I photograph one island,
slowly.
Wild Light Photography. Based in Colombo, mostly found in a jeep in the south-east.
Wild Light Photography. Based in Colombo, mostly found in a jeep in the south-east.
I trained as a civil engineer and spent six years building roads, which turned out to be excellent preparation for sitting still in uncomfortable places. In 2014 a friend needed a second driver for a trip to Yala, lent me a 300 mm lens for the weekend, and I never gave it back in any meaningful sense.
What I do now is unglamorous. I go back to the same crossings, the same waterholes, the same stretch of ocean off Mirissa, over and over, until I know which animal uses which path and at what hour. Most days produce nothing. The photographs on this site are what is left after nine years of days that produced nothing.
I do not bait, I do not call, and I do not add or remove anything from a frame beyond dust and a straightened horizon. If a photograph looks impossible, it is because somebody waited a very long time for it.
Ten per cent of every sale, print or licence, goes to leopard collaring and camera-trap work run by the Wilderness & Wildlife Conservation Trust. It is taken off the top, not out of profit, and the figure is published here every January.
Two bodies, three lenses, and a bean bag filled with rice that has been through customs more times than I have.
I take a small number of hotel and editorial commissions each year, and guide two photographic trips a season in Yala and Wilpattu, four guests at a time.