - The great faceoff between two powerful inhabitants. Photo: M.K Vasanth

Jungle Book - The great faceoff between two powerful inhabitants. Photo: M.K Vasanth

Any photography or wildlife enthusiast will get the import of what photographer M.K. Vasanth has captured on camera. A sighting of an elephant and a tiger, in action, having a faceoff is the mother of all photography ‘moments’ in the wild, Vasanth reiterates.

As evening fell over the Kabini Forest Reserve, near Mysore, Karnataka, on May 26, avid wildlife photographer M.K. Vasanth waited with bated breath in the safari van. A tiger was trying to hunt amidst a herd of gaur (Indian wild bison).

After unsuccessfully trying for a kill, the exhausted tiger settled down. But soon a huge herd of elephant emerged. Vasanth feels the herd could have contained nearly 150 elephants, a remarkable sight in itself!

“There was a tusker in their midst. It saw the tiger and approached it, cautiously at first. Elephants are very protective creatures, when their herd is around. So it kept advancing towards the tiger threateningly and going back. This drama went on for about half an hour. The tiger also kept looking up from where he was lying down and went back to sleep. It was almost like neither cared for the other’s threat. But then suddenly they were face to face, and both stared at each other. The tiger growled and ran and the elephant chased it,” Vasanth describes the sequence of events. He shot the photographs with an older version of the Canon 60 D.

Vasanth, who also goes by the name of M.K. Nanjunda Raje Urs (“my name is so complicated even I can’t say it sometimes,” he laughs) is one of the founder-members of Save Tiger First, a conservation organisation. He runs an ad-agency in Bangalore and divides his time between here and hometown Mysore. “I’ve largely been doing advertising and commercial photography and have been concentrating on wildlife photography very seriously for the last three years. I believe this is a rare moment that I have captured and I want to share it with people, especially readers of The Hindu .”

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.