Mostly a birder.

I’m Rohan Tengli, a wildlife photographer from Bangalore, and mostly a birder.

It started early: Nat Geo and BBC documentaries, Wild Kratts, and trips to the parks and zoos around Bangalore, where I loved spotting and naming the birds. A trip to Kabini at seven or eight was the first time I understood how much I loved finding animals in the wild. At ten I picked up my dad’s camera, started photographing the birds around my home, and never really stopped.

Most of my work still happens close to home. Black kites nest where I can see them from my balcony, and over time I’ve earned a strange kind of trust with them: leave food out and they come; wave, and they come. I’ve also photographed at Ranganathittu, Nagarhole, Yala in Sri Lanka, and in Ireland, but the birds outside my own window are still my favourite subject.

I enter my work in Photocrowd contests, where it’s earned recognition from the expert judges, including a Top 10 selection and several Highly Commended awards.

Away from the camera, I build things. I founded Volinity (volinity.org), a free platform that helps students across Bangalore find volunteering, log verified hours, and build a service portfolio for their applications. I designed the brand, built the platform front to back, and ran the outreach myself.

Kites or code, the thread is the same: I get an idea I care about, and I don’t let it go until it’s real.