THE wildlife photographer Shefiq Basheer Ahammed’s photograph of a tiger at the Parambikulam Tiger Reserve won the first prize in the wildlife photography contest organised by the Kerala Forest Department during Wildlife Week celebrations this year.
He was at the reserve in July 2016 when he stumbled upon the tiger relaxing and rolling on its back. Shefiq felt that the tiger spotted him clicking away, but it calmly withdrew into the forest.
Shefiq has contributed photo essays, along with this writer, to Frontline: “In quest of the frogmouth” (December 11, 2015), at Thattekad in Kerala; “Brown bear, red salmon” (March 18, 2016), at Kamchatka in the Russian Far East; “Himalayan kaleidoscope” (October 28, 2016), on birdlife in the Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary; and “In the leopard’s lair” (February 3, 2017), on man-animal coexistence in Rajasthan’s Pali district.
This is the second time that Shefiq, a motor vehicles inspector in Kochi, has won this award. The first time was in 2015 for a shot of a leopard staring at him from its perch on a rock, taken in 2014.
G. Shaheed
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