A night where vision met purpose, and wildlife photography found its rightful stage in the heart of Kolkata.
Valentine’s Day 2026 took on a different kind of love story at the Art At Central Gallery in Kolkata. While the city outside buzzed with roses and restaurant queues, the fourth floor of 112, Chittaranjan Avenue was alive with something altogether more extraordinary — the hush and wonder that comes from standing before an image of the natural world, captured with patience, skill, and a deep reverence for life.
Frames From The Wild, presented by Wild By Nature and held at the Art At Central Gallery, opened its doors on the 14th of February and ran through the 15th, drawing enthusiasts, professionals, and curious visitors into a world of feathers, fur, and microscopic marvels. More than just a display of beautiful photographs, the exhibition was built around a learning-first, ethics-led ethos — one that encourages responsible fieldcraft, zero disturbance to wildlife, and the kind of thoughtful storytelling that goes beyond a pretty frame.
At its heart were the people. The photographers who walked into forests and fields, waited in silence, and returned with images that stopped you mid-step. And at the very centre of it all was the man whose vision made Frames From The Wild possible — Bobby Lohia, Founder and director of Wild By Nature.
Bobby Lohia: The Vision Behind the Frame
If Frames From The Wild had a soul, it was shaped by Mr. Bobby Lohia. As the Founder and director of Wild By Nature, Mr. Lohia brings over 15 years of experience in wildlife photography to the organisation — and it shows in everything Wild By Nature does. In just its first year, WBN has already built a philosophy that places ethics, mentorship, and a genuine love for the natural world at its centre. And at this edition of Frames From The Wild, that philosophy was on full display.
The majority of the images showcased at the exhibition were Mr. Bobby Lohia's own — a testament to the depth and range of his work in the field. From the grasslands and wetlands of India to the sweeping savannahs of Kenya and other remote and challenging environments, his photographs carry the unmistakable quality of someone who does not merely visit the wild but inhabits it. There is patience in every frame, and intention behind every shutter press.
What makes Mr. Lohia’s contribution to the exhibition remarkable is not just the volume of work on display, but its diversity. Across species, habitats, and lighting conditions, his images tell a cohesive story — the story of a photographer who has earned his access to the wild through years of disciplined fieldcraft and genuine respect for his subjects. Visitors who moved through the gallery were, in many ways, moving through Mr. Lohia’s vision of what wildlife photography can and should be.
Beyond his photographs, Mr. Lohia’s influence permeates every dimension of the exhibition. The emphasis on ethical photography, the commitment to zero disturbance, the focus on mentorship and community — these are not incidental values but the founding principles of Wild By Nature, and they bear his fingerprint. Frames From The Wild, in many ways, is an expression of Bobby Lohia’s belief that wildlife photography is not just an art form, but a responsibility.
The Mentors Who Shaped the Exhibition
Competitions create winners, but exhibitions create conversations. And the conversations at Frames From The Wild were shaped in no small part by the mentors who showcased their own work and brought their expertise into the gallery space.
Siddhartha Banerji, Saptarshi Bhattacharya, Dr. Pankaj Joshi, and Hitesh Patel — four names that carry considerable weight in the Indian wildlife photography community — each brought curated prints and with them, the stories behind those frames. Their presence at the exhibition was not ceremonial. These are practitioners who have spent years in the field, and their showcased work offers visitors a masterclass in vision, technique, and above all, intent.
What does it mean to photograph responsibly? What does it mean to tell a story with a single image? The mentors' work answered these questions not with words, but with pictures. Though the mentors were not present in person, their images spoke for them — and visitors connected with those prints deeply, pausing, reflecting, and finding in them the kind of practical wisdom that no tutorial can quite replicate. The discussions that unfolded naturally in the gallery space, sparked by the work on the walls, are a testament to Wild By Nature's belief that mentorship does not always require a teacher in the room. Sometimes, a single well-made image is enough.
Plaban Datta Gupta: A Member Who Made His Mark
Exhibitions like this are ultimately about community — about creating spaces where people at every stage of their photographic journey can show up, learn, share, and grow. Plaban Datta Gupta, showcasing as a member, embodied exactly that spirit.
To have member work featured alongside mentors and competition winners is a statement of intent from Wild By Nature: talent is not the preserve of the established. It can be found in a community member who shows up, puts in the hours, and produces work worthy of a gallery wall. Datta Gupta’s inclusion is an encouragement to every aspiring wildlife photographer who has ever wondered whether their work is good enough. It can be. It might already be.
Warriors Of The Wild: Celebrating the Competition Winners
Alongside the exhibition, the Warriors Of The Wild competition recognised outstanding work across three categories. The winners — chosen from a strong field of entries — exemplified the very best of what wildlife photography can be: technically accomplished, ethically grounded, and deeply felt.
The Mammal Winner: Arige Mahadevan
To photograph mammals in the wild is to enter a game of patience and unpredictability. Mammals are alert, intelligent, and perpetually aware of human presence. They do not pose. They do not wait. And yet, Arige Mahadevan managed to capture one in a moment so natural, so unguarded, that it feels less like a photograph and more like a secret shared between species.
Mahadevan’s winning image speaks to a deep familiarity with the field — the kind that only comes from hours spent learning animal behaviour, understanding light, and knowing when to press the shutter and when to simply watch. The win is not just a recognition of technical excellence but of the quiet dedication that defines the best wildlife photographers — those who go out not to take, but to witness.
The Avian Winner: Dr. S S Suresh
Birds have always held a special place in wildlife photography. They are among the most expressive, most colourful, and most behaviourally complex subjects in the natural world — and they are notoriously unforgiving of slow reflexes or poor preparation. Dr. S S Suresh, the Avian Category Winner of Warriors Of The Wild, has clearly mastered both.
Dr. Suresh’s winning frame carries the hallmarks of someone who understands birds not just as photographic subjects but as living creatures with behaviours worth studying. The image freezes a moment that most eyes would never catch — a split second of grace, tension, or flight that reveals something true about the bird’s life in the wild. His work does not compromise the bird for the frame. It earns the frame.
The Macro Winner: Kapil Bhagwat
If mammal photography is about patience and avian photography is about reflexes, macro photography is about an entirely different kind of seeing. It asks you to kneel in the dirt, peer at the underside of a leaf, and find a universe in what the naked eye dismisses as insignificant. Kapil Bhagwat, the Macro Category Winner, does exactly that — and does it brilliantly.
Bhagwat’s winning image invites the viewer into a world that exists inches from our feet but light-years from our everyday awareness. Macro photography, at its finest, is an act of revelation. It says: look here, look closer, this matters. The insects, fungi, dewdrops, and textures that Bhagwat captures are not peripheral to the story of wildlife — they are foundational to it. The macro win at Warriors Of The Wild is a nod to the breadth of what wildlife photography can encompass: don’t overlook the small. The small, as Bhagwat’s work proves, can be breathtaking.
More Than an Exhibition
What made Frames From The Wild resonate was not just the quality of the images on the walls — it was the ecosystem around them. The conversations that sparked spontaneously between strangers. The quiet but firm commitment to ethical photography that ran through every discussion. In a landscape where wildlife photography is sometimes reduced to a checklist of species and settings, Wild By Nature chose to make space for something more considered.
The venue itself — the Art At Central Gallery on Chittaranjan Avenue — lent the exhibition a warmth and intimacy that a larger, more impersonal space might have swallowed. Visitors moved between prints at their own pace, lingered on the ones that spoke to them, and left — as the organisers intended — with a sharper eye, a stronger ethic, and a community to grow with.
Looking Ahead
The Warriors Of The Wild winners — Arige Mahadevan, Dr. S S Suresh, and Kapil Bhagwat — have not just won a competition. They have contributed their images to a larger story that Wild By Nature, under Bobby Lohia’s leadership, is actively building: a story about what it means to photograph the natural world with care, skill, and purpose. The mentors who showcased alongside them, and the members like Plaban Datta Gupta who found their place in this community, are chapters in that same story.
If this edition of Frames From The Wild is any indication, that story is only getting richer. For everyone who attended, who submitted, who pressed a shutter in a forest somewhere and wondered if it was good enough — the answer, more often than not, is yes. Keep going. The wild is waiting, and so is the next exhibition.
To know more about Wild By Nature’s upcoming exhibitions, workshops, and photography safaris, visit wildbynatureglobal.com.