English: A wildlife photographer of national renown, Biju Karakkonam has been striving for nature and environment protection for more than 15 years. Born at Manacaud in Thiruvananthapuram district, he was transplanted to his maternal hometown of Karakonam, a village in the southern Kerala border, at the age of four.

After completing his primary and secondary school education from Karakonam and college education from a parallel college at Neyyattinkara, Mr Biju took a break from learning and took up numerous jobs from taking tuitions as soon as his SSLC exams were over to joining as an LIC agent at the age of 18, a position he maintained for 9 years. At the age of 41, Mr Biju completed his Masters in Fine Art Photography from Karnataka Open University, becoming one out of the five students to graduate from the first ever MFA Photography batch in India. The very next year he also completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Journalism. An interest in photography right from his childhood prompted Mr Biju to visit his friend Prasad at the studio within his home during degree days. The aim of these visits was to capture his self in the roll of film that he took along. These visits inspired him to take up Mr Prasad’s SLR camera and experiment with photography. Earliest models of his art were the flowers and butterflies in the courtyard. The first camera that he owned was a Minolta Autofocus bought from Mr Prasad. Thus began his love for photography. The love for travel and the desire to capture new lives and new sights in both memory and film led him to choose photography as his livelihood. One should choose something that they love, says Mr Biju, be it in education, career or choice of a life partner. Often we try to adjust our preferences or satisfy ourselves with what we get. This is the reason for our failures in life. Sadly, only a few succeed. When a student learns something he is passionate about, he/she loves it and finds happiness in learning. When you choose a job that you love, you never feel monotony or dissatisfaction. Public offices often set academic achievements as parameters for candidate selection and as a result a person with no passion for the job gets appointed. This is the reason for inefficiency in many public offices. Mr Biju feels that it is this love for photography that gave him utmost satisfaction when he chose photography as a career. To learn cinematography was a long cherished dream which could not be fulfilled owing to financial troubles at home. However, Mr Biju made his maiden venture into cinematography by shooting two schedules with his friend and cinematographer Vincy Lopez for the movie ‘Kalam’ directed by Sooraj Sreedhar, yet another friend of Mr Biju’s. Through journeys and documentary production, I am still continuing my education in photography. Each journey and documentary is a quest for new knowledge, says Mr Biju. What were the reasons for adopting photography as a career? Journeys at least once a month with friends has been a routine for a long time. Often the destination would be wilderness and forests where nature is at its best. From there started the fascination to capture this beauty of nature. When travelling and photography became an infatuation, I decided to turn it into a career. In 2005, took a loan of 5 Lakh rupees from KFC and bought my first DSLR camera, a Nikon D70, and a Sony PD170 video camera. The camera with broadcasting quality was bought with the aim of making a travel documentary programme. The shooting of the travel programme from Kanyakumari was begun and many places in the Kanyakumari districts were covered. It was only when I contacted some channels that I came to know that broadcasting at prime time required quite a sum as payment. Getting sponsorship for such programmes was difficult during that time. Thus that dream project had to be abandoned at the onset itself. But the journeys, long and short, continued as a part of the job as well as an exploration of new sights. With the quest to experience the soul of nature, my passion to see the world and to capture those sights bloomed. How many genres of photography are there and which are the prominent ones? I would divide photography into three main categories. One is Point and Shoot photography. In this, you capture what you see with cameras or mobile phones. The rules of photography and aesthetics are not the concern of majority of photographers in this genre. They click what they see. Second category is Documentation photography. Here, the images are captured exactly as they are. Subjects are the prime interest in this genre and the photographer’s duty is to show the images to the viewer with accuracy and honesty. News photography, archaeological, industrial and product photography, among many others come under this genre. The last category is Fine art photography. A fine art photographer does not simply show the image that he sees. Instead his camera captures the image as his heart imbibes it. The photographer’s point of view is projected in such photos. This is where photography becomes an art. Only a photographer can stop time with a simple click. Each click of a photographer is a record of history. History never repeats, neither does the moment of the click. No matter how talented a photographer is, he can never recapture a moment or image from nature ever in his life. “I take same picture twice. First with my heart then camera” – Biju Karakkonam Which are some of the most memorable journeys that you have undertaken? I have had the opportunity to travel from Kanyakumari to Kashmir several times. My most memorable experience was a month spent in Kashmir upon the request of my close friend Vinish who is an art teacher in a Kashmiri school. Through some people I met there, I could learn the realities of life in Kashmir. In Kerala, Munnar is a favoured photography location. I had the extraordinary opportunity to see the Neelakurinji bloom twice, in 2006 and 2018, and capture those beautiful moments in both my heart and camera. Every journey in life, including the nine days spent trailing after tigers in Parambikulam for taking their census and those made with my friends to Karnataka and Wayanadu, are memorable life experiences. The first journey outside India was to Bhutan. My friend and film director Sooraj Sreedhar, Colonel Harikrishnan and I started from Thiruvananthapuram by car and reached Siliguri in West Bengal on the sixth day. From there, Sooraj and I travelled to Bhutan by car as Colonel couldn’t accompany us without obtaining prior permission from Government. The six days spent in Bhutan were a distinct experience. What is meant by the campaign named BET? The drastic changes in nature in places I revisited after an interval of time agonised me. The destruction suffered by nature due to human intervention left deep and painful scars in me. I have been conducting photography exhibitions, and camps and journeys to experience nature up close from 2006. The aim of these activities is to remind the public of the necessity of preserving nature and biodiversity for our future generations. Over the last 15 years, over 80 exhibitions of my photographs have been conducted both inside and outside Kerala. I have observed that the older generation is reluctant to take part in such activities. All of them are in some race to conquer life. Ever since I realised that such messages can be imparted to society only through children, I decided to shift the focus such programmes on children. In collaboration with the NGO Child Empowerment Trust, we have begun activities to impart the idea of “BET for a better world” through interactions with children. The BET in campaign name stands for Butterflies and Bees, Elephant and Tiger respectively. BET is just a symbol and represents all living beings. The concept is to create a society which stands together to bet for creating a better world. Everyone is a victor in this bet. We can prevent the world from the impending destruction only if we make our future generations aware that humans are not the sole inheritors of this planet. The present older generation is incapable of this as they run after wealth and power. They were prepared only for that by the previous generation and it is the same that they pass on to the next generation. The greatest challenge that nature faces now is the lack of a young generation to respond to social issues. 80 percent of the people who are currently working in this field are aged 60 and above. Majority of them are people who have annexed all they can, prepared their children to do the same and decided to spend the left of their time for social cause. Others are people who have made social work their income. Today, we have the whole world fitted into the mobile phones in our hands and the sincerity of such political and social workers is being questioned. Social media interventions have been responsible for exposing some such people. India’s greatest wealth is its youth which comes to more than 60 percent of its total population. Their outlook towards nature and society should change. Only through the intervention of the youth can we bring a change in the society. Politics should not intervene in nature. The politics of nature is the survival of all living beings.

How has travelling influenced you? Every journey in search of new sights gifts an unexplainable satisfaction to the traveller. The belief that we have to travel far to see new sights is a myth. Only the desire is needed to see the sights around us. We have a lot of sights and lives around us which require a compassionate heart to see. Appreciation of sights is also an art. If we do not take the children of this digital age to real sights they wouldn’t reach proper destinations. The experiences in each journey have given me opportunities to change my life. All the sights I have seen have changed my perspectives a lot. Even the solo journeys have taught me that none of us are really alone in life. Though travelling is often expensive, most of my journeys happen quite unexpectedly. Often, really close friends and even friends whom I haven’t met come to my rescue. It has been 25 years since I started travelling. Short or long, with friends or alone, these journeys include those done as a part of work as well as those undertaken to know nature better. Some good friends like Sooraj, Vincy, Bennet, Vineesh, Subash, Prashanth, Pradeep and Riyas often become partners in these journeys. I have already covered a lot of distance. Still I feel there is a lot more to be covered. I have travelled by bus, car, bike, ship, airplane, bullock cart, horse carriages and national permit lorries. The sensation of travelling by bike on some rainy nights is really special. The memory of an adventurous journey that five of us took from Thekkadi via Vandiperiyar-Moozhiyar to Vadasserikara on three bikes is still very fresh in my mind. For a while, I have been travelling with those interested in learning photography as a part of travel photography workshops. Each journey is like a textbook. The life lessons that they give us are very important. Often the self-realization that occurs in such journeys becomes milestones in our life. Each person we meet on the way makes us retrospect as to where we stand in life.

Each journey is a new lesson in the book of life for Mr Biju. It is his life’s mission to know people and nature closer and to impart the same to others. He continues his journey of hopes and dreams. To borrow Robert Frost’s words,