Hyderabad: Commemorating the international tiger day, city-based photographer Anjani Singamaneni put on display for the first time wildlife photographs exclusively from the Nagarjuna Srisailam tiger reserve (NSTR) here on Friday. The exhibition at Gallery 78 in Hitec City, held in association with the AP forest department, was dedicated to tigers of NSTR.
Ten DSLR camera traps were set up for one year to click the tigers in the wild and document the wildlife in a frame. The initiative was taken to raise awareness towards the protection of the endangered species.
It is the largest tiger reserve in India, spread across Kurnool, Prakasam and Guntur districts of Andhra Pradesh and Nalgonda and Mahabubnagar districts of Telangana.
Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, the award-winning photographer said, “Previously any event conducted in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana on the international tiger day displayed tigers from other forests of the country, except their own. We never had such high resolution documentation of the tigers of our own forest reserve. I thought it was time to showcase the beauty of tigers from our own region. I started working on it from 2018 which came to fruition last year when I finally set the camera traps based on the research of the forest department. I also wanted to depict the forest landscape along with the tigers to send across a message to save ecology and the environment.”
About the challenges in capturing the wildlife, Singamaneni says that it was difficult in the initial stage.
“In other forests like Tadoba and Kanha, you can see tigers but in this forest, you cannot as the reserve covers a large area stretching up to 250 square km. Here the exercise to capture the animal in one frame becomes a challenge. This is a work of 3600 captures from which I could get some presentable pictures”, he added.
The photographer stressed on society’s responsibility towards conserving nature.
“Connect to the forests by visiting one rather than giving lectures. Also, respect the boundaries of other living creatures in nature. Do not encroach their space,” he exhorted.
