Off the beaten track for leopard or dragonfly-By Yomal Senerath-Yapa

Off the beaten track for leopard or dragonfly-By Yomal Senerath-Yapa

Source:Sundaytimes

Today at 37, Riaz is content having carved out of his passion for wildlife a career as a nature tourism professional, with his own company, Natural World Explorer, curating special safaris with many itineraries focusing diversely on butterflies, birds, wild cats and even dragonflies; while also being a local ‘ground handler’ for big documentaries by the big names including National Geographic, BBC and Animal Planet.

Always ‘grabbing at any excuse’ to escape to the wild, Riaz has accumulated a massive portfolio of wildlife snaps that would be the envy of any shutterbug.

Educated at Royal College, then the Elizabeth Moir School, when he watched TV it was mostly documentaries as an escape chute into wild places, he says.

After completing his Bachelor of Commerce at the Melbourne University he was crammed into an office Down Under till he gave it up and took a serendipitous flight home to Sri Lanka, then just finding its feet after the war. While waiting to secure a position in the financial sector he signed up for an internship at Jetwing Eco Holidays, training under Gehan de Silva Wijeratne and what was meant to be a short tenure, became full time work.

After setting up on his own with Natural World Explorer with wife Nidaal, Riaz has had moments that probably even Jane Goodall (or a BBC or Discovery film crew) would envy.

Working for big documentaries across the length and breadth of the island involves staying on location in the wild for weeks and among some of the most epic experiences he says was seeing ‘super pods’ of sperm whales–giant conglomerates (going up incredibly to 80 individuals) frolicking in the Indian Ocean.

There was also capturing off Mirissa pics of a couple of killer whales up close, and getting ‘honeymoon shots’ of two romancing leopards on the Moderagala Rock in Yala.

While always avid for the majestic leopard or the fierce bear the lesser felines have not been ignored. Some intimate shots of a brood of fishing cats in the Thalangama wetlands he says, goes to show “you don’t always have to go far or spend big to take photographs.”

Recently he had a rendezvous with a portly saltwater crocodile in a canal in Colombo and took a curious snap of a smart Shikra defending its substantial kill of a rat from some sleek crows – in his own driveway in Kollupitiya.

With ground handling for documentaries it is not all glamour and sightings of rare animal behaviour every day; it is “a lot of hours in the field, a lot of fact finding, a lot of fine tuning, running along from location to location, making contingency backup plans and so on.”

While till recently they mostly worked with tourists from overseas and film crews, now they are preparing to cater to Lankans looking for wildlife holidays within our shores as well as in India and Africa with their expertise. While the dry zone figures large in their itineraries, they embrace all terrains and any traveller with Natural World Explorer gets the full experience down to spotting rare butterflies and minuscule dragonflies- “a little different to what you would normally see,” says Riaz. They take pride in their teams including seasoned naturalists, jeep drivers and trackers.

While affirming there can be no such thing as a ‘perfect’ snapshot, Riaz says a good picture is an alchemy which involves practice and years of rehearsing for the moment.

While also a sports fan, Riaz remains glad his ‘main hobby’- wildlife photography –  makes an impact on those people otherwise not sensitive to nature adding that he hopes his nature images can slowly bring these people into the fold of conservationists.