Plain Tiger (Danaus chrysippus). Location: Narsapur Lake, Medak.

If you are interested in seeing more butterfly photos do visit my Indian Butterflles gallery.

Common Silverline (Spindasis vulcanus). Location: Papikonda Reserve Forest, Maredumilli, East Godavari.

I spent three delightful days over the weekend traveling through the Eastern Ghats of Andhra Pradesh in search of butterflies and birds. We got ample sightings of both (as well as a few mammals). In total, we covered about 500 kms through three districts, East Godavari, Khammam and Vishakapatnam.

November 2008, Hyderabad.

September 2008, MV Foundation Alur Camp.

October 2008, Narsapur Reserve Forest.

Peacock pansies (Junonia almana) mating.

October 2008, Hyderabad.

Also known as Cheetal (Axis axis).

October 2008, Hyderabad.

The Blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra) also known as Krishna Jinka in Telugu is the state animal of Andhra Pradesh.

October 2008, Hyderabad.

Yesterday, I attended a play or rather a solo performance on the life of the great Hindi and Urdu writer, the Late Dr. Rahi Masoom Reza. To know more about him go here. The performance was very well written, acted and moving. It was especially relevant for contemporary Indian society where Hindus and Muslims increasingly view each other with suspicion and distrust.

I wish I could have avoided the lamp that seems to be coming out of the actor’s head but since I was limited to shooting from my seat I had to make do with this angle.

September 2008, Hyderabad.

About a month back, along with a few other amateur photographers, I had visited two camps for girls in and around Hyderabad managed by the MV Foundation (read more about them here) as part of the first step in a project we intended to do with them. The foundation works with children who come from a child labor as well as other troubled backgrounds. They take care of them in these residential camps where they are made part of a bridge course and after about a year in that are then put in the normal school stream. Many such children have done incredibly well, with some now studying medicine and some others finding good jobs in the IT sector. 

It was great fun to interact with and photograph the children. They were very enthusiastic about getting photographed. Even though at times their insistence to be photographed multiple times could be a little overwhelming their infectious happiness upon seeing their photos on the LCD screen of the camera made you forget all that. The children were a mix of age groups and came from diverse backgrounds. While most of them came from a child labor background some of them had gone through child marriages, suffered domestic abuse, lived all their lives until brought to the camps literally in jungles and even escaped murderous fathers. But the common thread that ran through all of them was their unwavering commitment to educating themselves. They did not want to go back to their old life and in fact some of them wanted to bring into the camps as many children as they could who were still caught in child labor. And that sincere belief they had in education I found very inspiring.

September 2008, Hyderabad.

For the first time since I got into photography I was part of a two day Nature Photography exhibition that was on for the past couple of days. The location was the Hyderabad office of global consulting firm Accenture. About 12 of my prints were on display along with another 50 of five other photographers. All six of us are informally or formally part of the Butterfly Conservation Society of Andhra Pradesh but the exhibition was not limited to butterflies. The photos on display ranged from landscapes, macros to photos of rarely seen birds. It was not a professional exhibition as we did not have the financial resources to mount one but more an attempt to show some of the variety and delights nature has on offer to people who mostly do not venture out of the concrete jungle of a city. The response was quite gratifying especially to me as I’ve only recently started seriously venturing into nature photography.

The above photo was one of the prints on display at the exhibition and is from my first outing with members of the Butterfly Conservation Society about a month back. I’ve to say that these outings (have been to two other such outings with them) have opened up a completely new world to me. The sheer variety of butterflies, some of which are so colorful to look at, one can find over a limited area never fails to surprise me. It takes a lot of patience and practice to get decent photos of these lovely little creatures but the results are often quite rewarding. So from now on you will see them more often on this blog.