View images at Sanctuary Wildlife Photography Festival 2017

Learn how to use the camera as a conservation weapon and check out snapshots by ace lensmen at a wildlife photography festival

A frame by Syed Ali Husain captures a herd of elephants soaking in a pond at Uttarakhand's Jim Corbett National Park. Another shows photographer Ripan Biswas's interesting click of West Bengal from the POV of Theobald's Ranid Frog. These images will greet you at an exhibition at the first Sanctuary Wildlife Photography Festival 2017. Starting this Saturday, the five-day fest is organised by Sanctuary Nature Foundation in collaboration with Urvi Ashok Piramal Foundation.

Syed Ali Husain captures the elephants at Jim CorbettâÂu00c2u0080Âu00c2u0088National Park in Uttarakhand

"The festival was born as a result of the sheer weight of images that have flooded our servers from the far corners of Asia in the past decade. With technology, the quality of images has risen too. We want to ensure that aesthetics and ethics are woven together with science and natural history to create strong bonds for a community of conservationists, who have turned their cameras into weapons to protect our natural heritage," says Bittu Sahgal, editor, Sanctuary Asia, and founder of the Sanctuary Nature Foundation.

Ripan Biswas' frame of Theobald's Ranid Frog in West Bengal

Apart from music performances, documentary screenings of India's Wandering Lions and Sumesh Lekhi's Bastion of the Giants, and an awards gala, the festival includes a series of workshops and talks that promise to be a treat for wildlife and photography enthusiasts. Wildlife photographer and naturalist Saurabh Sawant will host an interactive workshop for beginners, while a panel of experts has been invited for an intensive, day-long, technical workshop on advanced photography.

Bittu Sahgal

Dr Anish Andheria, president, Wildlife Conservation Trust, will speak about conservation photography; award-winning filmmaker and photographer Kalyan Varma will highlight how stories can be told through pictures; educator and naturalist Nayan Khanolkar will narrate his experiences of setting up camera traps at Sanjay Gandhi National Park to track Mumbai's leopards and shed light on the aesthetics and ethics of wildlife photography. You can also learn about underwater photography skills from Digant Desai, and the challenges of turning photography into a full-time profession from Dr Caeser Sengupta of DCP Expeditions.

The team has also collaborated with Bombay Natural History Society to present Insectdom, exhibiting images of critters like the lantern fly and painted grasshopper, from the organisation's archives. Children can learn about biodiversity and climate change at a session titled Kids For Tigers Rally, and enjoy a morning of mask-making, poster-painting and a fancy dress parade at the festival.

FROM: November 4 to 8
AT: The Royal Opera House, Mama Parmanand Marg.
TO REGISTER, LOG ON TO: sanctuaryasia.com