Living with Leopards

An interest in nature and wildlife led Nayan Khanolkar to study biology and become an educator in the field of botany. He later became a researcher with the BNHS (Bombay National Historic Society). When posted at Keoladeo National Park, Bharatpur, his interest in photography turned towards wildlife. A self-taught photographer, he has travelled extensively across India and covered varied habitats from the cold deserts of Ladakh to blue lagoons of Lakshadweep and from hot deserts of Rajasthan to the tropical wet evergreen forests of Assam.

He was named Wildlife Photographer of the Year in the 'Urban Wildlife' category by the Natural History Museum, London, along with the BBC. The committee selected Khanolkar's photograph "The Alley Cat', which features a leopard in Mumbai, for highlighting how human beings and the big cats co-exist in the suburban Aarey milk colony. At the Nature inFocus festival, 2017, he spoke about the photographic storytelling of a species, and the research and tools that went in creating photographs of the urban lives of leopards.