From Family Photographs to Wildlife
I’m Saptagirish Oleti, a wildlife and bird photographer based in Bangalore, India.
My journey with photography began more than a decade ago, without any ambition of becoming a wildlife photographer. I simply wanted to make better photographs of my children and preserve the small family moments that pass more quickly than we realise.
As I became more interested in photography, I started looking closely at the work of other photographers. Wildlife images opened up an entirely different world for me. I was fascinated not only by the animals and birds in those photographs, but also by the patience, timing and understanding of nature that must have gone into making them.
That curiosity gradually took me outdoors with a camera.
Birds Changed the Way I Saw the World
Birds became my first serious wildlife subjects. The lakes, scrublands and open spaces around Bangalore gave me opportunities to photograph familiar species and learn through repeated outings.
I began noticing things I had previously walked past—a call from inside a tree, the regular perch of a kingfisher, the sudden silence caused by a raptor overhead or the brief arrival of a migratory bird.
Bird photography changed the way I experience a place. It taught me to slow down, observe more carefully and accept that nature rarely follows the photographer’s plan.
What began close to home gradually grew into journeys across India’s wetlands, forests, grasslands, mountains and coastlines. Wildlife photography has since taken me farther afield as well, but birds remain at the heart of my work.
A Different Rhythm from My Professional Life
Professionally, I work as a senior technology leader in the banking industry. Much of my working life revolves around people, systems, decisions and deadlines.
Photography gives me a completely different rhythm.
A few hours beside a wetland or a morning inside a forest demands a kind of attention that is difficult to find elsewhere. There are no meetings to control, plans to enforce or predictable outcomes. I can prepare carefully, arrive before sunrise and still return without the photograph I had hoped for.
That uncertainty is part of what keeps me interested.
Balancing a demanding career with photography is not always easy. Many trips are built around weekends, annual leave and early departures from Bangalore. But the limited time also makes every opportunity in the field more meaningful.
A Journey Still in Progress
Over the years, my portfolio has grown from photographs of common birds around Bangalore into a wider collection of birds and animals from India and other parts of the world.
The growth I value most, however, is not the number of species or photographs. It is the change in how I see and respond to a moment.
I am more conscious now of behaviour, habitat, background and light. I am also more willing to leave space around an animal, wait for a natural interaction and accept that some encounters are better experienced than photographed.
I still make mistakes, miss opportunities and return from trips with fewer successful frames than expected. Wildlife photography remains a continuing process of observation and learning, which is exactly how I prefer it.
Why This Website Exists
I created this website as a permanent home for the photographs and experiences gathered along the way.
Social media is useful for sharing an individual image, but a portfolio can preserve more of its context—the species, the location, the habitat and sometimes the journey behind it.
The collection includes rare encounters as well as familiar birds photographed close to home. Together, they form a personal record of the places I have visited, the wildlife I have been fortunate to observe and the photographer I have gradually become.