Amboli was the place for the second batch of our ‘Certificate program in macro photography’, a macro photography workshop. We were welcomed to the place by a heavy downpour. That was quite expected as Amboli receives very heavy rainfall, more so, in the month of July. And it gets quite a bit foggy too. Photography, in this kind of a weather, is anything but easy. However, the rain brings in a sea of change to the place. It starts brimming with life. The nights especially are abound with activity and generally there are a lot of good sightings. The only thing that we prayed for was a bit of a let up in the rain for us to be able to go out, explore and work on our macro photography.
Luckily the rain gods did honour our prayers and we got good some good opportunities. Many malabar pit vipers, with one feeding on a frog, being the highlight. That was an amazing natural history moment for us to witness and capture. Malabar gliding frogs were in good number, so were the ramanellas, the ornate narrow-mouthed frogs among many others. Amboli toads were all over the place, with the males being very vociferous and looking for potential mates. Green vine snakes and Beddome’s cat snake were sighted too. Sighting the Oriental dwarf kingfisher with a couple of well grown chicks was like the icing on the cake.
There was a lot of learning with regard to macro photography techniques along with the natural history details of the subjects being sighted and photographed. The holistic understanding of things was the prime motto of this workshop. Off the field and on the field discussions brought in a lot of experimentations with respect to compositions, lighting and image making. It was indeed a lot of effort on the part of all the participants but the efforts were well worth it, looking at the results they got. I believe that they did take back good amount of learning on the macro photography genre along with an understanding of the behaviour of the subjects.
Here are a few of the amazing images made by our participants.
Images by Karthik P Hariharan :
Caterpillar covered in rain water droplets
The eye – Malabar gliding frog
Malabar gliding froglet
Green vine snake
Bracket fungi
Wrinkled frog guarding its eggs
Malabar pit viper feeding on a frog
Images by Vinay Tiwari :
Green vine snake 
Another image of the beautiful Green vine 
Wrinkled frog – amazing eye pattern 
Wrinkled frog guards its eggs
Beddome’s cat snake
Was yet another wonderful workshop. It was great interacting with the amazing participants. We had a great time and learning at Amboli.
If you would like to be part of our macro photography workshop, please do drop in a mail to info@birdwing.in We will keep you posted.
