Meet the Filmmaker Digitising His Family’s 100-Year Archive of Bharatpur’s Wild History

The earliest images in wildlife photographer and filmmaker Abhinandan Sharma’s memory aren’t from a camera at all — they’re from the passenger seat of a cycle winding through Rajasthan’s Keoladeo National Park.

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For him, the Bharatpur jungle was less a forest and more a familiar backyard. The real spectacle wasn’t the birds, but his uncle — the quiet man who seemed to converse with wildlife through a camera lens.

Growing up in that landscape, Abhinandan wasn’t yet the photographer he would become. He was simply a child absorbing the rhythms of a world where photography wasn’t art — it was inheritance.

“Back then, my family didn’t have an understanding of archiving or preserving photographs,” Abhinandan tells The Better India. “They didn’t see photography as an art form — it was documentation, livelihood, and a reason to go into the forest every day.”

A lineage built through lens

For four generations now, the Sharma family has raised their cameras to the skies — documenting the flight of migratory birds, royal hunts, and the changing landscapes of the park.

The tradition began with his great-grandfather, Nanthan Lal Sharma, who transitioned from running a printing press to becoming a court photographer for the Maharaja of Bharatpur.

“He was one of the members of the ‘navratna’ (nine gems), accompanying the Maharaja to hunting parties with British officials. He documented everything — from Holi festivals and royal weddings to the trophy shots of hunted ducks,” Abhinandan shares.

Over time, his lens drifted outdoors — towards the marshes, the fog-softened grasslands, the silhouettes of monuments, and tall trees settling into the still water. The few surviving glass plates and contact prints show a man trying to understand a landscape even before conservation entered the public vocabulary.

What began as a family occupation in the early 1910s quietly evolved into ‘Sharma Studios’, an important space that preserved the visual history of Bharatpur over the decades.

However, the defining shift came through Nanthan’s son Dinesh Chandra Sharma, who inherited both the studio and the instinct to look outward.

Known in the family for taking his camera on every trip — whether to hills, forests, or distant towns — he built an informal visual diary of the places he travelled through. By the 1970s, after hunting was banned, he was spending more time inside Keoladeo itself, developing five to seven-foot wildlife prints in the darkroom.

His photographs played a crucial role in creating awareness about Bharatpur’s biodiversity and contributed to the larger conservation push that eventually led to it becoming a national park in 1982.

Then came Naveen Sharma, whose eye moved easily between ceremonial grandeur and the delicate rhythms of the wild. He would shoot elaborate royal weddings one week and wading birds the next — spoonbills lifting off in synchronised arcs, painted storks tending to their nests, bar-headed geese gathering on the water, and the graceful Siberian crane, once the star migrant of Bharatpur and now lost to India’s skies.

Naveen’s images from the 1970s and ’80s — some grainy, some hand-processed — form some of the last visual memories of species whose migration patterns have since collapsed.

Today, when Abhinandan looks at these prints, contact sheets, and carefully preserved negatives, he doesn’t see a predetermined lineage but “a hundred years of record-keeping” shaped by chance, shared curiosity, and living under the same roof.

“I want people to look at the work across generations. For me, it’s simply a historical record of Bharatpur — photographed over time by people from the same family who just happened to care about the place,” he says.

A childhood framed by the wild

Despite the inherited legacy, Abhinandan’s own artistic awakening happened far from home. While he was a silent apprentice to a century-old family tradition, his moment of connection arrived not in the jungle, but in the urban landscape of Delhi.

“I was in sixth grade when I saw a bird in front of my house — the same bird I had seen in the jungle in Bharatpur,” he says. That Brown-headed Barbet, building a nest just metres from his window, became a living bridge between two worlds. “I didn’t have a camera at that time. So I would take pictures by keeping my phone and then using binoculars as the lens.”

Every afternoon after school, he would drop his bag, rush to the window, and spend hours watching this one bird on a neem tree right outside their house. At first, he didn’t understand what it was doing, but slowly, day after day, he realised it was building a nest. For almost a month, he observed the entire process.

That simple, quiet ritual became his first real connection with wildlife. “I didn’t know it then, but those afternoons with a Brown-headed Barbet were what unknowingly pulled me into this world of wildlife. That small moment changed my life, and that sense of wonder has only grown ever since.”

As he grew older, that early curiosity matured into something steadier. Wildlife was no longer just a childhood fascination — it became the lens through which he understood the world. By the time he finished Class 12, the pull towards visual storytelling felt unmistakable. Encouraged by his father, who had transitioned from photography to filmmaking, Abhinandan moved to Mumbai to study film formally.

What began with a phone camera and borrowed binoculars was now reshaping itself into a craft: atmospheric, patient, and deeply observational.

Through his professional journey, Abhinandan has worked on a wide range of projects across India — documentaries, wildlife films, branded content, and conservation campaigns. He has collaborated with Snow Leopard Trust, UNDP, Nature Conservation Foundation, UNICEF, Sony, and RoundGlass Sustain, among others.

He is also a National Geographic Award winner and a Nikon Professional Member, recognition that reflects both his craft and commitment.

This professional trajectory became the bridge between the wonder he felt as a child and the filmmaker he is today.

The call of the wild

Over the years, Abhinandan’s journey has not been confined to the wetlands of Bharatpur. It stretches to the stark, high-altitude landscapes of Ladakh, where a childhood fascination with a photograph of a snow leopard became an eight-year quest.

“I first visited Ladakh in 2016, when my father was posted there with Doordarshan. Over the years, I have seen snow leopards during documentary assignments, always with the help of spotters. But I always dreamed of finding one entirely on my own.

Finally, in April 2024, in the village of Uley, I spotted my first-ever snow leopard on my own. It was so far away that I initially mistook it for a rock. And then that ‘rock’ shimmered and moved, confirming the sighting,” he shares, the triumph still fresh in his voice.

“Here, I just didn’t chase a photo. I spent years returning, understanding the place, people, culture, listening to stories, and building relationships. The world needs more honest, authentic stories from the wild. If we focus on that, we can help bridge the growing disconnect between human beings and nature,” he adds, as a message to young aspiring wildlife photographers.

That moment of solitary discovery in the Himalayas was a testament to his patience and a defining chapter in his personal story, separate yet connected to the legacy he carries.

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Crafting a signature visual language

While traditional photography celebrates dramatic action and frozen moments, Abhinandan is drawn to quieter stories.

“I want to make my own photos,” he states, his voice firm with conviction. “I look for environments, for atmosphere. I want pictures that can emote. When you look at them, you can feel something.”

His colleague and filmmaker Akanksha Sood Singh believes this sensibility — this pursuit of stories over spectacle — is what sets him apart.

“There’s a lot of depth in his visuals,” she says. “He sees moments that most people would overlook, and through his framing, he brings them to life. He’s able to tell a story even when there’s no action.”

With almost 25 years of experience in the industry, Akanksha says Abhinandan’s frames feel distinctly evocative.

“I’ve worked with a whole variety of people who specialise in wildlife cinematography — they get great shots, they get great moments: animals fighting, mating. But Abhinandan can tell you a story even when nothing dramatic is happening.”

At just 28, Abhinandan’s photographs are not about spectacle alone but about the subtle stories within it — a still heron in a foggy lake, a lone bird perched against the moonlight, a snow leopard family gathered over their latest hunt.

This philosophy of storytelling has extended to his filmmaking as well.

“Films have the power to make people feel connected to a place, not just see it. They carry emotion, atmosphere, and experience in a way no single photograph can. I often meet people from Bharatpur who have never stepped inside the national park. When I share a film about it with them, it creates a connection and sometimes even pride. If the people living right next to the park don’t know it, love it, or understand it, how can we expect the sanctuary to be protected?” he states.

Bharatpur’s future

That connection is more urgent than ever. Bharatpur, a man-made wetland once abundant with clean water and migratory birds, is now grappling with ecological decline.

“Fresh, good-quality water is the lifeline of Bharatpur. Every resident and migratory bird depends on it. Without water, the very existence of this man-made wetland comes into question. Thousands of birds rely on Bharatpur as a winter home, and keeping this habitat healthy is essential for their survival,” says Abhinandan, noting the disappearance of species like the Fishing Cat and the iconic Siberian Crane.

“Bharatpur is a globally important place on the Central Asian Flyway. Photos and films can be the talking point for its conservation,” he adds. 

This belief in the power of images fuels Abhinandan’s current focus — digitising and archiving the Sharma Studios collection. Hundreds of fragile negatives, prints, and slides are being carefully scanned and catalogued, a self-funded effort he has taken on to ensure the archive survives intact.

For photographer Kush Kukreja, who studied this archive for his master’s dissertation, this collection is a priceless historical tool.

“It’s not just about saving old photos,” he says. “We’re building a visual history of Bharatpur — its people, its architecture, its biodiversity. The collection has everything from portraits of royal families to images of local artisans and migratory birds that no longer visit the park.”

He believes digitisation is as much about context as it is about conservation.

“Each photograph carries data — date, location, species, even weather patterns sometimes. When you put them together, they form a timeline of how Bharatpur’s ecosystem has changed over a hundred years. It’s an ecological database hidden in family albums.”

Akanksha believes this kind of long-term visual record could inform future environmental policies and community efforts.

“Anything we preserve from our past, we protect and pass down. For a generation that might never see what Bharatpur once was, this becomes both a window to the past and a guide for the future,” she adds.

A living legacy

The Sharma family’s century-long documentation offers a rare, visual continuity to this story of transformation. From black-and-white photographs of the 1920s to Abhinandan’s cinematic frames today, it serves as a reminder of how observation itself can be an act of conservation.

Abhinandan’s journey, like his photographs, is about framing the familiar differently — seeing history not as something to be preserved behind glass, but as something that breathes, evolves, and informs.

Through his lens, Bharatpur is not just a sanctuary for birds but for stories — stories of a family that chronicled India’s changing relationship with its land, its people, and its wild.

As he continues to archive, film, and photograph, Abhinandan stands at a rare intersection of past and future — carrying forward a legacy that began with a simple camera and an unspoken belief: that beauty, when seen with patience and empathy, can endure across generations.

All images courtesy Abhinandan Sharma