Wildlife and nature photographer Sarvam Balaram, a Central government employee who took to photography as a hobby, displayed his rare works captured in different nature parks in the country at a photo print exhibition and slide show of nature and wildlife photography organised by Frames Photo Academy here on Sunday.
Delivering a talk on his adventurous works undertaken during the past five years, he said wildlife and nature photography were not merely capturing photographs but a lot of observation, perseverance, and focus on the subject was needed to click educative and enlightening shots.
A study of character of birds and species was essential to capture subject-related and species-related photographs. Utmost care should be taken to prevent attracting a bird's attention to the presence of a foreign body, especially humans.
“If the bird senses that their virgin abode has been infiltrated by the humans, it will abandon its nest, eggs, and even its tiny chickens and never return,” Mr. Balaram said.
The birds should never be disturbed. The presence of strange objects such as camera and flash lighting should not be allowed to attract its attention. While wildlife photography involved a lot of risk and required safe hideouts, nature photography can be captured even at the backyard of a house. Wildlife photography was quite expensive and required lot of time, patience, and careful planning for capturing wildlife shots. “Unfortunately, India hardly has any national parks,” he noted.
Mr. Balaram displayed 50 prints and 45 slides captured by him at Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh and Bandipur National Park and Ranganathittu Wildlife Sanctuary in Karnataka.
He used medium format black and white for nature and landscape photography. He spent several hours, days, and months in the darkroom for printing. Since the availability of black and white printing paper had stopped, he too stopped the darkroom printing process. After the introduction of digital cameras, he started using Nikon D 200 DSLR. An electrical engineer by profession, he developed photography as a hobby.
International honour
He took to serious photography during the year 1995 and is still continuing. He is associated with AP Bird Watchers' Society, Hyderabad. He was awarded the Artist Federation of International Art Photography, France, an international honour, in the year 2006. He participated in several national and international photography salons in countries, including Canada, United States of America, United Kingdom, and Austria, apart from India.
