S Thippeswamy is no stranger to honours and plaudits. In a career spanning several decades in photography and cinematography, he has been there and done that. However, his reputation rests largely on his contribution to wildlife photography. No wonder then, that receiving the Fellowship of the Photographic Society of America (FPSA) in October last year at Colorado Springs, USA was a proud moment.
Strangely enough, Thippeswamy did not take to wildlife photography initially. But for a friend’s challenge, the Mysore-based lensman would have given it a miss. “A wildlife photographer-friend challenged me, saying that clicking actors and actresses was no big deal as they posed beautifully and photographed well. The challenge, he said, lay in photographing wildlife, where no two moments are similar, and which is fraught with danger. That’s when I decided to take up the gauntlet,” says the 70-year-old with a smile.
Much before he got hooked to shooting wildlife, Thippeswamy enjoyed a fulfilling career as a cinematographer and photojournalist. Back then, in the late 60s, he worked in the Kannada film industry and hobnobbed with South India’s top stars as a photojournalist for magazines like Bommai, Mangai, Vanita and Vijayachitra. This was followed by a nine-year stint as a medical photographer at Mysore Medical College. He also taught photojournalism and video production at Mysore University, finding time in between for countless documentaries.
Once the wildlife photography bug bit him, he started doing the rounds of forests and wildlife sanctuaries, both far and near. “In and around Mysore, there are many forests — Bandipur, Kabini and Nagarhole — and bird sanctuaries such as Ranganathittu and Kokkare Belur. I had easy access to wildlife,” says the septugenarian, elaborating, “Most of India’s top wildlife photographers are in fact from Karnataka.” Thippeswamy loves shooting elephants, some of which he has captured from as close as six feet. Of course, these otherwise gentle giants can get very antsy when they have a baby in their midst, which is true of any animal, he says. The regal tiger features next on his most photographed list, with a pride of lions and king cobras getting a dekko.
As for heart-stopping moments, his run-in with a charging rhino at Kaziranga in Assam comes to his mind. Thankfully, the beast changed its course at the last moment, he chortles. Thippeswamy’s recent exhibition in Chennai featured a variety of birds in ‘action’. Asking him to pick a favourite is like asking him to choose a favourite child. Even so, he reveals that the short-toed snake eagle feeding a snake to its young one is special.
When he began, lensmen had to make do with manual cameras. Today the doughty photographer uses a state-of-the-art digital Nikon D Series SLR, first enabled by his winning the Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society, England (FRPS) in 1991. Many accolades and awards followed, from the Karnataka government’s lifetime award in photojournalism to the Hanumanth Rao lifetime award in wildlife photography. What next? “I’ll be visiting Serengeti in Kenya soon,” he says, adding a parting shot, “Not bad for the son of a farmer, eh?”