Mirror Magazine caught up with the always-on-themove wildlife photographer, Lakshitha Karunarathna, who recently won the coveted Windland Rice Smith Award for 2017. Here, he share with us his passions, achievements and concerns about local wildlife
have been observing wildlife and nature for a long time. Ever since I was a kid I have been fascinated by it,” says Lakshitha Karunarathna, multiple award winning photographer. His latest win - the Windland Rice Smith Award for 2017, is one of the two biggest wildlife photography competitions in the world (the other being the Wildlife Photographer of the Year). For Lakshitha more than the prize money it is the recognition that excites him as his entry is being displayed at the Smithsonian Museum, one of the biggest and most visited museums in the world. The winning image will be displayed there for one year he tells us. In this year alone, Lakshitha has won 250 awards from 38 countries.
As a child growing up in Opanayake, about 25km from Ratnapura, Lakshitha was an avid fan of Sir David Attenborough’s documentaries and recalls watching them all on VHS tapes. “He was my biggest inspiration. When I first saw one of his programmes, I was maybe 10 years. He had a series; BBC live, BBC earth. And the way he narrated it, presented it, it was something I had never seen before.”
Lakshitha was so enthused by what he saw that he developed a taste for watching nature documentaries, both local and foreign, whenever he had the time. “This was a big time hobby. It still is.” By profession Lakshitha is a tea taster. Photography remains one of his hobbies, along with travel and reading. “I never wanted to be a photographer. It was never on the cards,” he smiles. His biggest passion remains the same; nature and wildlife.
So how did he get into photography? “When I got married in 2012, our wedding photographer, Rasanga Dissanayke, he was a very interactive person. I was really interested in the way that he was going about it and how he got the background to blur and the subject in focus. I was asking questions, and he took the time to explain. With that I became interested in photography.” Lakshitha bought himself a midrange Canon camera and started practising with the kit lens. Lakshitha is self-taught when it comes to photography. He honed his skill by watching YouTube and other online tutorials. He perused online profiles of outstanding wild- lif life photographers. “One is David Ll Lloyd, he’s one of my big time in inspirations. And Stephen D Dalton. Some of the things he ac achieved in the 80-90s with film c cameras, we are still trying to a achieve today,” he says. Popular w wildlife photographers such as B Bence Mate and Will BurradL Lucas incidentally were also in t the running for submissions for t this award, but Lakshitha’s was t the ultimate winner. A As he grew more confident in his skills he bought some thirdparty Sigma lenses through a friend in Dubai. Encouraged by the good reviews and feedback, he then went on to submit e entries for international photo competitions.
“I wanted something out of the box. Not just an animal standing. I wanted to do black and white. Even now my winning image is a back and white. Back then I was so afraid because in a way it was never done in Sri Lanka. Normally when you say wildlife, it’s colour. But then I saw David Lloyd’s work; he is the master of black and white photography. Those are the images that changed my mind,” he says explaining his initial hesitation with the medium.
He goes on to explain what now motivates him. “When you have a