Kalyan Verma - an Engineer to BBC Earth Champion

The co founder of peepli.org, a collaborative effort on long form visual story telling on crucial environmental issues as well as the co founder of India Nature Watch, an online community dedicated to wildlife photography - Kalyan Verma needs no introduction at all. A film maker, specialist in environment and Science and an eminent Wildlife photographer - Kalyan is known for his passion for nature photography.

Childhood Days

For Kalyan ,wildlife photography was a childhood dream which got manifested now. Right from childhood days, he was spending hours sticking to television ,watching wildlife programs on BBC Earth and National Geographic. He was mesmerized by observing these programs. Soon he realized that this was something which was giving him an opportunity to explore the wonderful wildlife and reveal it in front of everyone. " As I remember, I loved wild life from my childhood days and was kindly interested in photography. " Kalyan says. However as belonging to a middle class family ,he was not having the choice to follow an unconventional career , so he completed his mechanical engineering from Bengluru and started his career from Yahoo.

Transition in Career

In 2001, he joined Yahoo and worked as Security Division Head there. He also worked for open source software and LINUX community in India. During his job in Yahoo, he enjoyed his work a lot and was also awarded by 'Superstar Award ' which is presented only to 10 selected candidates all over the world. He was promoted and also sent to US but his heart was swinging in photography only so he finally quit his job in 2004 for his passion.

Migrating to the Wild

When Kalyan left his job, he decided to follow his dream and turned up to nature photography. He packed his bag and  migrated to B R Hills, a small wildlife sanctuary amidst dense forests in South Karnataka. He started understanding the relationship of human beings with nature and photographed many natural events. In his endeavor, he was helped a lot by Soligas, a community of local people living in wild for centuries. In this process, he got many valuable experiences and his entire vision about nature got transformed. As per Kalyan " we live in a country where we need protected areas. Our relationship with nature is very bad."

Royalty Free photos

As photography was a true falling for Kalyan, he took a breakthrough decision of keeping his photographs free. When he was in college, he was much inspired by the idea of free software and creative commons as these tools can be much beneficial for all. As per Kalyan, the idea of creative commons is wonderful in itself as you are putting forward your creative work in front of others for free so that they can consume it and improve also. Inspired by this idea, Kalyan has made his 10000 + photos on internet free which are ready to be used anywhere. He is not charging anything for them. He firmly believes that the people eventually pay you for your services.

His Works

As a child, Kalyan craved for being a part of a filming team. His dream came true when BBC asked him to work with them. Since then, he has worked both for BBC and National Geographic on many of their Blue chip programs. Kalyan has photographed lion tail monkeys which are found in Western Ghats in South India whose population is only 2000 worldwide. In his project, when he photographed them in an album and sent it to the project engineer showing that how their project was killing the monkeys, the construction work was stopped. He also documented several crucial wildlife projects namely Million snake bites and secrets of wild India and Mountain of the Monsoons. He also freelanced with Lonely Planet ,GEO, The Guardian ,Nature and Smith Sonian. 

Setting up World's largest Photography Platform

Kalyan is the co founder of India Nature Watch, the largest online photography community in the world. Decades ago when Kalyan started his work, he found that many other photographers were doing amazing work in nature photography but had no platform to share their work. Along with three other co-founders ,he created a web platform to share their wildlife photos and built a flourishing community around it. It has an active member base of 10000 + members with thousands of photos shared everyday. He also formed peepli.org, a collaborative visual story telling platform focusing on critical environmental issues  . He has now turned up to photo journalism by filming various landscapes changing over the years and making people aware about them.

Awards

Kalyan has been awarded with Century Wildlife photographer of the year 2005 and BBC Wildlife photographer of the year 2013. He has also got National Film Award for best exploration or adventure film for movie Wild Karnataka. His documentary on the Sundarbans Tiger for the BBC series super cats was nominated for the Emmys. He regularly give lectures on digital and nature photography. 

Passion has no body but only wings. It can create wonders. Kalyan Verma is a perfect example of it!