I am an ardent naturalist, living in Ithaca, NY. I have been a photographer and naturalist for almost 50 years. I used many vintage cameras my father was collecting in those days to take my earlier black and white photographs and print them on an ancient enlarger my father used to own, which exists to this day but is unused. My first semiprofessional camera was a used Canon model, and a used Sigma 200mm lens. My first try with this combination was photographing a total solar eclipse on February 16, 1980, in Yellapur, Karnataka, India.
It was expensive and difficult to buy even a used camera and lenses and binoculars in my younger days in India. So earlier, I photographed insects particularly butterflies and other nature as 200mm lens was not enough for shooting birds. Slowly, I graduated to better cameras and longer lenses passing through cameras such as Minolta, Pentax, various models of Nikon and currently, I am using Sony A RIII with 200-600mm lens for birds and mammals and 24-104mm lens for landscapes. I still use Nikon D7500 with Nikkor 100mm macro lens for insects and flora. For astrophotography I use manual Rokinon 14mm lens.
I started nature sound recording about 25 years ago. I started with a Sony tape recorder with a ME 66 shotgun mic. Then upgraded recorders to various models of digital mini discs. Then I also started stereo recording with mics from Lom and Micboosters. For a long time I used Sony PCM 10, when it died, I used Zoom H4N and Tascam DR-05 for recording. Currently, I am using Sony PCM A10, which is a neat little handy recorder for quick recording, which I love and cumbersome Zoom F3 when I have time to plan.
By profession, I am chemical ecologist and interested in behavioral ecology. I did research in these subjects and have published my work in reputed peer reviewed journals.
I love travelling and have traveled all over the world in search of nature from Antarctica to Arctic, Asia, Australasia, Africa, Americas including Galapagos Islands.
I have many more photos, audios and videos on various sites such as iNaturalist, Macaulay Library, Xeno-Canto, YouTube, etc. I hope you will enjoy the visit to these sites.
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