Going wild with her lens

Keerthana Balaji from Pollachi has won the Sanctuary Asia award for capturing a rare natural-history moment on camera

Photographer Keerthana Balaji. Photo: special arrangement

Forty dhols and seven elephants. The wild dogs surround a baby elephant, slavering, snarling, advancing and retreating. The elephants will have none of it and the earth shakes with their trumpeting. What a photo op, and 21-year-old Keerthana Balaji wasted no time whipping out her camera (Canon T 2i Rebel) to take some rare pictures. “To think that that day I was reluctant to go to work,” she shakes her head.

Keerthana was driving towards Valparai when she saw a crowd of people leaning over the parapet of the Aliyar Dam. Curious, she got out of her vehicle and to her utter astonishment saw the warring elephants and dhols. “They were there for nearly 45 minutes or more,” says Keerthana who clicked furiously and got nearly 50 good photographs.

She posted some of them on the

Sanctuary Asia Facebook page and was pleased as Punch at the reception it got. A lot of naturalists commented that it was a rare picture. Keerthana’s friends urged her to send it in for the annual

Sanctuary Asia Awards. Heavyweights in the world of environment and conservation judged the entries for the awards. They included Steve Winter (a

Nat Geo photo-journalist), Shekhar Dattatri (wildlife filmmaker) and the editor of

Sanctuary Asia , Bittu Sahgal.

“I was at work in Pollachi when I received a call from Mumbai saying I had won. I went blank and then I started crying,” says Keerthana. It is just over a year since Keerthana got into wildlife photography, and she says, “Being recognised by a prestigious jury is truly a blessing and an honour.”

More than anything else, Keerthana is excited that her photograph is the first one from the Anamalai Tiger Reserve (ATR) to win a Sanctuary Asia award. The experience at the awards ceremony in itself was amazing she says. “It was so inspiring to meet knowledgeable people who are contributing to conservation at the cost of immense personal sacrifice. I felt so humbled being amongst them. To have won this prestigious award for documenting a rare natural history moment, makes me immensely proud.” Keerthana’s prize-winning photograph has appeared in the August 2014 issue of Sanctuary Asia .

Keerthana is alive to the fact that she is indeed lucky to have the ATR almost in her backyard. Her photographs, she hopes will contribute towards conservation efforts in the region. She believes that even an ordinary person can do his or her bit towards safeguarding Nature. One does not have to be tagged a conservationist.

“Even expressing admiration for the flora and fauna is a way of conservation,” she says. It is the need of the hour to have everyone pitching in to save what is left of the jungles and, “Through admiration comes responsibility to protect and preserve.”

Keerthana is the co-founder and Creative director of The Pollachi Papyrus , a quarterly magazine aimed at conservation by way of responsible tourism ( http://bit.ly/1J6GA37 ).