On Wednes­day, we had Clement Fran­cis talk to us about bird pho­tog­ra­phy. He shared with us the pho­tographs he had taken over nearly 2 decades of what he calls a deadly addic­tion (!). But what I took back from this nearly 2 hour inter­ac­tion is some­thing he said at the end. And that is: care about your sub­ject. And this is espe­cially true of birds, ani­mals and nature photography.

If you are just a detached observer try­ing to get the ‘best shot’ then you might land up with an award win­ning pho­to­graph, but that’s where it ends. Whereas, if you care about the sub­ject, study its envi­ron­ment, make an attempt to know more about the species/surrounding and then cap­ture it on film — you will have achieved much more than just click­ing a picture.

He gave us the exam­ple of pho­tog­ra­phers going to extreme lengths to get pho­tographs, thus dis­turb­ing the nat­ural envi­ron­ment of the ani­mal or bird. This is in absolute dis­re­gard to the sub­ject you are try­ing to cap­ture. Clement is pas­sion­ate about bird con­ser­va­tion issues (he has been asso­ci­ated with con­serv­ing the Bonnelli’s Eagle) and it shows in his work and his pas­sion for these crea­tures. He’s involved in other efforts too (all this while main­tain­ing his full-time work). With­out these kind of folks who work so hard towards con­serv­ing nature and wildlife, we prob­a­bly won’t have much of it left at all in a few years to come.

The other day I was talk­ing to some­one who told me he has no hob­bies. Absolutely none, he admit­ted. I seri­ously did not think it was pos­si­ble for a human being to be not inter­ested in any­thing! It made me even more thank­ful that at the other end of the spec­trum, there are those who do their best to make the world a bet­ter place to live in, in what­ever way they can. And asso­ci­at­ing and lis­ten­ing to folks like these is so much more inspir­ing and sat­is­fy­ing. It makes me want to do a lot more in terms of giv­ing back. Most of us take so much from our envi­ron­ment and nature and spend so lit­tle time or energy giv­ing back. Per­haps, it’s time to do a lit­tle bit of that too along with our busy lives.