About Me
Born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), I moved to Goa when I was 7 years old. A Portuguese colony on the west coast of India, south of Bombay (Mumbai), till 1961, Goa is famous for its beaches of golden sand and palm tree on the edge of the Arabian Sea. Grew up in this idyllic Mediterranean like setting with no electricity till the mid 70s and water had to be hand drawn from a 100 foot deep well. Summers were spent climbing trees, eating mangos and chasing pigs, when not on the beach. Ran the family dairy farm from when I was thirteen. Up at 4 AM for the morning milking, then off to school and back for the evening 3:30 PM milking, all done by hand of course. Started my real education when I attended St Xavier’s College and Institute of Science in Bombay for a Bachelors and Masters in Zoology – which probably explains my love of animal photography. Came to America in 1983 to continue my studies, receiving a PhD in Zoology in the deep south at Louisiana State University and then fellowships in diabetes and obesity research at Upjohn in Kalamazoo and Joslin Diabetes Center/Harvard Medical School in Boston (notice no mention of photography during this time).
I started my real first job at Novartis in New Jersey helping develop drugs for diabetes and obesity. Subsequently moved to a business development position finding and negotiating research collaboration with academia and biotech. Got to travel all over Europe and Asia but business travel is really not fun. Now I work on the investment side of biotech and business travel has diminished allowing me more time to travel for fun. My first leisure trip to Patagonia was in 2013. The landscapes are truly stunning there. Next, I travelled to Ecuador and Galapagos where I realized that my point and shoot just did not cut it.
My first real camera, bought in 2015, after much research (what do you expect from a former scientist) was a Sony A65 with a 18-135mm lens. My photos were still quite crappy since I had no clue on how to use a digital DSLR camera. I enrolled in evening classes at New England School of Photography which helped me understand the relationship between ISO, aperture and shutter speed. These classes allowed me to get out of automatic into manual mode and start to think about composition. I then moved over from shooting in jpeg to raw format when I got Lightroom in 2016.
I shot in Peru – Machu Picchu and the Amazon in 2015, safari in Tanzania in 2016 and Egypt in 2017. It was not till I went on a photography workshop to Glacier National Park in the summer of 2017 that my photography skills got elevated to a level that excited me.
I am now officially hooked on photography and plan to combine my love for travel and photography and go semi pro starting in 2020.
My gear
Sony A1 (mirrorless, 50.1MP full frame body)
Sony A7 RiiiA (mirrorless, 42.4MP full frame body)
Sony Zeiss FE 16-35mm f/2.8 GM lens
Sony FE 24-105mm f/4 G OSS lens
Sony FE 90mm f/2.8 Macro G OSS lens
Sony FE 100-400mm F4.5-5.6 GM OSS lens
Sony FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS lens
Lensbaby Velvet 85mm f/1.8 Lens for Sony E (Black)
Lee filter system Foundation Kit
+ 0.6 and 0.9 soft grad
+ 0.6 and 0.9 hard grad
+ 6-stop ND filter
+ Circular polarizing filter
Manfrotto Element Tripod (MKELEB5RD-BH)
Really Right Stuff
- Versa Series 3 Mk2 Carbon Fiber Tripod (TVC-34L)
- Ball Head with Full-Size Lever-Release Clamp (BH-40)
- Leveling Base with Platform and Hook (TA-3)