Sunday, July 12, 2020

The photographer behind the stunning 'Bagheera' black panther images explained how he spent years in the forest to get the sublime shots

Sanchita Dash and Ruqayyah Moynihan,
Business Insider India
Saya, the melanistic leopard who has found his way into the Kabini forest. Shaaz Jung

Photographs of a rare black panther living in the Kabini forest, in India's Nagarhole National Park, went viral this week.
Many compared the panther to Bagheera from The Jungle Book.
Business Insider spoke to Shaaz Jung, the wildlife photographer who caught the photos on how he managed to capture the rare images.
For Jung, this was once in a lifetime opportunity — he's spent the last five years capturing the black panther.


Photographs of a majestic black panther roaming in the Kabini forest in Karnataka in southern India have gone viral.

The man behind the camera, Shaaz Jung,⁠ spent 12 hours a day for five long years tracking Saya, a melanistic leopard who found his way into the Kabini forest.

After a Twitter account, Earth, shared Jung's images, hundreds of thousands of people across the globe liked and retweeted the stunning photos.
—Earth (@earth) July 4, 2020

The 31-year-old wildlife filmmaker and photographers dedicated his life to capturing the photos.


For the last few years, Jung has spent seven days a week in the forest, arriving at 6 am, and staying until darkness fell at 6.30 pm. "I would consider myself very lucky if I saw him twice a week, and a lot of times, it would be just fleeting glimpses," he said.

But Jung knew that this was once in a lifetime opportunity.

Black panthers usually inhabit evergreen forests, where the thick canopy of trees doesn't let the sun into the undergrowth - but Saya is found in the deciduous forest of Kabini.

"When people see these pictures, they think there are several leopards, but actually there's just one black panther where we are — one melanistic leopard in the dense forest of Nagarhole," explained Jung, who also owns a wildlife safari lodge in Nagarhole National Park.


"It was like finding a needle in a haystack," he said.
For two-three years straight, Jung went into the jungle at 6am, staying there until 6.30pm, seven days in a week. Shaaz Jung

Jung comes from a family of wildlife enthusiasts. As an economics graduate, he was headed for a career in the corporate world, until he came to the forest when he was 20, with his parents who are wildlife conservationists.

He is the ambassador for Nikon India and recently worked as the director of photography for a National Geographic film on the rare black panther.

The forest is one of the few places in the world that's home to not just leopards and the black panther, but tigers, elephants, bears, and more.


"This is truly the real Jungle Book," he said. "He is not just surviving; he's thriving."
Black panthers are usually found in evergreen forests. Shaaz Jung

"The result is the first portfolio of a melanistic leopard where we have him hunting, courting, fighting ... everything," said Jung. "My aim was to go deeper and understand how he's surviving in a forest where he doesn't belong."Read the original article on Business Insider India. Copyright 2020. Follow Business Insider India on Twitter.

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