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With a love for nature - Hira Punjabi| Better Photography | Story
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With a love for nature - Hira Punjabi
  Kaushik Chakravorty | Nov-2005
"It has been just 10 years now that Hira Punjabi started photographing wildlife and nature with a sense of seriousness and purpose. Today, his body of work is simply good—by most standards. But his desire to use the labour of his love as a means to educate people about the fragility of nature: that it needs urgent attention from all if it were to survive, makes him more than just another wild life photographer. Kaushik Chakravorty in conversation with him…"
 
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Until about ten years ago, Hira spent most of his adult life on a family business in the city of Mumbai, and had more than his hands full. Then misfortune struck, and the well-established business did not seem all that secure. Photography asked him out and he gave in. That was ten years ago…

So, when did it all begin?
1984. My first camera was a Nikon FM2 with a normal lens. It had cost me around Rs.5,500. I borrowed money from friends to bring the SLR home. With that, I started haunting the nearby Borivali national park and the nearby creeks on the fringe of the city. I got myself an 80-200mm Vivitar and much later a Tamron 500mm mirror lens. Though nothing consequential came off these trips, they touched my conscience and I began shooting birds, insects and spiders, without even knowing the names of many of them. I just clicked because I simply wanted out.

In 1992 I went to Goa. There is not too much in terms of wildlife but it opened a window to the real wildlife that I was going to seek in the near future.

When did you actually do the switch in your mind—to take up wildlife photography as a calling in life?
I started taking wildlife very passionately after my trip to Kanha forest reserve. By then I had good equipment, but soon I realised that equipment alone was not the answer, but the spirit inside the person.

I returned a different man altogether, rejuvenated in body and mind. And even set the business that had taken a wrong turn, on track to profit. I knew by then, that photography was my calling.

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