February 13, 2024 • 52 mins
A Master Wildlife Photographer, Conservationist and a wonderful human being. In memory of the late Aditya 'Dicky' Singh, celebrated famous Indian wildlife and tiger photographer, this episode features a conversation with us that took place just weeks before his untimely passing at only 57 years of age. Dicky, best known for his breathtaking tiger photographs and personal contributions to conservation in India, joins us for a eye-opening discussion. Through his engaging anecdotes and captivating storytelling, Dicky shares his journey from being a self-taught Nikon photographer, starting to work with a BBC production, and thanks to the insightful advice from mentors like Colin Johnson and Andy Rouse, he got to gaining global recognition for his outstanding work.
He emphasizes the importance of being a nature conservationist in first place and offers advice to aspiring photographers, urging them to focus more on composition rather than solely relying on the technical aspects of the camera. As we reflect on his life and career, his passion for environmental conservation, and his unique experiences capturing wildlife moments within India's natural habitats, we honor his memory and the legacy he leaves behind. Thank you for everything Dicky.
**The Transcription of this Episode is readable on our website**
Timeline:
00:00 Tribute to Dicky Singh
01:54 Intro
04:07 Aditya Singh's Early Life
08:38 Best Practices for Successful Wildlife Photography
10:36 A Typical Day of Tiger Photography with Aditya Singh
15:12 The Evolution of Camera Gear and Techniques in Wildlife Photography
27:19 The Art of Photo Processing
30:54 Conservationist or Photographer: A Personal Journey
38:53 Mentors in Photography
45:04 The Art of Seeing the Shot
49:37 The Final Thoughts and Reflections
Check out more of Aditya Dicky Singh's work:
Website: https://dickysingh.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AdityaDickySingh/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dickysingh/?hl=en
Twitter: https://twitter.com/adityadickysin?lang=en
Sanctuary Nature Foundation article: https://www.sanctuarynaturefoundation.org/article/meet-aditya-dicky-singh
"Noor. Queen of Ranthambhore" book by Andy Rouse and Aditya Dicky Singh: https://www.andyrouse.co.uk/index.php?s=product_detail&id=316
Tributes to the loss of Aditya Dicky Singh: https://www.adityadickysingh.in/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:06):
Welcome everyone to our podcast, andfor those who wonder why this week
we have a little different intro,it's because in the world of wildlife
photography, there are a few whoselens capture the essence of nature with
such breathtaking clarity and passionas Aditya Dikhi Singh from India.
For many years, his namebecame synonymous with the art.
(00:28):
of preserving the wild in frozen momentsand each frame telling the story of
beauty, conservation and the wonderfuland fun human being, husband and a father.
So as we prepared to share with you onour podcast an interview with him, we
found ourselves reflecting on the suddenprofound loss of this visionary talent
(00:49):
at the age of only 57 and just weeksafter we recorded our interview with him.
He was a soul who roamed the wildernessof Ranthambore Park with boundless
curiosity and reverence and his wildlifepictures transcended mere images.
They evoked emotions, sparkedconversations, and ignited a
collective conservation call forthe fragile splendor of our natural
(01:11):
world, inside and outside from India.
I was fortunate enough to have met himtwice, and though he may no longer walk
among us, his legacy endures forever.
Through the countless nature photographsthat continue to inspire millions.
So join us as we remember andcelebrate the life, work and
enduring spirit of Aditya TikkiSingh in our recorded interview.
(01:35):
A master of the wild, whose legacy willforever echo to the corridors of time.
Spanning the globe to bringgreat photographers and their
(01:57):
experiences directly to you.
It's 2am in Japan, 7pm in Spain, and 10.
30pm in our guest's homein Ranthambore, India.
That means it's time for the CameraCafe Show, created by photographers
Tom Jacobs and Dave Payne.
Hello there, Tom.
(02:18):
Would you want to welcome ourspecial guests and introduce
them to our listeners?
Welcome amigo, and welcome everyonefor another podcast episode.
And today we cross into that magical landof spices, wonderful culture, excellent
food, and of course, mysterious animals.
A place I've been numerous times to, andalways holds a special place in my heart.
(02:40):
Today, we move our podcast to India,and it's our pleasure to talk to
one of the biggest names in wildlifeand tiger photography, Aditya Singh,
or Dickie, as most people know him.
He's been around tigers almost 30 years,lives at the outskirts of the Rantambore
National Park, is a master of wildlifephotography, publisher of various books.
(03:03):
And touring around daily throughthe park with photographers
to look for elusive tigers.
I had the pleasure of meeting him.
And so, so let's move things rolling.
Dickie.
Good evening.
Good evening, Tom.
Good evening from the land of tigers.
Oh, I
love it.
I have, I have, I have a bit of a specialquestion to, to get things warmed up.
(03:23):
I think I heard one time you'vebeen bitten by a Cobra, right?
It was a dry bite.
So a lot of venomous snakes.
They bite you oftendon't release the venom.
So I did get bitten by a Cobra, but,uh, it didn't get to the hospital,
but nothing really happened to me.
If it wasn't a dry bite,I probably wouldn't have.
(03:46):
Okay, so, you'd choose the cobra or the
tiger?
I would choose the cobra.
Better chances of survival.
You can still run away?
You can still run away, andthey'll probably only bite
you if you step on them.
Though, to be fair, tigers arequite, you know, harmless to humans.
(04:06):
Dickie,
tell us a bit about yourself beforeyou began your photography journey.
I mean, what made you go outfrom Delhi and, and, and visit
Ranthambore Park so often?
My father was in the Indian army.
So I've actually lived all acrossIndia in the early parts of my life.
Like I've gone to about ninedifferent schools in my 12 years of
(04:29):
schooling, but I did spend a lot oftime in a boarding school in Delhi.
And, uh, once I finished school,I'm a trained civil, I mean, I
did a degree in civil engineering.
Then for a short time, I was with,uh, with the Indian civil services.
And then at some point I decided like,this is not what, what I like to do.
(04:50):
So we, by that time I'd been married.
So we decided to move to Ranthambore.
So this was fairly early.
I just got married.
And I think within a yearwe moved to Ranthambore.
We came to Ranthambore and at thatpoint, this was a really small town.
And the only possible way to make aliving was to start something with
(05:11):
tourism, then make your way around.
So we opened up a resortwhere you've come and stayed.
And, And we ran it for 21 years till 2019.
Since then we, we closed that place down,built a house and a really small homestay.
That's open only to people we know andplan to spend the rest of her life here
(05:32):
in the, in the, in this new house here.
And your photography journey,Dickie, you would say that it all
started in 1999 when the BBC wildlifedivision asked you to help them out?
Yes.
So I got into, you know, I got keen.
I was very interested inwildlife since, uh, 1984.
(05:53):
So till, from then till I actually movedto Ranthambore, I had no cameras, and I
mean, cameras weren't part of my life.
Binoculars were.
So I spent a lot of time.
Traveling to wild areas, butphotography wasn't a priority then.
And, uh, in 1999, I was workingfor a documentary film, which
(06:15):
was to be broadcast by BBC.
It was commissioned byBBC Natural History Unit.
And they wanted, uh, still pictures from,for, you know, off behind the scenes.
And that's where my photography, that wasactually my first assignment in my life.
And it was also the firsttime I worked with a camera.
And the
cameras, they came from themor you had already camera?
(06:36):
Oh, no.
So they send the cameras.
What happened was, you know, most BBCshoots are a really small, lean crew.
So they were.
Four of us working on that film, twotracker driver, two guides and drivers,
guide drivers, uh, me, and the maincinematographer, a person called Colin
Johnson, who was a big influence inmy early photography career as such.
(07:01):
He wasn't a photographer,he was a filmmaker.
So, some point, you know, the producersaid that we need behind the scenes
still pictures and we need stillpictures from the, from the park.
So they sent down what then wasstate of the art cameras, like 2.
8 lenses and F4 lenses, andit was slides then, uh, you
(07:22):
know, I remember Canon EOS 3s.
Uh, which were like the best camerabodies that are, and uh, so all the
kit landed up here and then theysaid, okay, someone has to shoot it.
So we, four of us, which is the entirecrew had a meeting and Colin, who
was the cinematographer, he told usthat he has to shoot the main film,
(07:42):
so he obviously can't shoot it.
So it's got to be one of us three, becausethat was me and, or one of the two guides
who were working with us, Salim and Vimal.
By default became me because thecamera manuals were in English
and both the guides said thatthe English is not very good.
So we got to read the manuals.
So I actually, I did my firstassignment, which got published in BBC.
(08:05):
It was for BBC film division withcameras, which I'd never seen before.
And I read the manualto learn to use them.
And how long they were there?
That shoot was for 200 days.
So you get to know eachother very well, I suppose.
Yeah, yeah, we did, we did.
And, uh, in fact, Colin and we've Colinhas come and done some six documentary
(08:26):
films here, so I've worked with himfor almost a thousand days in my life.
And apart
from this, you, you meet a lot ofother famous wildlife photographers.
We will come back in a moment about that.
But what do you, what do you consider,Dickie, the two or three best practices
to successful shoot some picturesof tigers as elusive as they are?
(08:48):
So one of the things is.
Someone I'd read about aphoto editor of a magazine.
I'm not even sure if it's true or not.
He said that the difference betweenan amateur and a professional is that
the amateur is there for three days.
The professional isthere for three months.
And so for animals as elusive as tigers.
(09:09):
You need to give them time.
You can be here for like three days.
You will see tigers, but then the thingis you'll have to photograph whatever
you see, like, you know, chancesare you could, they're lazy animals.
So half the time that you seethem, they could be sleeping.
So you have to give them some time.
The other thing, which I wastaught very early in my career
(09:31):
was that you have to have a plan.
You have to have a plan, and it's,it's better to have a plan by a plan.
It means what do you wannado with the pictures?
One cool thing I find is that, sayif I, if I go to some someplace for a
week, then I generally make it a planthat, okay, when I go back, I have to
(09:52):
make a small brochure of this script.
My brochure means like, Oh, I have to doa five page photo article on this trip.
So now if you come to Ranthambore and youwant to do a brochure or a photo article
of Ranthambore, then you need not justthe tigers, you need pretty much, you
need to establish all of Ranthambore.
(10:13):
So it helps if you have a plan becausethen it, you know, that basically
means that you kind of have comewith some sort of an idea of what
kind of pictures you need and, andyou work towards, towards that plan.
You may not get all the picturesthat you planned for, but you still
end up getting a very good selectionfar better than just driving around
(10:34):
and trying to pick up pictures.
Hmm.
Very good point.
Dickie, I had the pleasure to, tomeet you and go out shooting years
ago, but for those listening at home,describe us a moment, how a typical day
looks when, when people book at yourhomestay and you go out to, to shoot
tigers.
Uh, so, you know, tigers arelike forest animals or what
(10:56):
do you call jungles in India?
They also elusive unlike grasslands orthese big, you know, dry bush forests.
Where you see a lot of animals andyou see all pretty much all whatever
you want to see every single dayin jungles in India, you don't.
So your typical day goes like that.
You are looking for tigers, butyou essentially know at the back
(11:20):
of your head that, uh, the headthat you will not find them.
That particular on that particular day.
So you basically keep pickingup pictures every day.
You pick up a few good pictures every day.
It could could be tigers.
It could just be landscapes.
It could be some birds.
It could be some deer.
It could be.
whatever, uh, you pick up, keep,pick up pictures and you stay
(11:43):
for a few days, like at least, Iwould say at least five, six days.
And if you pick up pictures inevery, every day, you will get
tigers in those five, six days.
That's how you build up a sort of adecent collection of, of everything.
So when you're not finding tigers,instead of just Rushing around.
I'm my, I, I generally try to, and Imake sure everybody with me does that.
(12:07):
We pick up pictures, whatever, whateverwe think we find in good light.
I mean, like we say herethat don't waste good light.
If the light is good, shoot the firstyear you see if it's, if it's in
good light, like get it like it's.
Uh, it's better to get a, a commonanimal in good light than to get
a rare animal in really bad light.
(12:28):
Dickie, when people come to your, to do astay with you and to do tiger photography.
Do you give them any kind of coachingor, or discussions about tiger behavior,
do's and don'ts, that kind of thing?
I, we
do, we do, we do a quite a lot.
Like, I mean, I'll be all awarethat, you know, all photographers
(12:48):
love to, love to chat.
They love to talk and talkis mostly about photography.
So that's pretty much all you'retalking about while you hear it.
We give them some, uh, a brief on what toexpect and then on what to do when you.
Get the stuff that you're expecting.
So we do to give them a brief and morethan that, it's not like a one time brief,
(13:13):
you sort of updating them on it, likepretty much every day or every six hours.
And the other thing is almost allthe people that I get have been
photographers for like, so you don'thave to teach them anything about
the technical part of photography orthe art of photography or something.
The single most important thing whenyou're shooting tigers or say any
(13:35):
big cats or any big predators isthat you most probably in a vehicle.
So you're, you know, unlikeif you're on foot, you're in a
vehicle, you're quite restricted.
You can't just go anywhere you, inIndia, you have to, in the forest,
you have to stay on the tracks.
You can't go off the tracks.
So the most important thing to tellthem is how to line up the vehicle.
(13:58):
When you're, when you're photographingtigers, that, in my opinion, is
the single most important thing.
Uh, where do you park the vehiclefor that, for a particular shot?
And once you've got a set of shotsfrom there, how do you change the
angle so that the shot looks different?
Like, so that you get another angleand a different set of picture.
Uh, quite often, with tigers particularly,If you see a tiger in the open, you
(14:21):
don't drive up, ideally, you shouldn'tdrive up very close to it, because
if you drive up to a tiger, the tigerwould naturally tend to start walking
away from your vehicle, which is not,which is not great for photography.
So it's better to figure outwhich direction the tiger is
moving in and park accordingly.
So you have to wait in a place forlike a few minutes before it comes,
(14:43):
before it becomes photographic.
Once you start figuring thisout, then they actually come.
Quite close to you, you canvisualize that they'll come in
this gap, this gap, this gap.
That is the, I mean, like some, uh,very serious photographers and a
lot of documentary filmmakers hirepeople like us to take them inside.
And they essentially hiring usfor, uh, positioning skills.
(15:06):
The single most important thingis that where do you position the
car and how do you change that?
Okay.
So Dickie, if you get an email from thenext photographer wanting to come to
your homestay and he asks about gear.
Yeah.
What you think is essential to
bring.
So gear is no ending, you know, like I'vegone through a lot of gear over the years.
(15:27):
Now I'm reaching a stage.
It's also probably because of my age,my back is not as good as it used
to be, but I would now try to keep,carry as little gear as possible,
particularly in forests in India.
It's not easy to switch lenses.
It's too dusty here.
So ideally you should have each lensshould have a camera body with itself.
(15:50):
Now you can't possibly, if you havefour lenses, that means four camera
bodies, which means carrying itin like, say, a bag or two bags.
And that just becomes too cumbersome.
And you start missing shots because, youknow, you confuse, shall I pick up the 500
or shall I pick up the 7, 200 or whatever.
The kit I now use, or I love touse for tigers, I've switched to,
(16:13):
I shoot with Nikon, I've switchedto their mirrorless, the Z mounts.
So I have one camera with a 100to 400 mm lens and one camera
with a 24 to 120 mm lens.
So I'm essentially covered from 24 to 400.
I at some point willget a bigger telephoto.
So not necessarily for tigers,tigers are big animals.
(16:36):
So a 500 or 600 often gets too tight.
A bit too tight, so I just lovethat the flexibility that this
a hundred to 400 lens gives you.
I, I actually bought, the first 104hundred I bought was the Z Mount.
I didn't, I didn't own the, the, theolder, you know, when, when I was in
F Mount cameras, I didn't own the 104hundred, I had a 7,200 or 200 400.
(17:00):
But for tigers, tigers, ideally the bestrange is somewhere between 100 and 300.
Would
you say that that mirrorless now Dickeyhas helped to photography a bit in your
case?
It has.
It has.
Uh, if you, it's, it's made, it'smade a simpler, I mean, you know, a
lot of like auto focusing is far, farmore advanced than it was earlier.
(17:26):
But then, you know, like, I mean,we started on, I started with
shooting slides on cameras wherethe auto focusing was good, but
nothing compared to what it is now.
So every year, every, every timenew kit comes out, it feels like,
oh, wow, this was a game changer.
This was a game changer.
So, mirrorless.
But the new mirrorless systems,the autofocusing is mind blowing.
(17:50):
They have insane amount of features,insane amount of customization.
The flip side is you end up taking farmore pictures than you, you'd plan to.
So your storage goes for a six.
I mean, Z9 shoots like at 45 megapixeland it shoots 20 frames in a second.
So.
Even if you try to hold, really holdyourself, you end up taking two, three
(18:11):
pictures of each frame and, you know,it's, it's very easy to fill up the card.
Very, very easy to fill up the card.
So you have to really hold back on this.
You remember
the days of slide film,Dickie, when you had only 36?
Oh, yes.
Uh, and, uh, here it was even more,for us, it was slightly trickier.
Uh, we couldn't buy slide rolls locally.
(18:31):
So we used to buy them from Delhiand that time getting them from
Delhi was, the drive was really long.
So we had to get them in trains andthen with the weather in Ranthambore,
we had to keep them in refrigerators andtake out to, so like, you know, you got
your, you got like a dozen slide rollsfrom Delhi that is like 36 into 12.
(18:51):
And you are, you are planning to makeit last till your next trip to Delhi.
Yes.
So if you had a, if you had a rollin your camera, which has taken
something like 29 pictures and there'sa tiger stalking, waiting to charge.
You, you know, you have only seven shorts,so you really, really held yourself back.
And the other thing, other issue wehad was once we shot the slide roll, we
(19:16):
had to send it to Delhi for developing.
So you would get to see your picturesabout two months after you shot them.
So you had, you know, it was difficult to.
I mean, if things went wrong, if thepicture wasn't correct and slides, as you
remember it, it, it was very unforgiving,you know, if your exposure was a bit off,
(19:37):
it's gone, everything like, you know,and there were a hundred ISO 50 is well,
we have a 60 ISO pro we have, we hada hundred ISO later 400 ISO came out.
That was like brilliant.
I mean, 400 is what we thoughtwas like, amazingly far.
So the slides, the other problem was wewould see the slide two months later.
So by that time, you've kind ofhalf forgotten where you shot this.
(20:01):
Why did you go wrong?
And in fact, I switchedtotally to digital in 2005.
And I don't, I mean, I noticed this.
See us improvement in my photographybecause, you know, with digital was
that replay was instant if you wantedto, or at least, you know, a few hours
later, so you knew where you went wrong.
(20:23):
What happened with slides?
You shot it.
You had no clue whatsettings you had used.
We used to try to note somesetting down in a smaller book.
But because you get the slide backafter the, from, you know, after
processing, like it would take two months.
So by that time you kind offorgotten that pocket book.
So you don't even know where I, whereI went wrong, but digital that, that
(20:47):
the feedback was near instant that,that, that changed things quite a bit.
And now with mirrorless, it's like thingshave become quite easy or standard.
I mean, your standard picturesare very easy in order to shoot.
So pretty much.
Everybody can shoot very similarish picture, technically speaking.
So it's all, it's all come down nowto, I think, in my opinion, it's just
(21:11):
composition, composition, composition.
How good do you compose?
How strong do
you compose?
And mirrorless also has the advancesnow of the very strong low light.
Amazing though idea, like from, youknow, those are like 20 years ago
I thought a hundred ISO was fast.
Now you think 30 to a hundredISOs, you can push it even more.
(21:32):
Yeah.
But like that, that's ahuge, huge difference.
Yeah.
I mean, I, 20 years ago getting shutterspeeds of one by 500 was like your dream.
Now you like, now I'm on one by2000, one by thousand one by four.
I mean, if I'm below oneby 500, it's by design.
It's not by.
(21:52):
It's because I want to stay low.
Yes.
Because everybody wants to get theshot of the tiger drinking in the
water hole in sunrise and now withthis low light feature, it's amazing.
You know, like with slides, uh, when you,when I remember when we entered the park
for the first one hour, you didn't takea single picture because it was too dark.
(22:16):
Yeah.
True.
Now that first one hour is the.
The time when you take all yourpictures, because that's like, you
think that's the golden hour or radaror, you know, but slides on that,
that, that was really difficult.
You'd only pictures of static things.
And like, but when you entered the parknow, so some of the light that we can
(22:38):
capture now was unheard of 20 years ago.
Dickie today with yourmirrorless gear, what kind of
ISO range do you shoot within?
When you're doing tiger photography, so
I carry two mirrorless bodies, atleast one to one with wide angle is
(22:59):
set like how default mirrorless is set.
The one which I use on telephoto, I'vechanged the ISO settings to, I don't use
auto ISO, I change the ISO manually, butI've changed it to change in full stops.
So I go from 400 ISO to 800 ISO, there'snothing in between and 800 to 1600.
(23:20):
So I, by default, keepmy camera at 800 ISO.
So if I have to switch, if I thinkI have a lot, a lot of light, then
it's just one switch down to 400.
One switch up to 16.
The other mirrorless, which Ihave on the white there, I, the
ISO goes up by one third stop.
In fact, in my telephoto, I keep myISO on to move on full stops and even
(23:47):
my aperture to move on full stops.
So there is, I go from F5.
6 to F8.
There's nothing in between.
I have done this because with tigers andthe other interesting, really interesting
animal for me is the leopard here.
You need to be able to shoot really fast.
You know, they don'tgive you so much time.
They often don't give you so much time.
(24:09):
And especially, you know, okay, portraits,they give you, if they're sitting down or
the resting, like tigers, particularly,you'll see them for a long time.
But if there's any action,it's going to happen very fast.
And tigers can go fromtigers, like all big cats.
Can go from sleeping to fullcharge board in a fraction,
you know, in about two seconds.
(24:31):
So I didn't, you know, I, I like it onthe telephoto that I'm able to change
the aperture and ISO by full stops.
So if I, I either double theamount of light that coming in or
half the amount of light that'scoming just to make it faster.
Uh, but with the, with the wideangle, then it's like everything
(24:51):
goes up by one third stops.
And, uh, the other thing I have is,which was actually drilled into our
heads by the other photographers weworked in the early days, was that you
have to have a mental default setting.
That when you pick up, say, 100 400 lens,you know, from even when you take it out
of the bag, you know, that it's at 5.
(25:14):
6 800 ISO, the focus point is bang inthe center, you know, and so if I switch
and there's no exposure compensation,if I switch any one of these settings,
moment I stop shooting, I put it backto the default, that default is very
important because what if you don'tgo back, I mean, if you don't go
(25:35):
back to your default, Put the cameraback in your bag and you pull it out.
And then the next few shots thatyou take, you realize that you
had it two third underexposed.
So the default is, the default likeis like kind of just ingrained in me.
I have to put everything back in default.
I'm guilty.
I've
done that.
Yeah.
No, everyone's guilty of that.
(25:56):
I have, I have one of the stupidestthings I did once was, you know, quite
often you switch the, the preview onthe back monitor off, but just to say
battery, I was shooting black and white.
So the camera wasn't monochrome.
And after that, I hadsome five minutes of.
Fantastic tiger and cub actions.
(26:17):
I shot the whole thing in black and white.
And that is just, so you do, I mean,it's easy to make these, I, I, I call
these a schoolboy mistakes, but wekeep making them once in a while.
So the idea is like, don't make the,don't make rank amateur mistakes.
Remember
you heard it here first folks.
Even Dickie makes schoolboy mistakes.
(26:40):
So don't feel bad.
Everybody, everybody does.
And we'd be lying if you say youdon't make schoolboy mistakes.
I think I've made morethan my share of them.
Dickie, quick question.
You, you, you do a lot of editingon, on your pictures in Photoshop.
I not so much though.
You know, I shoot a lot.
I like, because I live here.
(27:01):
So I'm, I actually like atleast four or five days a week.
I am shooting.
So I pretty little timeto process the pictures.
A lot of my friends would like, youknow, would come here for 15 days and
then they go back to wherever they are.
And then the next trip is a month later.
So they got a month towork on the picture.
(27:23):
I typically would get a weekend.
So what I've started now started doingis I process very few pictures and I kind
of half process them in the sense that.
I'll just fix them in the, atthe raw stage in the, on, on
Photoshop and save it as there.
(27:46):
So only if I need to use that picturesomewhere, do I then finally tweak it?
Otherwise, just do the, just doyour basic light correction, color
correction, whatever in the, in the,all in the raw stage and just save it.
It just saves me time.
And my computer, my, uh, my heaviestfolder is called to do, I mean, these
(28:07):
are things I have to do and, andjust keeps filling up, filling up,
filling up, and then reaches a stagewhere you've just got to delete it.
You backed up the pictures, but hesaid, okay, this I'm not doing anymore.
Processing has also become far better.
Processing software, theybecome really good now.
I mean, like early, earlyPhotoshop, you had to be quite
a, quite a geek to use it here.
(28:28):
And you know, we, we were like, I'ma civil engineer by training, but I
was one of the last generations tofinish engineering without computers.
So I'm not really, I'm not very, veryconfident with, uh, with computers itself.
And when he, I remember thefirst few versions of Photoshop
were quite difficult to use for.
(28:51):
For someone who is not, who isnot very good at using a computer
and now it's become pretty good.
I mean, for, uh, if you ask me, like, ifyou take a straight picture by a straight
picture, I mean, the sun is behind yourshoulder and you know, the animal is front
lit or whatever the subject is front lit.
(29:11):
In the raw thing, if you just pressauto, it gets 90 percent of it, right?
Yeah, yeah.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
It's amazing.
It's only when you're silhouetting itor, you know, shooting backlight or
some, then the auto doesn't work allthat well, but like for most of the
cases, it just, just gets it right.
So,
well, but it's somethingyou, you wouldn't, you enjoy.
(29:33):
No editing
or no, no, no, I like, Ilike editing the pictures.
I don't like processing them.
Yes.
I mean, I love to go see through thepictures and like, uh, figure out, okay.
These are the ones that I like.
I normally, when I import myroles, uh, I go through them.
I rarely delete pictures,even if there's something.
(29:54):
Wrong because storage is, Imean, storage isn't, it's getting
cheaper and it's an expense thatyou have to handle to save time.
I don't really, you know, gothrough and like delete the junk
and keep the app keepers and things.
But I like to go through just to selectthe pictures that I want to process.
(30:14):
And I usually give them a rating.
So my rating system isthe two sets of rating.
There's one star and the three star.
One star is some picture forpersonal use or personal interest.
It's not something I'm going topublish or even share with anyone.
Three stars is what I would process toprint or whatever, store, keep with me.
(30:36):
So I give like say about 1 percent ofthe pictures that I take a three star
rating and I put them in a folder calledto do and the way they keep accumulating.
And that folder becomes like,takes up half your computer space.
Yes.
You delete it or you forget
something.
Dickie, let's take our listenersin a different direction, show
(30:57):
them a different side of you.
In our earlier discussions, it becameclear that you've been active in and
founded a number of key conservationgroups or roles, including the Andala
Plateau Water Security Project.
Travel operators for tigers, thirdtiger crisis and kids for tigers.
(31:21):
It begs the question, do you consideryourself a conservationist first?
Or a photographer first, and why?
So I consider myself aconservationist first.
That's because a conservationistor whatever you would call it,
a wildlife offender or someonewho loves wildlife or wilderness.
(31:44):
I started off that way for aboutfirst 13 or 14 years of my, you know,
since my wildlife interest started.
I didn't even own a camera.
It was only binoculars.
And the cameras happened by much later.
I am a very serious photographer whospends a lot of time with cameras
(32:04):
around, like I almost, I don't stepout of the house without a camera,
but I still consider, I wouldconsider myself a conservationist.
So, one of the things you've, I don'tknow if you, you've probably not heard
about is, my wife and I, we have afarm pretty close to where we live.
We bought this farmland, whichis barren, barren land, not
(32:26):
much, but about 50 acres of it.
And over the last.
24 years, we've converted it intoa, a proper forest with the same,
like we didn't plant trees there.
We let the natural regrowth happen.
It took 15 or 20 years, we protected it.
And now we are proud owners of 50acres of forest where we get tigers
(32:48):
and leopards and deer and we have waterholes and it's like, it's our own forest.
What do you
see as a conservationist?
What do you see as the biggest threatto tigers and their future in India?
In my opinion,
you know, like when we talk about saywildlife conservation, it's a small
(33:11):
part of ecosystem conservation globally.
Really speaking, pretty muchall our environmental mess.
can be pinpointed to oneword, which is consumption.
So more we consume, more power we consume,more metal or whatever, more minerals we
consume, more material we consume, biggerthe mess we're landing up ourselves.
(33:34):
And so essentially You know, a climateactivist, a wildlife activist, a landscape
activist, a wilderness activist, they'reactually all parts of the same problem.
The problem is the same.
That there are too many of us and asignificant percentage of us, not 80
or 90%, but like 10 percent of all thehumans in the world, or 10 or 15 or 20%,
(34:00):
the consumption level is far too high.
So, you know, it's, it all comes downto like, it's, it's just weird how
things are It's funny, like, you know,we want, say, I want uninterrupted power
supply throughout my life to run mygadgets, but I also want to save my life.
(34:20):
So it's very difficult toreconcile both of these.
You know, a lot of our powercomes from dodgy sources.
A lot of our infrastructure isSeriously damaging to the environment.
Now, when you say environment, yousee the ocean, the forest, the desert,
everything is affected essentially byconsumption and big urban centers or by
(34:42):
the rich and rural area for everythingbasically comes down to consumption.
Like for instance, you know, for anaverage person, the thought is that
the single biggest thing, dangerfor tigers are tiger poachers.
In my opinion, that may not bein the top three or four threats.
The single biggest, uh, like, youknow, a poacher can come to say a
(35:06):
gang of poachers can hit Ranthamboreand maybe kill half the tigers.
But tigers breed very fast.
If there's enough tiger habitatfor them, they'll fill up the
rest of the habitat really fast.
But say a dam for power consumption.
Or a mine for coal thatdestroys the habit.
(35:27):
Once that habitat is gone, nothing isgoing to say, I mean, nothing comes back.
The problems are, you know, the,the problems that get highlighted
the most are the glamorous oneslike poaching and things, but
the real issue is somewhere else.
Well, and with India is now the mostpopulous nation in the world, 1.
3, almost 1.
(35:47):
4 billion people.
And I think.
A birth rate that's climbing.
No, the birth rate isactually coming down.
Oh, the rate.
Yeah.
But it's 1.
4 billion people.
Birth rate is coming down.
We are actually quite close towhat you would call a rate at
which there will be no more growth.
But the number of our populationwill still keep going up 30 years
(36:14):
before it starts going down.
And anyway, you know, 1.
4 billion is a lot.
So we're talking about literallysome 15 or 15 or 20 percent of the
world's population in two and ahalf percent of the world's land.
You know, India is a very land hungrycountry, like a bulk of our population
depends on primary industries like it.
(36:36):
Agriculture and thing.
So more people means they need more land.
Interesting.
On
the other side, imagine 1.
4 billion people, Dickie, and, and anyway,still you have these, oh, that thousand
tigers there.
That is the most optimisticthing about India.
There are very few countries.
(36:57):
I think no country in the worldwith population density so
high and still so much of it.
It's not just tigers.
We have tigers.
We have rhinos.
We have elephants.
We have leopards.
We have, I mean, we have insaneamount of wild animals and in a
country which has something like700 people per square kilometers.
(37:17):
That's like, you know, our,our population density is about
the same as West New York.
We are about the samesize as West New York.
And we have about, say, 50times more wildlife than that.
You,
you talked about this before inour last conversation together.
Is the tiger populationstatic, declining, or climbing?
(37:40):
The
tiger population for the lastfew years, last 10, 12 years,
has been climbing slowly.
The problem is that the tigerhabitat is going down slowly.
So better management within theexisting habitat is actually critical.
(38:00):
Yeah, so it's increased the numberof tigers totally, just gradually.
I mean, like by a few percentage points,but overall, the habitat suitable
for tigers has gone down by a few.
Percentage points.
So that is the scary part.
The habitat loss is scary.
Like we, we need to hold whatever habitatwe have and ideally build up a bit more.
(38:21):
There is enough, enough space, whichcan be, which just needs time to
regenerate itself and it will be back.
There's also a lot of focuson tigers now in India.
Things 20, 30 years.
The previous generation, like our parentsgeneration, for instance, they were
all, I Like hunting was rampant andthings, but the newer generation, like
(38:46):
the next generation, our kids generationare very environmentally conscious.
That's good news.
You mentioned a couple of peopleearly on who were the two or
three greatest photographyinfluences in your life, Dickie.
And what did you learn from them?
Okay.
So
one of the first Big influence on myphotography was the BBC cinematographer
(39:12):
I spent so much time with, Colin Johnson.
He wasn't really a still photographer,but I spent so much time with him and
we used to always talk about angles andlights and things because essentially
he was also, he was a cameraman.
He was just shooting moving images.
So, a lot of my early influence was Colin.
(39:35):
So Colin was a brilliant cinematographer.
Technically he wasn't, he wasn'tthe best, you know, in terms
of the tech part of his camera.
I remember with him shooting and like, youknow, these professional film cameras, the
whole lot of knobs and buttons all over.
And you'd ask Colin that,like, Colin, what's all this?
(39:56):
He's, ah, matey, it'ssome, something, something.
The tech guys fix it and then I just.
He used to put tapes over them so thatit doesn't change, but essentially
the few things he taught me, whichreally helped me through, uh, how
to, how to see light, how to, howto see a shot and how to get angles.
(40:18):
He used to say basically thatthere are only six things about
photography, which were light, light,light, and angle, angle, angle.
So Colin was a huge influence in me.
And then I've worked with a lot ofother professional photographers.
And the other big influence was, andis still, uh, is, uh, Andy Rouse.
(40:41):
Uh, he's a, he's one ofBritain's best photographers.
He, he and I shoot a lot together.
We are like very close friends.
I mean, nearly family.
And he comes to Ranthambore about fouror five times a year, and a couple
of times a year we meet up in Africa.
So he's also been a hugeinfluence on my photography.
(41:02):
And, uh, a third gentleman wassomeone who was not known much,
was a photographer who passed away.
He is from near Delhi.
Someone called N.
C.
Dhingra, when I started photography, uh,with slides and things, he really helped
me out a lot with, with a lot of things.
And that time I'm just starting.
(41:24):
He'd been, he'd been, so he, he wasa, a busy businessman whose only
hobby was wildlife photography.
So these were the threebig influences in my life.
Sounds like you had a very fortunate.
Group of mentors to help you out?
I, I did.
I did.
And so glad I got them really earlybecause a lot of us are quite lost in
(41:47):
the first two, one or two years, and wepick up some things and some techniques,
which then takes years to forget.
I mean, we pick up something, somethings which are not really good
to pick up, and then it takes.
I was fortunate that right at thebeginning, I was like guided quite well.
(42:09):
And, you know, I'm generally things likedrilled a thing like, you know, don't
make schoolboy mistakes were drilled in myhead, like go back to default, do this, do
that, were literally drilled in my head.
Something you said about Colin andhis film camera, that there were
buttons and adjustments everywhere.
Yeah.
Made, made me think of aquestion for you real quick.
(42:32):
You know, a lot of the new camerasthat are out today have got, the number
of buttons has doubled, the number ofcontrol wheels has climbed, it's, it's
almost like, if you had a choice, do youwant more buttons, more possibilities?
More variations, or do you want acamera that gets out of your way, that
(42:55):
focuses on aperture, shutter speed, ISO?
I, I personally would like less, thoughthere is, you know, just because I like,
I would like less buttons and less techpart, does not mean that I'll get it.
As cameras get more and morecomplicated, they are going to be
(43:16):
more and more buttons and things.
I mean, the new mirrorlesslook like a spaceship.
I mean, the buttons allover the bloody place.
So, uh, I mean, like when Igot the Z9, the manual is more
than 900 pages, 900 pages.
I mean, that's insane.
So I, usually what I do is once I getthe camera, I go through the manual.
(43:40):
And I go in and do my customizationand everything once, and once that's
done, I rarely go into my menu.
Very, very rarely.
I like, I believe, you know, takingpictures is like driving a car.
It's a lot of musclememory and it's all about.
So for instance, when you drive acar, pretty much the own roles that
(44:01):
you have, you have five controls.
You have the steering.
You have the accelerator.
You have a brake.
You have a gear.
I mean, manual shift.
Okay, we have like, wemostly drive manuals here.
We have a clutch.
So these are the five settingsthat you have on a camera.
You pretty much have just five settings.
You have can change the aperture.
You can change the shadow speed.
(44:21):
You can change the ISO.
You can change the focal length andyou can change the point of focus.
Essentially, these are theonly five controls really
that you need, but it helps.
A lot of the buttons, a lot of thecustomization is actually helps you
fine tune or make these five, you know,change these five settings far easier.
(44:42):
But end of the day, it's all just five,just, just about your aperture, your
shutter speed, your ISO, your, that's it.
And it's, you know, so the, the technical,you know, the thing with thing is
that a lot of us get stuck on a lotof us, like that includes, includes
me and it took me a long time to get.
(45:04):
This in my head that photographyis not gizmo, it's not like it's
not science, it's not, it's an art,it's, it's got, you know, it's not
technical, it's, it's an art form.
So essentially, you know, youknow, the single biggest thing in
photography, the single most importantthing in photography is composition.
All the tech part is.
(45:26):
It's one of the things that I'mpersonally wrestling with a little
bit because as I get out and shootmore and more and, and I'm shooting
primarily black and white at this point,what I realize is it's fundamentals.
It's aperture, it's shutter speed,it's ISO, it's seeing the shot in
(45:49):
my mind's eye, then see throughthe viewfinder and make it go.
This,
this, the single big, you know,the third, the single biggest
thing is actually seeing the shot.
I mean, we all strugglewith it all the time.
Like, you know, there are times whenyou're totally in the zone, you see the
(46:10):
shot and you know exactly what you want.
You know exactly the frame that you want.
It's about seeing the shot.
Easier said than done.
You know, it's very easy to say, okay,I'll just, just see, see the shot.
I guess that's what, that's probablythe toughest part of photography.
And it's got the greatest benefits ifyou can learn to improve your vision.
(46:33):
It
is, it is, it is.
It's all about that.
All right.
Dickie, this has been wonderful.
Let me run one last question by it andkind of wrap up today's conversation.
For those listeners who arealready into wildlife photography.
What is one thing you'd recommendthey should start doing, one
(46:56):
thing they should stop doing, and
why?
So, the thing I would recommendthat they should start doing is,
like I said, seeing the shot.
That's the, that's the whole story.
And the one thing I would I recommendto stop doing is don't shoot too much.
I mean, shoot less, see more.
(47:18):
It's very easy to shoot a lot.
I think I've seen very often in thefield is that people just pick up
the camera and like say there's atiger standing in half good light.
They take 50 pictures.
You essentially got 50copies of one pictures.
It makes more sense to see a bit like,you know, if you could change the focal
and change the angle a bit, change thepoint of focus, change or whatever.
(47:41):
Change orientation instead oftaking 50 copies of one picture,
you, it's, you're probably betteroff taking five versions of that.
Yeah.
It sounds a little bit likeJohn free street photographer.
And he says, you've got topractice, practice, practice, but
(48:01):
that doesn't mean machine guns.
No
machine gun shooting isactually, you shouldn't
frame it.
Think it, then share it.
And
you know, if you, we have this thing,we believe that if you don't machine
gun it, you're missing things.
No, you're not.
You know, I would rather missthe first few shots and then, and
(48:23):
understand what I really want me,what I really should be doing.
Even if it means missing the first fewshots, you'll end up with a better,
better collection by the end of it.
Excellent.
Oh,
go ahead, Tom.
I'm because.
The time zone here inSpain, I'm getting hung up.
You still have, you still havecampfire nights in your lodge now?
(48:44):
This is June.
Um, it is 45 degrees centigrade.
In winters we do.
Right now it's hot.
And instead of the campfire night,Tom, they have soft ice cream.
Yeah, we have a
bucket of ice for everyone.
Yeah.
But otherwise, yeah.
(49:05):
Otherwise, uh, for, uh, fromNovember to February, we sit around
a lot of fire all every night.
Okay, if you can make me some PalakPaneer, I will be there in December.
Looking forward to that.
I'll personally make it for you.
And add Murg Malai Tikka to that
order, please.
Yeah, I think, uh, you shouldcome here for a longer time.
(49:26):
I prefer the Murg MalaiTikka to Palak Paneer.
Oh,
here I come.
Well, now he's got me hungry andit's the middle of the night here.
Oh, geez.
We'd really love to thank Dickie Singhfor just an absolutely delightful
and insightful conversation together.
(49:47):
And I hope that you, our listenersagree that we need to get
Dickie back for another episode.
What do you think, Tom?
Yeah, I think he's a perfect fit for ourconservation episode we are planning.
Absolutely.
If he's willing to come back, of course.
I am.
It's a, it was, it'sa pleasure being here.
(50:08):
It was a pleasure talkingto the two of you.
I'm looking forward to another episode.
Okay.
Well,
we were going to follow up on that then.
Dickie.
Thanks.
All right.
And best of luck.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
Bye.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Dave.
I just.
Back my back while we did this interviewand you were talking because I have
(50:28):
to go, I have to go back there again.
I mean, I, I love the passion he has and,and the stories, you know, the stories
that only come from years living there andmaking these outstanding pictures he does.
And he's just another wonderful exampleof how, and we see it over and over
again now in, in, in our podcast.
(50:49):
How a wildlife photographer becomesmore than just the camera they turn
in their turn, all their intentionto let me think, how can I save this?
And it's, I find it amazing totalk to photographers like him
and people who actually tryingto make a change in the world.
It's
amazing.
There's three things that I have reallycome to admire about Dickey Singh.
(51:13):
One, he is self taught.
The BBC sends him a camera and saysyou need to take photos for 200 days.
Did he shrink from it?
No.
He learned it, got into it, but he'sself taught and he's willing to share.
The second thing I like about him ishis energy, just comfortable focus,
(51:38):
but you can sense the power underneaththe surface with Dickie Singh.
And the third thing justcame clear to me tonight.
I really liked the way he focuses onthe basics that it's about composition
and aperture and shutter speed.
(51:58):
And ISO, but seeing the shot beforeyou see it in the viewfinder, that
is such strong, strong advice.
Well, listeners, we're going to leaveyou with a quote from Paul Oxton, the
founder and CEO of the Wild Heart WildlifeFoundation, who said, never apologize
(52:21):
for being oversensitive and emotionalwhen defending the welfare of wildlife.
Those emotions give you the strengthto fight for what's right and to be
the voice of those who cannot be heard.
Thank you so much for listening.
Now pick up your camera, get outthere, and make a difference.
Welcome everyone to our podcast, andfor those who wonder why this week
we have a little different intro,it's because in the world of wildlife
photography, there are a few whoselens capture the essence of nature with
such breathtaking clarity and passionas Aditya Dikhi Singh from India.
For many years, his namebecame synonymous with the art.
(00:28):
of preserving the wild in frozen momentsand each frame telling the story of
beauty, conservation and the wonderfuland fun human being, husband and a father.
So as we prepared to share with you onour podcast an interview with him, we
found ourselves reflecting on the suddenprofound loss of this visionary talent
(00:49):
at the age of only 57 and just weeksafter we recorded our interview with him.
He was a soul who roamed the wildernessof Ranthambore Park with boundless
curiosity and reverence and his wildlifepictures transcended mere images.
They evoked emotions, sparkedconversations, and ignited a
collective conservation call forthe fragile splendor of our natural
(01:11):
world, inside and outside from India.
I was fortunate enough to have met himtwice, and though he may no longer walk
among us, his legacy endures forever.
Through the countless nature photographsthat continue to inspire millions.
So join us as we remember andcelebrate the life, work and
enduring spirit of Aditya TikkiSingh in our recorded interview.
(01:35):
A master of the wild, whose legacy willforever echo to the corridors of time.
Spanning the globe to bringgreat photographers and their
(01:57):
experiences directly to you.
It's 2am in Japan, 7pm in Spain, and 10.
30pm in our guest's homein Ranthambore, India.
That means it's time for the CameraCafe Show, created by photographers
Tom Jacobs and Dave Payne.
Hello there, Tom.
(02:18):
Would you want to welcome ourspecial guests and introduce
them to our listeners?
Welcome amigo, and welcome everyonefor another podcast episode.
And today we cross into that magical landof spices, wonderful culture, excellent
food, and of course, mysterious animals.
A place I've been numerous times to, andalways holds a special place in my heart.
(02:40):
Today, we move our podcast to India,and it's our pleasure to talk to
one of the biggest names in wildlifeand tiger photography, Aditya Singh,
or Dickie, as most people know him.
He's been around tigers almost 30 years,lives at the outskirts of the Rantambore
National Park, is a master of wildlifephotography, publisher of various books.
(03:03):
And touring around daily throughthe park with photographers
to look for elusive tigers.
I had the pleasure of meeting him.
And so, so let's move things rolling.
Dickie.
Good evening.
Good evening, Tom.
Good evening from the land of tigers.
Oh, I
love it.
I have, I have, I have a bit of a specialquestion to, to get things warmed up.
(03:23):
I think I heard one time you'vebeen bitten by a Cobra, right?
It was a dry bite.
So a lot of venomous snakes.
They bite you oftendon't release the venom.
So I did get bitten by a Cobra, but,uh, it didn't get to the hospital,
but nothing really happened to me.
If it wasn't a dry bite,I probably wouldn't have.
(03:46):
Okay, so, you'd choose the cobra or the
tiger?
I would choose the cobra.
Better chances of survival.
You can still run away?
You can still run away, andthey'll probably only bite
you if you step on them.
Though, to be fair, tigers arequite, you know, harmless to humans.
(04:06):
Dickie,
tell us a bit about yourself beforeyou began your photography journey.
I mean, what made you go outfrom Delhi and, and, and visit
Ranthambore Park so often?
My father was in the Indian army.
So I've actually lived all acrossIndia in the early parts of my life.
Like I've gone to about ninedifferent schools in my 12 years of
(04:29):
schooling, but I did spend a lot oftime in a boarding school in Delhi.
And, uh, once I finished school,I'm a trained civil, I mean, I
did a degree in civil engineering.
Then for a short time, I was with,uh, with the Indian civil services.
And then at some point I decided like,this is not what, what I like to do.
(04:50):
So we, by that time I'd been married.
So we decided to move to Ranthambore.
So this was fairly early.
I just got married.
And I think within a yearwe moved to Ranthambore.
We came to Ranthambore and at thatpoint, this was a really small town.
And the only possible way to make aliving was to start something with
(05:11):
tourism, then make your way around.
So we opened up a resortwhere you've come and stayed.
And, And we ran it for 21 years till 2019.
Since then we, we closed that place down,built a house and a really small homestay.
That's open only to people we know andplan to spend the rest of her life here
(05:32):
in the, in the, in this new house here.
And your photography journey,Dickie, you would say that it all
started in 1999 when the BBC wildlifedivision asked you to help them out?
Yes.
So I got into, you know, I got keen.
I was very interested inwildlife since, uh, 1984.
(05:53):
So till, from then till I actually movedto Ranthambore, I had no cameras, and I
mean, cameras weren't part of my life.
Binoculars were.
So I spent a lot of time.
Traveling to wild areas, butphotography wasn't a priority then.
And, uh, in 1999, I was workingfor a documentary film, which
(06:15):
was to be broadcast by BBC.
It was commissioned byBBC Natural History Unit.
And they wanted, uh, still pictures from,for, you know, off behind the scenes.
And that's where my photography, that wasactually my first assignment in my life.
And it was also the firsttime I worked with a camera.
And the
cameras, they came from themor you had already camera?
(06:36):
Oh, no.
So they send the cameras.
What happened was, you know, most BBCshoots are a really small, lean crew.
So they were.
Four of us working on that film, twotracker driver, two guides and drivers,
guide drivers, uh, me, and the maincinematographer, a person called Colin
Johnson, who was a big influence inmy early photography career as such.
(07:01):
He wasn't a photographer,he was a filmmaker.
So, some point, you know, the producersaid that we need behind the scenes
still pictures and we need stillpictures from the, from the park.
So they sent down what then wasstate of the art cameras, like 2.
8 lenses and F4 lenses, andit was slides then, uh, you
(07:22):
know, I remember Canon EOS 3s.
Uh, which were like the best camerabodies that are, and uh, so all the
kit landed up here and then theysaid, okay, someone has to shoot it.
So we, four of us, which is the entirecrew had a meeting and Colin, who
was the cinematographer, he told usthat he has to shoot the main film,
(07:42):
so he obviously can't shoot it.
So it's got to be one of us three, becausethat was me and, or one of the two guides
who were working with us, Salim and Vimal.
By default became me because thecamera manuals were in English
and both the guides said thatthe English is not very good.
So we got to read the manuals.
So I actually, I did my firstassignment, which got published in BBC.
(08:05):
It was for BBC film division withcameras, which I'd never seen before.
And I read the manualto learn to use them.
And how long they were there?
That shoot was for 200 days.
So you get to know eachother very well, I suppose.
Yeah, yeah, we did, we did.
And, uh, in fact, Colin and we've Colinhas come and done some six documentary
(08:26):
films here, so I've worked with himfor almost a thousand days in my life.
And apart
from this, you, you meet a lot ofother famous wildlife photographers.
We will come back in a moment about that.
But what do you, what do you consider,Dickie, the two or three best practices
to successful shoot some picturesof tigers as elusive as they are?
(08:48):
So one of the things is.
Someone I'd read about aphoto editor of a magazine.
I'm not even sure if it's true or not.
He said that the difference betweenan amateur and a professional is that
the amateur is there for three days.
The professional isthere for three months.
And so for animals as elusive as tigers.
(09:09):
You need to give them time.
You can be here for like three days.
You will see tigers, but then the thingis you'll have to photograph whatever
you see, like, you know, chancesare you could, they're lazy animals.
So half the time that you seethem, they could be sleeping.
So you have to give them some time.
The other thing, which I wastaught very early in my career
(09:31):
was that you have to have a plan.
You have to have a plan, and it's,it's better to have a plan by a plan.
It means what do you wannado with the pictures?
One cool thing I find is that, sayif I, if I go to some someplace for a
week, then I generally make it a planthat, okay, when I go back, I have to
(09:52):
make a small brochure of this script.
My brochure means like, Oh, I have to doa five page photo article on this trip.
So now if you come to Ranthambore and youwant to do a brochure or a photo article
of Ranthambore, then you need not justthe tigers, you need pretty much, you
need to establish all of Ranthambore.
(10:13):
So it helps if you have a plan becausethen it, you know, that basically
means that you kind of have comewith some sort of an idea of what
kind of pictures you need and, andyou work towards, towards that plan.
You may not get all the picturesthat you planned for, but you still
end up getting a very good selectionfar better than just driving around
(10:34):
and trying to pick up pictures.
Hmm.
Very good point.
Dickie, I had the pleasure to, tomeet you and go out shooting years
ago, but for those listening at home,describe us a moment, how a typical day
looks when, when people book at yourhomestay and you go out to, to shoot
tigers.
Uh, so, you know, tigers arelike forest animals or what
(10:56):
do you call jungles in India?
They also elusive unlike grasslands orthese big, you know, dry bush forests.
Where you see a lot of animals andyou see all pretty much all whatever
you want to see every single dayin jungles in India, you don't.
So your typical day goes like that.
You are looking for tigers, butyou essentially know at the back
(11:20):
of your head that, uh, the headthat you will not find them.
That particular on that particular day.
So you basically keep pickingup pictures every day.
You pick up a few good pictures every day.
It could could be tigers.
It could just be landscapes.
It could be some birds.
It could be some deer.
It could be.
whatever, uh, you pick up, keep,pick up pictures and you stay
(11:43):
for a few days, like at least, Iwould say at least five, six days.
And if you pick up pictures inevery, every day, you will get
tigers in those five, six days.
That's how you build up a sort of adecent collection of, of everything.
So when you're not finding tigers,instead of just Rushing around.
I'm my, I, I generally try to, and Imake sure everybody with me does that.
(12:07):
We pick up pictures, whatever, whateverwe think we find in good light.
I mean, like we say herethat don't waste good light.
If the light is good, shoot the firstyear you see if it's, if it's in
good light, like get it like it's.
Uh, it's better to get a, a commonanimal in good light than to get
a rare animal in really bad light.
(12:28):
Dickie, when people come to your, to do astay with you and to do tiger photography.
Do you give them any kind of coachingor, or discussions about tiger behavior,
do's and don'ts, that kind of thing?
I, we
do, we do, we do a quite a lot.
Like, I mean, I'll be all awarethat, you know, all photographers
(12:48):
love to, love to chat.
They love to talk and talkis mostly about photography.
So that's pretty much all you'retalking about while you hear it.
We give them some, uh, a brief on what toexpect and then on what to do when you.
Get the stuff that you're expecting.
So we do to give them a brief and morethan that, it's not like a one time brief,
(13:13):
you sort of updating them on it, likepretty much every day or every six hours.
And the other thing is almost allthe people that I get have been
photographers for like, so you don'thave to teach them anything about
the technical part of photography orthe art of photography or something.
The single most important thing whenyou're shooting tigers or say any
(13:35):
big cats or any big predators isthat you most probably in a vehicle.
So you're, you know, unlikeif you're on foot, you're in a
vehicle, you're quite restricted.
You can't just go anywhere you, inIndia, you have to, in the forest,
you have to stay on the tracks.
You can't go off the tracks.
So the most important thing to tellthem is how to line up the vehicle.
(13:58):
When you're, when you're photographingtigers, that, in my opinion, is
the single most important thing.
Uh, where do you park the vehiclefor that, for a particular shot?
And once you've got a set of shotsfrom there, how do you change the
angle so that the shot looks different?
Like, so that you get another angleand a different set of picture.
Uh, quite often, with tigers particularly,If you see a tiger in the open, you
(14:21):
don't drive up, ideally, you shouldn'tdrive up very close to it, because
if you drive up to a tiger, the tigerwould naturally tend to start walking
away from your vehicle, which is not,which is not great for photography.
So it's better to figure outwhich direction the tiger is
moving in and park accordingly.
So you have to wait in a place forlike a few minutes before it comes,
(14:43):
before it becomes photographic.
Once you start figuring thisout, then they actually come.
Quite close to you, you canvisualize that they'll come in
this gap, this gap, this gap.
That is the, I mean, like some, uh,very serious photographers and a
lot of documentary filmmakers hirepeople like us to take them inside.
And they essentially hiring usfor, uh, positioning skills.
(15:06):
The single most important thingis that where do you position the
car and how do you change that?
Okay.
So Dickie, if you get an email from thenext photographer wanting to come to
your homestay and he asks about gear.
Yeah.
What you think is essential to
bring.
So gear is no ending, you know, like I'vegone through a lot of gear over the years.
(15:27):
Now I'm reaching a stage.
It's also probably because of my age,my back is not as good as it used
to be, but I would now try to keep,carry as little gear as possible,
particularly in forests in India.
It's not easy to switch lenses.
It's too dusty here.
So ideally you should have each lensshould have a camera body with itself.
(15:50):
Now you can't possibly, if you havefour lenses, that means four camera
bodies, which means carrying itin like, say, a bag or two bags.
And that just becomes too cumbersome.
And you start missing shots because, youknow, you confuse, shall I pick up the 500
or shall I pick up the 7, 200 or whatever.
The kit I now use, or I love touse for tigers, I've switched to,
(16:13):
I shoot with Nikon, I've switchedto their mirrorless, the Z mounts.
So I have one camera with a 100to 400 mm lens and one camera
with a 24 to 120 mm lens.
So I'm essentially covered from 24 to 400.
I at some point willget a bigger telephoto.
So not necessarily for tigers,tigers are big animals.
(16:36):
So a 500 or 600 often gets too tight.
A bit too tight, so I just lovethat the flexibility that this
a hundred to 400 lens gives you.
I, I actually bought, the first 104hundred I bought was the Z Mount.
I didn't, I didn't own the, the, theolder, you know, when, when I was in
F Mount cameras, I didn't own the 104hundred, I had a 7,200 or 200 400.
(17:00):
But for tigers, tigers, ideally the bestrange is somewhere between 100 and 300.
Would
you say that that mirrorless now Dickeyhas helped to photography a bit in your
case?
It has.
It has.
Uh, if you, it's, it's made, it'smade a simpler, I mean, you know, a
lot of like auto focusing is far, farmore advanced than it was earlier.
(17:26):
But then, you know, like, I mean,we started on, I started with
shooting slides on cameras wherethe auto focusing was good, but
nothing compared to what it is now.
So every year, every, every timenew kit comes out, it feels like,
oh, wow, this was a game changer.
This was a game changer.
So, mirrorless.
But the new mirrorless systems,the autofocusing is mind blowing.
(17:50):
They have insane amount of features,insane amount of customization.
The flip side is you end up taking farmore pictures than you, you'd plan to.
So your storage goes for a six.
I mean, Z9 shoots like at 45 megapixeland it shoots 20 frames in a second.
So.
Even if you try to hold, really holdyourself, you end up taking two, three
(18:11):
pictures of each frame and, you know,it's, it's very easy to fill up the card.
Very, very easy to fill up the card.
So you have to really hold back on this.
You remember
the days of slide film,Dickie, when you had only 36?
Oh, yes.
Uh, and, uh, here it was even more,for us, it was slightly trickier.
Uh, we couldn't buy slide rolls locally.
(18:31):
So we used to buy them from Delhiand that time getting them from
Delhi was, the drive was really long.
So we had to get them in trains andthen with the weather in Ranthambore,
we had to keep them in refrigerators andtake out to, so like, you know, you got
your, you got like a dozen slide rollsfrom Delhi that is like 36 into 12.
(18:51):
And you are, you are planning to makeit last till your next trip to Delhi.
Yes.
So if you had a, if you had a rollin your camera, which has taken
something like 29 pictures and there'sa tiger stalking, waiting to charge.
You, you know, you have only seven shorts,so you really, really held yourself back.
And the other thing, other issue wehad was once we shot the slide roll, we
(19:16):
had to send it to Delhi for developing.
So you would get to see your picturesabout two months after you shot them.
So you had, you know, it was difficult to.
I mean, if things went wrong, if thepicture wasn't correct and slides, as you
remember it, it, it was very unforgiving,you know, if your exposure was a bit off,
(19:37):
it's gone, everything like, you know,and there were a hundred ISO 50 is well,
we have a 60 ISO pro we have, we hada hundred ISO later 400 ISO came out.
That was like brilliant.
I mean, 400 is what we thoughtwas like, amazingly far.
So the slides, the other problem was wewould see the slide two months later.
So by that time, you've kind ofhalf forgotten where you shot this.
(20:01):
Why did you go wrong?
And in fact, I switchedtotally to digital in 2005.
And I don't, I mean, I noticed this.
See us improvement in my photographybecause, you know, with digital was
that replay was instant if you wantedto, or at least, you know, a few hours
later, so you knew where you went wrong.
(20:23):
What happened with slides?
You shot it.
You had no clue whatsettings you had used.
We used to try to note somesetting down in a smaller book.
But because you get the slide backafter the, from, you know, after
processing, like it would take two months.
So by that time you kind offorgotten that pocket book.
So you don't even know where I, whereI went wrong, but digital that, that
(20:47):
the feedback was near instant that,that, that changed things quite a bit.
And now with mirrorless, it's like thingshave become quite easy or standard.
I mean, your standard picturesare very easy in order to shoot.
So pretty much.
Everybody can shoot very similarish picture, technically speaking.
So it's all, it's all come down nowto, I think, in my opinion, it's just
(21:11):
composition, composition, composition.
How good do you compose?
How strong do
you compose?
And mirrorless also has the advancesnow of the very strong low light.
Amazing though idea, like from, youknow, those are like 20 years ago
I thought a hundred ISO was fast.
Now you think 30 to a hundredISOs, you can push it even more.
(21:32):
Yeah.
But like that, that's ahuge, huge difference.
Yeah.
I mean, I, 20 years ago getting shutterspeeds of one by 500 was like your dream.
Now you like, now I'm on one by2000, one by thousand one by four.
I mean, if I'm below oneby 500, it's by design.
It's not by.
(21:52):
It's because I want to stay low.
Yes.
Because everybody wants to get theshot of the tiger drinking in the
water hole in sunrise and now withthis low light feature, it's amazing.
You know, like with slides, uh, when you,when I remember when we entered the park
for the first one hour, you didn't takea single picture because it was too dark.
(22:16):
Yeah.
True.
Now that first one hour is the.
The time when you take all yourpictures, because that's like, you
think that's the golden hour or radaror, you know, but slides on that,
that, that was really difficult.
You'd only pictures of static things.
And like, but when you entered the parknow, so some of the light that we can
(22:38):
capture now was unheard of 20 years ago.
Dickie today with yourmirrorless gear, what kind of
ISO range do you shoot within?
When you're doing tiger photography, so
I carry two mirrorless bodies, atleast one to one with wide angle is
(22:59):
set like how default mirrorless is set.
The one which I use on telephoto, I'vechanged the ISO settings to, I don't use
auto ISO, I change the ISO manually, butI've changed it to change in full stops.
So I go from 400 ISO to 800 ISO, there'snothing in between and 800 to 1600.
(23:20):
So I, by default, keepmy camera at 800 ISO.
So if I have to switch, if I thinkI have a lot, a lot of light, then
it's just one switch down to 400.
One switch up to 16.
The other mirrorless, which Ihave on the white there, I, the
ISO goes up by one third stop.
In fact, in my telephoto, I keep myISO on to move on full stops and even
(23:47):
my aperture to move on full stops.
So there is, I go from F5.
6 to F8.
There's nothing in between.
I have done this because with tigers andthe other interesting, really interesting
animal for me is the leopard here.
You need to be able to shoot really fast.
You know, they don'tgive you so much time.
They often don't give you so much time.
(24:09):
And especially, you know, okay, portraits,they give you, if they're sitting down or
the resting, like tigers, particularly,you'll see them for a long time.
But if there's any action,it's going to happen very fast.
And tigers can go fromtigers, like all big cats.
Can go from sleeping to fullcharge board in a fraction,
you know, in about two seconds.
(24:31):
So I didn't, you know, I, I like it onthe telephoto that I'm able to change
the aperture and ISO by full stops.
So if I, I either double theamount of light that coming in or
half the amount of light that'scoming just to make it faster.
Uh, but with the, with the wideangle, then it's like everything
(24:51):
goes up by one third stops.
And, uh, the other thing I have is,which was actually drilled into our
heads by the other photographers weworked in the early days, was that you
have to have a mental default setting.
That when you pick up, say, 100 400 lens,you know, from even when you take it out
of the bag, you know, that it's at 5.
(25:14):
6 800 ISO, the focus point is bang inthe center, you know, and so if I switch
and there's no exposure compensation,if I switch any one of these settings,
moment I stop shooting, I put it backto the default, that default is very
important because what if you don'tgo back, I mean, if you don't go
(25:35):
back to your default, Put the cameraback in your bag and you pull it out.
And then the next few shots thatyou take, you realize that you
had it two third underexposed.
So the default is, the default likeis like kind of just ingrained in me.
I have to put everything back in default.
I'm guilty.
I've
done that.
Yeah.
No, everyone's guilty of that.
(25:56):
I have, I have one of the stupidestthings I did once was, you know, quite
often you switch the, the preview onthe back monitor off, but just to say
battery, I was shooting black and white.
So the camera wasn't monochrome.
And after that, I hadsome five minutes of.
Fantastic tiger and cub actions.
(26:17):
I shot the whole thing in black and white.
And that is just, so you do, I mean,it's easy to make these, I, I, I call
these a schoolboy mistakes, but wekeep making them once in a while.
So the idea is like, don't make the,don't make rank amateur mistakes.
Remember
you heard it here first folks.
Even Dickie makes schoolboy mistakes.
(26:40):
So don't feel bad.
Everybody, everybody does.
And we'd be lying if you say youdon't make schoolboy mistakes.
I think I've made morethan my share of them.
Dickie, quick question.
You, you, you do a lot of editingon, on your pictures in Photoshop.
I not so much though.
You know, I shoot a lot.
I like, because I live here.
(27:01):
So I'm, I actually like atleast four or five days a week.
I am shooting.
So I pretty little timeto process the pictures.
A lot of my friends would like, youknow, would come here for 15 days and
then they go back to wherever they are.
And then the next trip is a month later.
So they got a month towork on the picture.
(27:23):
I typically would get a weekend.
So what I've started now started doingis I process very few pictures and I kind
of half process them in the sense that.
I'll just fix them in the, atthe raw stage in the, on, on
Photoshop and save it as there.
(27:46):
So only if I need to use that picturesomewhere, do I then finally tweak it?
Otherwise, just do the, just doyour basic light correction, color
correction, whatever in the, in the,all in the raw stage and just save it.
It just saves me time.
And my computer, my, uh, my heaviestfolder is called to do, I mean, these
(28:07):
are things I have to do and, andjust keeps filling up, filling up,
filling up, and then reaches a stagewhere you've just got to delete it.
You backed up the pictures, but hesaid, okay, this I'm not doing anymore.
Processing has also become far better.
Processing software, theybecome really good now.
I mean, like early, earlyPhotoshop, you had to be quite
a, quite a geek to use it here.
(28:28):
And you know, we, we were like, I'ma civil engineer by training, but I
was one of the last generations tofinish engineering without computers.
So I'm not really, I'm not very, veryconfident with, uh, with computers itself.
And when he, I remember thefirst few versions of Photoshop
were quite difficult to use for.
(28:51):
For someone who is not, who isnot very good at using a computer
and now it's become pretty good.
I mean, for, uh, if you ask me, like, ifyou take a straight picture by a straight
picture, I mean, the sun is behind yourshoulder and you know, the animal is front
lit or whatever the subject is front lit.
(29:11):
In the raw thing, if you just pressauto, it gets 90 percent of it, right?
Yeah, yeah.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
It's amazing.
It's only when you're silhouetting itor, you know, shooting backlight or
some, then the auto doesn't work allthat well, but like for most of the
cases, it just, just gets it right.
So,
well, but it's somethingyou, you wouldn't, you enjoy.
(29:33):
No editing
or no, no, no, I like, Ilike editing the pictures.
I don't like processing them.
Yes.
I mean, I love to go see through thepictures and like, uh, figure out, okay.
These are the ones that I like.
I normally, when I import myroles, uh, I go through them.
I rarely delete pictures,even if there's something.
(29:54):
Wrong because storage is, Imean, storage isn't, it's getting
cheaper and it's an expense thatyou have to handle to save time.
I don't really, you know, gothrough and like delete the junk
and keep the app keepers and things.
But I like to go through just to selectthe pictures that I want to process.
(30:14):
And I usually give them a rating.
So my rating system isthe two sets of rating.
There's one star and the three star.
One star is some picture forpersonal use or personal interest.
It's not something I'm going topublish or even share with anyone.
Three stars is what I would process toprint or whatever, store, keep with me.
(30:36):
So I give like say about 1 percent ofthe pictures that I take a three star
rating and I put them in a folder calledto do and the way they keep accumulating.
And that folder becomes like,takes up half your computer space.
Yes.
You delete it or you forget
something.
Dickie, let's take our listenersin a different direction, show
(30:57):
them a different side of you.
In our earlier discussions, it becameclear that you've been active in and
founded a number of key conservationgroups or roles, including the Andala
Plateau Water Security Project.
Travel operators for tigers, thirdtiger crisis and kids for tigers.
(31:21):
It begs the question, do you consideryourself a conservationist first?
Or a photographer first, and why?
So I consider myself aconservationist first.
That's because a conservationistor whatever you would call it,
a wildlife offender or someonewho loves wildlife or wilderness.
(31:44):
I started off that way for aboutfirst 13 or 14 years of my, you know,
since my wildlife interest started.
I didn't even own a camera.
It was only binoculars.
And the cameras happened by much later.
I am a very serious photographer whospends a lot of time with cameras
(32:04):
around, like I almost, I don't stepout of the house without a camera,
but I still consider, I wouldconsider myself a conservationist.
So, one of the things you've, I don'tknow if you, you've probably not heard
about is, my wife and I, we have afarm pretty close to where we live.
We bought this farmland, whichis barren, barren land, not
(32:26):
much, but about 50 acres of it.
And over the last.
24 years, we've converted it intoa, a proper forest with the same,
like we didn't plant trees there.
We let the natural regrowth happen.
It took 15 or 20 years, we protected it.
And now we are proud owners of 50acres of forest where we get tigers
(32:48):
and leopards and deer and we have waterholes and it's like, it's our own forest.
What do you
see as a conservationist?
What do you see as the biggest threatto tigers and their future in India?
In my opinion,
you know, like when we talk about saywildlife conservation, it's a small
(33:11):
part of ecosystem conservation globally.
Really speaking, pretty muchall our environmental mess.
can be pinpointed to oneword, which is consumption.
So more we consume, more power we consume,more metal or whatever, more minerals we
consume, more material we consume, biggerthe mess we're landing up ourselves.
(33:34):
And so essentially You know, a climateactivist, a wildlife activist, a landscape
activist, a wilderness activist, they'reactually all parts of the same problem.
The problem is the same.
That there are too many of us and asignificant percentage of us, not 80
or 90%, but like 10 percent of all thehumans in the world, or 10 or 15 or 20%,
(34:00):
the consumption level is far too high.
So, you know, it's, it all comes downto like, it's, it's just weird how
things are It's funny, like, you know,we want, say, I want uninterrupted power
supply throughout my life to run mygadgets, but I also want to save my life.
(34:20):
So it's very difficult toreconcile both of these.
You know, a lot of our powercomes from dodgy sources.
A lot of our infrastructure isSeriously damaging to the environment.
Now, when you say environment, yousee the ocean, the forest, the desert,
everything is affected essentially byconsumption and big urban centers or by
(34:42):
the rich and rural area for everythingbasically comes down to consumption.
Like for instance, you know, for anaverage person, the thought is that
the single biggest thing, dangerfor tigers are tiger poachers.
In my opinion, that may not bein the top three or four threats.
The single biggest, uh, like, youknow, a poacher can come to say a
(35:06):
gang of poachers can hit Ranthamboreand maybe kill half the tigers.
But tigers breed very fast.
If there's enough tiger habitatfor them, they'll fill up the
rest of the habitat really fast.
But say a dam for power consumption.
Or a mine for coal thatdestroys the habit.
(35:27):
Once that habitat is gone, nothing isgoing to say, I mean, nothing comes back.
The problems are, you know, the,the problems that get highlighted
the most are the glamorous oneslike poaching and things, but
the real issue is somewhere else.
Well, and with India is now the mostpopulous nation in the world, 1.
3, almost 1.
(35:47):
4 billion people.
And I think.
A birth rate that's climbing.
No, the birth rate isactually coming down.
Oh, the rate.
Yeah.
But it's 1.
4 billion people.
Birth rate is coming down.
We are actually quite close towhat you would call a rate at
which there will be no more growth.
But the number of our populationwill still keep going up 30 years
(36:14):
before it starts going down.
And anyway, you know, 1.
4 billion is a lot.
So we're talking about literallysome 15 or 15 or 20 percent of the
world's population in two and ahalf percent of the world's land.
You know, India is a very land hungrycountry, like a bulk of our population
depends on primary industries like it.
(36:36):
Agriculture and thing.
So more people means they need more land.
Interesting.
On
the other side, imagine 1.
4 billion people, Dickie, and, and anyway,still you have these, oh, that thousand
tigers there.
That is the most optimisticthing about India.
There are very few countries.
(36:57):
I think no country in the worldwith population density so
high and still so much of it.
It's not just tigers.
We have tigers.
We have rhinos.
We have elephants.
We have leopards.
We have, I mean, we have insaneamount of wild animals and in a
country which has something like700 people per square kilometers.
(37:17):
That's like, you know, our,our population density is about
the same as West New York.
We are about the samesize as West New York.
And we have about, say, 50times more wildlife than that.
You,
you talked about this before inour last conversation together.
Is the tiger populationstatic, declining, or climbing?
(37:40):
The
tiger population for the lastfew years, last 10, 12 years,
has been climbing slowly.
The problem is that the tigerhabitat is going down slowly.
So better management within theexisting habitat is actually critical.
(38:00):
Yeah, so it's increased the numberof tigers totally, just gradually.
I mean, like by a few percentage points,but overall, the habitat suitable
for tigers has gone down by a few.
Percentage points.
So that is the scary part.
The habitat loss is scary.
Like we, we need to hold whatever habitatwe have and ideally build up a bit more.
(38:21):
There is enough, enough space, whichcan be, which just needs time to
regenerate itself and it will be back.
There's also a lot of focuson tigers now in India.
Things 20, 30 years.
The previous generation, like our parentsgeneration, for instance, they were
all, I Like hunting was rampant andthings, but the newer generation, like
(38:46):
the next generation, our kids generationare very environmentally conscious.
That's good news.
You mentioned a couple of peopleearly on who were the two or
three greatest photographyinfluences in your life, Dickie.
And what did you learn from them?
Okay.
So
one of the first Big influence on myphotography was the BBC cinematographer
(39:12):
I spent so much time with, Colin Johnson.
He wasn't really a still photographer,but I spent so much time with him and
we used to always talk about angles andlights and things because essentially
he was also, he was a cameraman.
He was just shooting moving images.
So, a lot of my early influence was Colin.
(39:35):
So Colin was a brilliant cinematographer.
Technically he wasn't, he wasn'tthe best, you know, in terms
of the tech part of his camera.
I remember with him shooting and like, youknow, these professional film cameras, the
whole lot of knobs and buttons all over.
And you'd ask Colin that,like, Colin, what's all this?
(39:56):
He's, ah, matey, it'ssome, something, something.
The tech guys fix it and then I just.
He used to put tapes over them so thatit doesn't change, but essentially
the few things he taught me, whichreally helped me through, uh, how
to, how to see light, how to, howto see a shot and how to get angles.
(40:18):
He used to say basically thatthere are only six things about
photography, which were light, light,light, and angle, angle, angle.
So Colin was a huge influence in me.
And then I've worked with a lot ofother professional photographers.
And the other big influence was, andis still, uh, is, uh, Andy Rouse.
(40:41):
Uh, he's a, he's one ofBritain's best photographers.
He, he and I shoot a lot together.
We are like very close friends.
I mean, nearly family.
And he comes to Ranthambore about fouror five times a year, and a couple
of times a year we meet up in Africa.
So he's also been a hugeinfluence on my photography.
(41:02):
And, uh, a third gentleman wassomeone who was not known much,
was a photographer who passed away.
He is from near Delhi.
Someone called N.
C.
Dhingra, when I started photography, uh,with slides and things, he really helped
me out a lot with, with a lot of things.
And that time I'm just starting.
(41:24):
He'd been, he'd been, so he, he wasa, a busy businessman whose only
hobby was wildlife photography.
So these were the threebig influences in my life.
Sounds like you had a very fortunate.
Group of mentors to help you out?
I, I did.
I did.
And so glad I got them really earlybecause a lot of us are quite lost in
(41:47):
the first two, one or two years, and wepick up some things and some techniques,
which then takes years to forget.
I mean, we pick up something, somethings which are not really good
to pick up, and then it takes.
I was fortunate that right at thebeginning, I was like guided quite well.
(42:09):
And, you know, I'm generally things likedrilled a thing like, you know, don't
make schoolboy mistakes were drilled in myhead, like go back to default, do this, do
that, were literally drilled in my head.
Something you said about Colin andhis film camera, that there were
buttons and adjustments everywhere.
Yeah.
Made, made me think of aquestion for you real quick.
(42:32):
You know, a lot of the new camerasthat are out today have got, the number
of buttons has doubled, the number ofcontrol wheels has climbed, it's, it's
almost like, if you had a choice, do youwant more buttons, more possibilities?
More variations, or do you want acamera that gets out of your way, that
(42:55):
focuses on aperture, shutter speed, ISO?
I, I personally would like less, thoughthere is, you know, just because I like,
I would like less buttons and less techpart, does not mean that I'll get it.
As cameras get more and morecomplicated, they are going to be
(43:16):
more and more buttons and things.
I mean, the new mirrorlesslook like a spaceship.
I mean, the buttons allover the bloody place.
So, uh, I mean, like when Igot the Z9, the manual is more
than 900 pages, 900 pages.
I mean, that's insane.
So I, usually what I do is once I getthe camera, I go through the manual.
(43:40):
And I go in and do my customizationand everything once, and once that's
done, I rarely go into my menu.
Very, very rarely.
I like, I believe, you know, takingpictures is like driving a car.
It's a lot of musclememory and it's all about.
So for instance, when you drive acar, pretty much the own roles that
(44:01):
you have, you have five controls.
You have the steering.
You have the accelerator.
You have a brake.
You have a gear.
I mean, manual shift.
Okay, we have like, wemostly drive manuals here.
We have a clutch.
So these are the five settingsthat you have on a camera.
You pretty much have just five settings.
You have can change the aperture.
You can change the shadow speed.
(44:21):
You can change the ISO.
You can change the focal length andyou can change the point of focus.
Essentially, these are theonly five controls really
that you need, but it helps.
A lot of the buttons, a lot of thecustomization is actually helps you
fine tune or make these five, you know,change these five settings far easier.
(44:42):
But end of the day, it's all just five,just, just about your aperture, your
shutter speed, your ISO, your, that's it.
And it's, you know, so the, the technical,you know, the thing with thing is
that a lot of us get stuck on a lotof us, like that includes, includes
me and it took me a long time to get.
(45:04):
This in my head that photographyis not gizmo, it's not like it's
not science, it's not, it's an art,it's, it's got, you know, it's not
technical, it's, it's an art form.
So essentially, you know, youknow, the single biggest thing in
photography, the single most importantthing in photography is composition.
All the tech part is.
(45:26):
It's one of the things that I'mpersonally wrestling with a little
bit because as I get out and shootmore and more and, and I'm shooting
primarily black and white at this point,what I realize is it's fundamentals.
It's aperture, it's shutter speed,it's ISO, it's seeing the shot in
(45:49):
my mind's eye, then see throughthe viewfinder and make it go.
This,
this, the single big, you know,the third, the single biggest
thing is actually seeing the shot.
I mean, we all strugglewith it all the time.
Like, you know, there are times whenyou're totally in the zone, you see the
(46:10):
shot and you know exactly what you want.
You know exactly the frame that you want.
It's about seeing the shot.
Easier said than done.
You know, it's very easy to say, okay,I'll just, just see, see the shot.
I guess that's what, that's probablythe toughest part of photography.
And it's got the greatest benefits ifyou can learn to improve your vision.
(46:33):
It
is, it is, it is.
It's all about that.
All right.
Dickie, this has been wonderful.
Let me run one last question by it andkind of wrap up today's conversation.
For those listeners who arealready into wildlife photography.
What is one thing you'd recommendthey should start doing, one
(46:56):
thing they should stop doing, and
why?
So, the thing I would recommendthat they should start doing is,
like I said, seeing the shot.
That's the, that's the whole story.
And the one thing I would I recommendto stop doing is don't shoot too much.
I mean, shoot less, see more.
(47:18):
It's very easy to shoot a lot.
I think I've seen very often in thefield is that people just pick up
the camera and like say there's atiger standing in half good light.
They take 50 pictures.
You essentially got 50copies of one pictures.
It makes more sense to see a bit like,you know, if you could change the focal
and change the angle a bit, change thepoint of focus, change or whatever.
(47:41):
Change orientation instead oftaking 50 copies of one picture,
you, it's, you're probably betteroff taking five versions of that.
Yeah.
It sounds a little bit likeJohn free street photographer.
And he says, you've got topractice, practice, practice, but
(48:01):
that doesn't mean machine guns.
No
machine gun shooting isactually, you shouldn't
frame it.
Think it, then share it.
And
you know, if you, we have this thing,we believe that if you don't machine
gun it, you're missing things.
No, you're not.
You know, I would rather missthe first few shots and then, and
(48:23):
understand what I really want me,what I really should be doing.
Even if it means missing the first fewshots, you'll end up with a better,
better collection by the end of it.
Excellent.
Oh,
go ahead, Tom.
I'm because.
The time zone here inSpain, I'm getting hung up.
You still have, you still havecampfire nights in your lodge now?
(48:44):
This is June.
Um, it is 45 degrees centigrade.
In winters we do.
Right now it's hot.
And instead of the campfire night,Tom, they have soft ice cream.
Yeah, we have a
bucket of ice for everyone.
Yeah.
But otherwise, yeah.
(49:05):
Otherwise, uh, for, uh, fromNovember to February, we sit around
a lot of fire all every night.
Okay, if you can make me some PalakPaneer, I will be there in December.
Looking forward to that.
I'll personally make it for you.
And add Murg Malai Tikka to that
order, please.
Yeah, I think, uh, you shouldcome here for a longer time.
(49:26):
I prefer the Murg MalaiTikka to Palak Paneer.
Oh,
here I come.
Well, now he's got me hungry andit's the middle of the night here.
Oh, geez.
We'd really love to thank Dickie Singhfor just an absolutely delightful
and insightful conversation together.
(49:47):
And I hope that you, our listenersagree that we need to get
Dickie back for another episode.
What do you think, Tom?
Yeah, I think he's a perfect fit for ourconservation episode we are planning.
Absolutely.
If he's willing to come back, of course.
I am.
It's a, it was, it'sa pleasure being here.
(50:08):
It was a pleasure talkingto the two of you.
I'm looking forward to another episode.
Okay.
Well,
we were going to follow up on that then.
Dickie.
Thanks.
All right.
And best of luck.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
Bye.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Dave.
I just.
Back my back while we did this interviewand you were talking because I have
(50:28):
to go, I have to go back there again.
I mean, I, I love the passion he has and,and the stories, you know, the stories
that only come from years living there andmaking these outstanding pictures he does.
And he's just another wonderful exampleof how, and we see it over and over
again now in, in, in our podcast.
(50:49):
How a wildlife photographer becomesmore than just the camera they turn
in their turn, all their intentionto let me think, how can I save this?
And it's, I find it amazing totalk to photographers like him
and people who actually tryingto make a change in the world.
It's
amazing.
There's three things that I have reallycome to admire about Dickey Singh.
(51:13):
One, he is self taught.
The BBC sends him a camera and saysyou need to take photos for 200 days.
Did he shrink from it?
No.
He learned it, got into it, but he'sself taught and he's willing to share.
The second thing I like about him ishis energy, just comfortable focus,
(51:38):
but you can sense the power underneaththe surface with Dickie Singh.
And the third thing justcame clear to me tonight.
I really liked the way he focuses onthe basics that it's about composition
and aperture and shutter speed.
(51:58):
And ISO, but seeing the shot beforeyou see it in the viewfinder, that
is such strong, strong advice.
Well, listeners, we're going to leaveyou with a quote from Paul Oxton, the
founder and CEO of the Wild Heart WildlifeFoundation, who said, never apologize
(52:21):
for being oversensitive and emotionalwhen defending the welfare of wildlife.
Those emotions give you the strengthto fight for what's right and to be
the voice of those who cannot be heard.
Thank you so much for listening.
Now pick up your camera, get outthere, and make a difference.
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