Fierce beauty Photographer and filmmaker Sandesh Kadur jumped out of the car when he saw this ‘leaf’. And it’s this curiosity and spontaneity that leads to the best images, he says

024 / / MARCH 2017 Photographer in focus Sandesh Kadur

his is an image that demands a Kadur says that curiosity is the key to unlocking double-take. Is it a snake? Two great wildlife photography. ‘This was enormous T snakes? ‘Nope, it’s a moth,’ says for a moth, at around the size of my face, but I nearly award-winning filmmaker and missed it. I was driving past in my car, when the photographer Sandesh Kadur, who vivid colours caught my eye. I thought, “What is has worked on BBC documentaries II, that, a brightly coloured leaf?” I stopped, out of pure Natural World and Wonders of the Monsoon, to name photographic nosiness; I wanted to find out which but a few. ‘I saw it in the Himalayas where I spent six tree this unusual leaf was from, and was confronted months. An Edward’s Atlas Moth, to be exact, in the with this extraordinary sight. I got down on the throes of a defence display. When this moth senses ground with it to shoot at moth level. Professional danger, it drops to the floor and slowly undulates its photographers spend much of their lives lying on magnificent wings, to resemble a snake.’ the ground,’ he says. I get a thrill when I capture shrimp. I investigated every loophole to keep something else, so it made no sense. The initial previously undocumented shrimp in my life, like ‘I’ll just eat farmed shrimp!’, outlay is eye-wateringly large when you buy behaviour. A few years ago, but I found out that they have to clear mangrove good quality, but the kit will stay with you forever. I was with a team filming a pair swamps to farm it. I couldn’t justify eating it I now use Panasonic Lumix camera bodies of king cobras who were after that. Worse luck. with Canon lenses. courting. They were headbutting each other, which Everybody’s a photographer now, as you can is typical behaviour before take amazing images with camera phones. mating. Suddenly, a second male cobra emerged I love that this has given the power of from the jungle, and the two males fought. in photography to everyone. My advice would be Incredibly enough, cobras don’t bite each other focus to seek the story in the wildlife image. For during combat. It’s more like a snake version instance, elephants use their sense of smell of a thumb war, as they attempt to pin each to navigate and to sense danger. I’ve shot other to the ground. The new male was victorious, You can take 100+ shots of an thousands of photos of elephants, but my so we expected him to mate with the female. animal and only get one where favourite one is of a mother and her calf trotting Instead, to our astonishment, he ate her! they’ve made eye contact. That’s along with their trunks in the air, trying to pick Cannibalism had never been documented in the one that gives you the intimacy. up a scent map. It tells us something interesting cobras before. We can only assume that he could In the late afternoon in winter, about elephants, rather than just being a pretty tell she was already pregnant with the other animals such as foxes come out of picture. That’s what wildlife photography is all male’s offspring. Gruesome. their dens to catch the last of the about. Understanding what you’re seeing, sunlight. It’s a good time to shoot. rather than just pressing a button. A shoot in Mexico made me stop eating shrimp. Sometimes, I’ll learn something Read before you shoot. Learning about wildlife I really wish I could un-know. We were filming the is the first port of call. I grew up devouring books critically endangered Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle; by British-Indian explorer Jim Corbett and there are fewer than 1,000 nesting females left in hunter-turned-conservationist Kenneth Anderson. the wild. I realised that the main thing these little If I could go back and give my younger self a They inspired me. I remember sitting high up in guys eat is shrimp. And we’re fishing it all. Then piece of advice about photography, it would be a tree as a teen in , above a waterhole, I found out that for every kilo of shrimp caught, to invest, invest, invest. When I was starting out, watching the animals come and go. A hush came fishermen can dredge up to 12 kilos of by-catch. I tried to save cash by buying cheaper kit. But it over the scene. I realised that there was a leopard Shrimp is the most expensive thing you can eat, just didn’t deliver the quality, or only lasted for beneath me, bathed in the rays of a full moon. ecologically speaking. And I absolutely love a short time. So I had to buy it again, or buy He wasn’t remotely interested in me. He swung

Clouded vision

We were shooting in a remote village on the Myanmar border, when we were told that the village elder knew the whereabouts of a clouded leopard, a seldom-seen species. When we arrived at his house, we found the clouded leopard’s skin hanging in his kitchen. They’re so hard to see, and yet people hunt these incredibly rare creatures and hang them up. It’s pretty depressing, but that’s why I take pictures, to tell stories like these and hopefully bring about change.

026 / / MARCH 2017 Photographer in focus Sandesh Kadur

‘A wildlife image The power of three I already had the mountain needs to be more range and the rainbow light, but I needed something in the than a pretty foreground to give the shot intrigue and scale. I drove picture. Always around for ages in Ladakh looking for this Tibetan kiang, seek the story’ a type of ass.

himself up into the neighbouring tree and started Speed deer fear. She’s terrified of snakes. But children scratching himself, calling out to females. aren’t... until they’re taught to be. Sensationalist I instantly understood what Corbett had meant I set up a slow shutter speed fearmongering of snakes, tigers and sharks when he wrote about the ‘sawing call’ of and followed this barasingha means that children become frightened, when a leopard. That’s exactly what it sounds like, galloping through the forest. there’s usually no need to be. I hope my work the raspy sound of a saw’s teeth biting into A fast shutter speed freezes teaches children to have respect and wood. It was an exhilarating moment. the action and makes it look reverence, rather than fear. flat, but a slow shutter here For more on Kadur’s work, see sandeshkadur.com My bucket list trip would be to Ethosha captures the lovely energy. or follow him on Instagram @sandesh_kadur National Park in Namibia – lions, giraffes and rhinos aplenty. I’m dying to go, having seen many, many pictures of the incredibly rich wildlife you can see just by hanging out at a waterhole. Another place I would go back to at the drop of a hat would be Kaziranga National Park in Eastern India. It’s the land of giants. Not just giant wildlife like elephants and water buffalo, but also elephant grass – the world’s tallest grass – which hides its colossal inhabitants. I filmed there for thePlanet Earth II episode I worked on, Grasslands.

We’re taught to be afraid of animals that wish us no harm. My nickname in my family is an Indian translation of ‘the uncle who loves snakes’. When I lived in the USA, I once rescued an injured racer snake and introduced it to my niece. Her mother, my sister-in-law, was appalled when

Words: Catherine Gray. Photographs: Sandesh Kadur Photographs: Gray. Catherine Words: she saw her daughter handling the snake with no