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Hi, I am Debabrata Bagchi - aka Deb - and I am a creative nature and wildlife photographer based out of Bangalore, India. I was raised in a small town in India - called Jamshedpur - where steel was first made in India. l studied in a mainstream school, and due to the focus on academics , I never found much of an outlet to express my creative side as I was growing up. As an adult, I realised the deep conditioning that I have been through during my childhood to conform, from my teachers, society and family and I could understand the dichotomy inside me that deep conditioning had created. And that understanding led to severe conflicts in my mind that affected both at work and my personal life. And at that time, photography came as a form of self expression for me. An expression to be in this journey to look inwards and through my relationships and get to know myself better. It was as if I wanted to break free from all the layers of conditioning I have accumulated in my life and creative nature and wildlife photography came as the means to do that.
I love to play with light - esp go against the light, and create light when there isnt any. I love to go out and make frames, especially when the weather is adverse (like fog, mist, rain, etc) and that helps me create different kinds of images. More than sharp , clean backgrounds, I love playing with form and shape that brings more depth and makes it more personal for me.
I also want to express my deepest gratitude to people who have helped shape this journey through their help, guidance, photographers who have inspired me (there are so many of them!) and my family for supporting me in my endeavour of finding myself through my photography.
Looking forward to your thoughtful questions, thank you for spending your valuable time with me!
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Hello Deb, Thank you for giving your time to encourage questions. I am very impressed by your creative approach. It is certainly non conforming!
Can you please tell us my about how you create light when there isn’t any, e.g. in one of the photos you have posted here.
Thank you for your question ! This is a really good question. In my journey of creative wildlife photography, in my early days - while being in several constraints - like low light, light only coming from a certain direction, different weather conditions, was not a very happy place for me. I craved for the “right conditions” and wouldnt really shoot otherwise. But gradually, I started embracing the light (and sometimes the lack of light) and the weather as the tool and also tried to see how to make that a character in my frame. This really increased my oppotunities to shoot creatively. For example, during low light conditions, I like to keep my shutter very slow and use that opportunity to look for frames and opportunity where I can use Intentional Camera Movement as a technique ( as opposed to bumping up ISO, with high shutter speeds and taking sharp, clean images). An example of “no light” is when I do macro photography. The Oriental Tarantula one above is a good example. We were in a rainforest, shot in the night, with no “natural” light. And on top of this it was raining. I used my headlamp as a backlight to light up the tarantula’s furry legs and the rain, and used a slow shutter to get long streaks of rain with slight movement of its legs. So, esp for shooting macro in the night, I would use differnt kind of lights (and colors ) to bring different effects to the frame based on how I perceive the subject and the surroundings at that time. I hope this gives you some clarity on what I mean by “no light” and creating light " artifically"
The example images you have are quite dramatic and distinctive for sure, but they don’t convey nature to me much at all, well, except for the giraffe. That one seems more wild and the others more like captive animals. Not being familiar with your work as a whole, I wonder if this is something you are doing on purpose - like portrait photographers working with clients to get a specific look even though it might be a little stagey.
Deb, I like how your shots tell me stories about the wildlife. I especially like the first shot. Did you do a composite, with ICM shot of spider and web and focused shot of snake? Or was the spider shaking the web as they do sometimes?
Thanks for your question Kristen. My goal of creative photography, is my self expression for how I look at nature and wildlife and it would not be right for me to expect anyone else to understand the same. Thank you for sharing your perspective and interpretation of my work. I work only with subjects in the wild and I have no experience working with captive animals. I definitely like to understand (and try out) other genres like portrait photography, street photography, and often include cross learnings from one genre to another, to try and expand my thinking and perspective. So, I do use lighting methods that has been used for example for some other genre of photography (like portrait) and experiment with that in the wild, while being sensitive to the environment and subject. I’d like to visualise nature and the subjects, and their interaction - as fine art - and that what fuels me to try new experiments. Hope this gives you some perspective of my thinking process. Thanks again for your question.
Hi Mike, thank you for your question and thank you for appreciation for the first shot. This has been achived as a composite shot - with multi exposure. I use Sony gear, which unfortunately does not have in camera multi exposure capabilities, so the composite was done out of the camera. In this specific case, I took multiple shots (camera mounted on tripod) - both spider and web, and the cat snake, backlit by the same light at the same time. First, a bunch of shots of the spider and the web at a very slow shutter. There was a bit of rain and wind that was moving the web and also there is a slight movement of the spider and the other, at a slightly faster shutter speed ( rather a burst) of the backlit cat snake when it was moving below the web. It just happened to be a co-incidence that I got a shot that aligned , most of the composites were of the snake below the web, but not exactly at the junction. Hope this answers your question.
