| Shooting elephants and tigers
 The shadows across Bandipur National Park were spreading quickly as dusk overtook the long, tiring day that Jagannatha Rao, a wildlife photographer, had spent. For an entire day, he had remained in position, concentrating on capturing an elephant 'eye-to-eye'.
His Nikon lenses were kept open, aperture set on the camera and on high alert. "At a distance of about 100 ft, I saw the elephant coming towards my jeep. At 60 ft, it showed nervousness and twisted its trunk onto its tusk. Finally, at 50 ft, I captured the image. These chances last only for a few seconds in the wild. It was a close call but here it is, my most proud possession," says
Rao.
Today, 30 years later, the black and white enlarged photograph of the elephant, captured in Bandipur, stands 10 ft high and 7 ft wide in his house. Rao says, "It's haunting, I can still feel it coming towards me."
Jagannatha Rao has been doggedly pursuing his hobby since childhood. Trained by renowned wildlife photographer M Krishnan, he devotes hundreds of hours every year to his passion towards the bio-diversity of nature studies and wildlife that began in 1950.
Despite some dangerous situations he has been in the jungles and forests, he says, "There are obvious risks attached and wildlife photography can turn into life threatening incidents but it feels like you've become a part of an adventure story. I have been chased by elephants and stalked by a leopard but you have to take those risks to capture those rare photographs. I have taken some shots that were sought after in the '50s. But, I never sold my pictures. I just got the satisfaction of serving nature."
What keeps him coming back to the various wildlife sanctuaries, coastal deep rain forests, deserts and mountainous areas? For years he has been involved in the protection of wildlife and nature. "A voice for the voiceless," is how he describes it.
More than 1,00,000 black and white photographs, made over a period of 50 years, reveal the unique, personal, aesthetic touch he brings to wildlife photography, as well as the images that almost come to life. Wildlife photography is all about taking 'grab pictures'. "One does not follow any rules in wildlife photography. I just go into the jungles with no scripts. Sometimes, even if you stay for weeks, you may not see a tiger's tail. So, when an opportunity comes to me, I just capture the picture."
Some of his other favourite 'grab shots' have been in Assam when he caught on movie the rhino, the elephants in Tekkadi, leaping samba deer on the jungle roads of Mudumalai and tigers and panthers caught mid-air in Kanha National Park.
He and a team of 10 photographers also made a television series called 'India's Wildlife' with professional Sony M3 cameras. "Forty years ago, shooting a tiger, resting your left foot on it and posing for a picture was considered heroic. That's not the scene now; India's growing in leaps and bounds since the wildlife protection movement started in the late '40s. But still about 90 per cent of the people are not aware of the flora and fauna of our country. It's a phenomenal creation but they do not know it," says
Rao.
People don't know the diversity of wildlife, nature and their inter-dependence. "Do you even believe that the little insect visible to our naked eye, measuring 1/10 of a millimeter, running across the books that we read, has a reproductive system, eyes and a stomach. It can even fly. We talk about aircraft but look at the wonder of God's creations."
Now, even at the age of 70, he still makes it a mission to talk to thousands of children every year about photography, ecology, soil conservation and wildlife preservation. He feels that we should not put nature's creations at stake and that the younger people have to take over because no technology in the world can bring back a species that goes extinct.
"I cannot re-live the days that I spent in my darkroom, bringing my photographs to life but, I can certainly share my experiences of the wildlife and images captured over the years with people. For, now I just remain an armchair naturalist."
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