Happy to bug you!

“My love for photography developed as I realised the need for the documentation of insects for the purpose of education and awareness,” says Parag Rangnekar, fondly known as the Butterfly Man of Goa. Rangnekar is well-known for his macro photography and the book he authored: ‘Butterflies of Goa’, which is probably the first ever documentation of the state’s butterflies. “The compilation of ‘Butterflies of Goa’ began in around 2005. I was always interested in macro photography and my obvious choice was to capture maximum possible kinds of butterflies. As I ventured into research to identify the butterflies I had clicked, I found that there was no proper documentation of Goa’s butterflies. There were a few scientific ones, but none of them meant for the common people. So I decided to compile a book on the butterflies, that would not just be scientific, but popular as well. Also, most of the photography guides focus on tips to capture landscapes or birds and animals, but I didn’t find any that would address the needs of those who would click butterflies, so I decided to incorporate that aspect as well in my book,” explains Rangnekar. Rangnekar’s love for nature goes right back to his childhood. “We had an ancestral land in Amboli, and during the 1980s, my father built a house there. That house became our holiday home. The house was situated at a secluded spot, in the middles of the forest. This is where my first contact with the wild was established and the seed of the love towards nature was sown,” recalls Rangnekar. As for photography, he says, that it was much later that he decided to take photography so seriously. “Earlier, my contact with nature was limited to trekking, bird-watching, etc; photography wasn’t a very serious affair. But when I took an interest in observing the world of the smaller organisms, mainly the butterflies, I realised that there wasn’t much documentation in this field as far as photography is concerned. As I started conducting talks and workshops to increase people’s awareness, this lack of photographs posed a huge difficulty, which mainly drew me to take up photography,” he maintains. In a time when landscapes and wildlife draw the attention of nature photographers, Parag Rangnekar takes pride and pleasure in macro photography. “Everyone usually prefers to click those organisms that can be easily spotted, and the smaller ones are generally ignored. But even macro photography can be as beautiful as the others. For me, the smaller stuff has always been much more interesting. But I find that these tiny, wonderful insects are mostly ignored by the photographers even when they are easily accessible. If you observe carefully, you can find a great variety of insects at a park even in a town like Panjim,” he opines. Saying further, he adds, “When we blow up these organisms in the photographs and show them to people, it’s very interesting to see how they react. Because even a simple dragonfly, to which we otherwise don’t pay any attention, looks so amazingly beautiful in macro photography.” Whenever he goes to any workshop to teach budding photographers, there is one thing that he insist they should follow. “Do not manipulate the animal you are capturing in your camera. Let it be in its own natural setting. Do not try to shift it or make it move for your benefit. This is the only thing that I urge all the photographers to follow. Never manipulate your subject or its habitat,” he asserts. After the success of ‘Butterflies of Goa’, Parag Rangnekar is now planning to bring a book on Goa’s dragonflies. “For the last 5 to 6 years, I have been working on the scientific documentation of the dragonflies found in our state. And as a pleasant surprise, during our research, we also discovered a new species that hadn’t been documented earlier, named ‘Idionyx gomantakensis’. I’m working on a book that would be scientific as well as popular. I am planning to finish the work and release the book in a year or so,” he concludes