Cleopatra and Saaya live, love and hunt together in the Kabini forest in Karnataka. We spoke to the man who introduced them to the world in July this year.
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AnimalsTranscript
00:00For the first few seconds I was literally shaking, I mean I could not hold my camera
00:09steady and after that somehow I managed to compose myself and click a few shots.
00:39The first time we saw them during the sighting it was very brief where I saw them for about
00:5610-15 seconds and they went deeper into the jungle.
01:00The next day they made a kill about 100 meters from where we could access them and after that
01:07it was a waiting game because we could hear them mating, we could hear their rows but
01:14they would not come out until their kill was over and they had a water source very close by.
01:19But knowing the habits of the panther for the last 4 years I knew he would
01:25come out at a particular pathway. So after the 6th day both of them walked out
01:33after a series of alarm calls from the monkey and the deer, I mean it was deafening alarm calls.
01:38So when the actual moment happened Cleopatra the female actually walked out first followed
01:45by the panther and there was a distance of about 10 meters in between them so I was not able to
01:50get both of them in the same frame. At one point I knew that Cleopatra would wait for the panther,
01:56it's usually the other way around, usually the big males take the lead
02:01and followed by the females but in this couple Cleopatra was in charge, she was ahead,
02:07followed by the panther. At some moment knowing the behavior of these leopards you always know
02:12that one leading is always going to stop and only when the other one joins it and they are
02:18close by when they will start moving again. So I was waiting for that moment because I needed
02:23both in one frame to tell that story and I'm glad it happened and luckily it happened about
02:30say about 50 meters before they entered the bush on the other side so yeah and both of them looking
02:37together was a bonus for sure. That moment I can relive for the rest of my life, every day of my
02:43life, I can just close my eyes and relive it. I had visualized something like this ever since I
03:04saw the black panther sire, how beautiful would it be to actually capture the leopard and get the
03:11contrast of the leopard against the black shadow. I was actually a wildlifer from the very beginning,
03:28I was born and brought up in the jungles of south India, in a place called as Dandeli,
03:33one of the best black panther habitats and ever since I was a kid I always remember like I always
03:39wanted to be around animals like birds especially like big cats fascinated me from the very beginning
03:46but a couple of moments in the forest actually changed my perspective. Those were some amazing
03:51moments where I felt like I've seen it through my eyes but I have to showcase this to the world
03:57and that's how the journey began. I picked up my first camera in 2009 and never looked back
04:03after that. From then to here like now I spend about six to eight months a year
04:08in this park. It is basically like home, I feel more at home here than anywhere else.
04:24The most amazing thing about wildlife photography is it has an element of surprise.
04:29You can always plan a shoot and go there and wait for say days, weeks, at the end of it you might
04:36come back with nothing or you might come back with something completely different what you actually
04:41didn't think of. So that way like you might find anything at the next bend, the next moment.
04:47So you have to be ready with your camera, your settings, everything. Sometimes you have to
04:51camouflage yourself so hard that you end up looking as a bush in the forest, you sit in
04:57hides, you get bitten by bugs, 5 a.m wakes up every day like you chase that perfect light because
05:04you're so dependent on that natural light that you have to shoot in the best times of the day
05:09that's like one hour in the early mornings, one hour late evenings. Yeah at the end of all that
05:14you end up getting pictures where there's a leaf blocking the animal's view or there's a stick,
05:21there's a twig and yeah you have to accept that.