Meet The Pro: Wildlife Photographer Riaz Cader

Join host Toby Jermyn as he catches up with Sri Lankan wildlife photographer, safari planner, and travel entrepreneur Riaz Cader! 

In this episode, Riaz shares the stories behind his five chosen images, including an adorable leopard cub balancing in Kumana National Park, a striped dolphin soaring ten feet into the air, a hair-raising close encounter with a sloth bear, and a powerful look at human-elephant conflict. Plus, Riaz reveals his favourite image by legendary photographer Andy Rouse and discusses what makes Sri Lanka one of the world's most versatile wildlife destinations. 

In this episode, we discuss:

• Exploring Yala's hidden blocks and Wilpattu National Park 
• The secrets to photographing fast-moving marine life off the Sri Lankan coast 
• The reality of sloth bear behaviour and wildlife conservation challenges 
• Sri Lanka’s endemic bird species and elusive nocturnal wildlife 

Connect with Riaz
https://www.instagram.com/riazcader/
https://www.naturalworldexplorer.com/about-us 
https://www.facebook.com/riaz.cader/ 

Resources & Links:

• Gallery: View all the images featured in today's show via the link: https://pangolin.smugmug.com/SmugMug-Website/Pangolin-Podcast/Riaz-Cader/Meet-the-Pro-Riaz-Cader
• Blog Post: Read Toby's full Sri Lanka travel blog and itinerary details at : https://www.pangolinphoto.com/sri-lankan-safari

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Transcript

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Toby Jermyn: Hello and welcome to another brand new episode of the Pangolin Podcast. I'm your host, Toby Jermyn. Thank you very much for joining me. 

In each episode, I've invited a professional wildlife photographer to imagine themselves in a remote location. And along with their camera gear, they're allowed to bring five photographs to hang on the wall of their humble dwelling. Now, four of these must be their own. And the final image is one they admire by another photographer. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see the images as we talk. But for audio listeners on other platforms, there's a link in the description to a gallery. On today's show... 

Riaz Cader: We're just waiting for the moment we saw it. It just happened so quickly. It came up from the edge of the stream and within a couple of seconds, the fence was broken. It was on the other side. So, I mean, they're big animals, but they're deceptively fast.

Toby Jermyn: My guest today is a Sri Lankan wildlife photographer, safari planner and travel entrepreneur who is based in the capital, Colombo. He has spent over a decade immersed in wildlife and nature-based tourism, crafting bird watching tours, wildlife photo safaris and nature-centric holidays across Sri Lanka, the Indian subcontinent and also on occasion to Africa. He is widely regarded as one of Sri Lanka's leading wildlife photographers and travel personalities, as well as an internationally recognized location manager and a fixer for wildlife documentary film crews, having worked on major productions including National Geographic's Wild Sri Lanka and Disney's Monkey Kingdom. Welcome to the show, Riaz Cader. Hello, Riaz. How are you today?

Riaz Cader: I'm very good. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Toby.

Toby Jermyn: It's an absolute pleasure. It's really good to see you. I keep missing you around the world. You were recently in Birmingham at The Photography Show and then I wasn't there this year. You go to Africa. I'm not in Africa. So, this is the only way we get to catch up, isn't it?

Riaz Cader: Absolutely. I mean, I hope we catch up soon, either in Africa or back in Sri Lanka, hopefully too.

Toby Jermyn: It's been a few years since I've been in Sri Lanka. So, I think it's about time I headed back again. I absolutely loved it. Just to give the audience a bit of a background as to how I know Riaz. So during COVID, when we were all twiddling our thumbs a little bit, weren't we? Riaz reached out to me and said, "Hello, I'm a photographer from Sri Lanka. What are you doing?" I said, "Nothing." And Riaz equally, "I'm doing nothing. We're just waiting." Riaz very kindly took the opportunity to teach me all about Sri Lanka. So thank you for reaching out, Riaz.

Riaz Cader: No worries, and thank you for coming down two years later and experiencing it yourself and recommending the destination to fellow travelers like yourself.

Toby Jermyn: Did I remember very distinctly during our introductory call saying to you, "This sounds absolutely amazing, and when this is all over, I am coming to Sri Lanka." And then we made it happen. It was fantastic. So Riaz, where are you today? Where are you? Are you in your office in Colombo?

Riaz Cader: Yes, I'm in my office in Colombo. Yeah.

Toby Jermyn: You've been photographing in Sri Lanka for a very long time, but how easy or difficult was it to choose the four images for this show?

Riaz Cader: I mean, it's never easy cuz over the years you've built a portfolio of pictures and then you have to sort of look at what's unique, what sort of pictures tell more of a story rather than just a really beautiful portrait of an animal. So took a while, but I had about 10 pictures that I was sort of competing through and then, you know, picked out these four images.

Toby Jermyn: You managed to whittle it. Did you get the wife to help you as well? How is she now? Congratulations on—you've had a new baby, haven't you?

Riaz Cader: Yes. So my elder daughter is seven years and the younger one is seven months. And yeah, my wife is good. We're just hands-on with everything at the moment. So yeah, but it's fun. It's enjoyable.

Toby Jermyn: It's a fine balancing act, isn't it? Okay, tell you what, Riaz. Let's start with the first image, and it's probably not going to be a surprise as to why we chose this one to be the first image. Tell us about this photograph. Where you took it, how you took it, where was it?

Riaz Cader: This was a really special encounter of a leopard cub with his sibling in the background, where on its hind legs balancing against a branch looking directly towards the camera in the national park. It was taken in Kumana National Park, which is Yala East in the southeast corner of the island, and there was a third cub as well who was not in the frame at the time. So it was the first day anyone in the park had seen them, and initially we spent a few hours observing them just through the gap between some branches inside the den when they were playing and exploring territory and habitat. And mom was above them, just sort of asleep the entire time. And I mean, this picture is really cute, I think because of a very humanlike pose, you know? And I can almost link it up now to like what my seven-month-old baby is doing. She's just doing similar things where she's holding on to something and standing on her two feet and getting to explore and know her surroundings and all of that. So yeah, I just thought it's a beautiful moment, and you don't really often see leopards standing on their hind legs quite often.

Toby Jermyn: So they don't, and you mentioned you were in a park. And for those of you who don't know Sri Lanka, Yala is obviously the most famous park in the south of the island, and it's broken up into different blocks. Do you want to just briefly explain how it works for us, because it's quite interesting and knowing which one to go to is key.

Riaz Cader: Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, Yala is the second-largest national park after Wilpattu, which is in the northwest. Wilpattu is also excellent for leopards and sloth bear. And then in the southeast corner of the island, you'got Yala. So it's got five blocks that it's divided into. So Yala Block 1 is the most visited location. After Yala Block 1, you've got the Manik River, and then after that you've got another river called the Kumbukkan Oya. And then that is what separates Yala Block 2 to Kumana National Park, which was previously known as Yala East.

Toby Jermyn: It makes such a difference. As I said, Riaz organized an amazing trip for myself and my partner Claire to go and visit. And I really enjoyed Block 5. I thought that was very special. Block 1 was interesting. It's very scenic and it's very beautiful. And I love the fact that the guide that you gave us, Wiki, knew all of the little routes off to the side to get away from the crowds, because it can get busy, can't it? I mean, Yala 1 has got a reputation for being a little bit busy and a little bit crazy.

Riaz Cader: Yeah. I mean, it gets a bit crowded in Block 1 in the peak times of the year and all of that. Yala East, which is Kumana, basically it's got a very similar habitat and terrain to Block 1. You've got, you know, the scrub jungles, the lagoons, the beautiful rocky outcrops that the leopards get on, the big palu trees and all of that. So it's a little bit of a cheat code cuz we can sort of pry for the leopards and the other wildlife without the crowds there.

Toby Jermyn: It's very special. We had the opportunity to go to all of these places and loved it. And also we went up to Wilpattu in the northwest as well, which you mentioned earlier on, which I thought was absolutely stunning. And because these national parks are on the coast as well, which makes it very unique, because one minute you're in what feels like a jungle and then suddenly you see the beach.

Riaz Cader: Yeah, absolutely. And if you're really, really, really lucky, you may see an elephant walking by with, you know, the sea in the background, or a leopard if you're even luckier. It does happen. Not often, but you know, you do with the spectacular surroundings.

Toby Jermyn: We'll talk more about traveling in Sri Lanka, but I thought it was really stunning. I'm lucky that I get to travel to lots of places around the world, and most places I'll go to once and say, "Well, there we go. I've seen it. Where next?" But Sri Lanka is in the rarefied group of places that I am definitely going to come back to.

Riaz Cader: If I could just add one more thing, I'll just recall a really old encounter from about seven, eight years ago. So I was with a travel agent on a fam. So in the morning we were out whale watching in Mirissa, which is on the south coast of Sri Lanka, and we had the fortune of seeing two killer whales out at sea and a glimpse of a blue whale and some dolphins. And then directly after that, we drove straight down to Yala, and we had views of elephants and a quick glimpse of a leopard moving into the bush. So we could be one of the only people in the world to have seen blue whales, killer whales, leopards and elephants in one day. So yes.

Toby Jermyn: I can't think of anywhere else where that's likely to be happening at all. You mentioned you were with an agent on a fam trip. Now I suppose this is a good opportunity to talk about it because you haven't always been on the photographic side of tourism. You had quite a lengthy stint with—was it AndBeyond?

Riaz Cader: Yeah, with AndBeyond. Yeah. I mean, they have a travel arm here. They don't have the lodges and all that like in Africa and India. So yeah, we were running sort of high-end tours and safaris and linking a little bit of the best of Sri Lanka, you know, the culture, the beaches, the wildlife, the montane landscapes, a little bit of all of that. And I did some filming with AndBeyond as well at the time.

Toby Jermyn: But for those people who don't know, Sri Lanka offers some of the most amazing sort of cultural landscape photography. I mean, the history of Sri Lanka—I had no idea until I got there. I mean, it's millennia, millennia old with these ancient civilizations that put anything in Europe to shame and so well preserved.

Riaz Cader: Yeah. And it's quite interesting because when you travel around Sri Lanka, everything is sort of linked cuz it's a small island, right? For example, pretty early on in your tour you may go into Wilpattu National Park, and it's the coastline of Wilpattu where the ancient settlers who came into Sri Lanka from India—and they were the origins of the Sinhalese race. And then it was from there that they ventured on through the jungles of Wilpattu and set up Anuradhapura, which is then the next stop on the itinerary. So you're almost tracing those old footsteps when you travel through the country.

Toby Jermyn: It's a proper journey. Like you say, a small country, but absolutely zero direct straight roads anywhere, really, because you spend a lot of time driving.

Riaz Cader: Yeah. But it's beautiful. It's really beautiful.

Toby Jermyn: Tell me about growing up in Sri Lanka, you know, how did you get into wildlife? Is this something that you and your family or you were exposed to as a youngster in Sri Lanka?

Riaz Cader: I guess I always liked learning about animals, especially like big cats and whales and elephants, and we were watching documentaries on TV. And when we were growing up, we had a civil war between separatist Tamils in the north and the east of the island. So it was quite tough, like there would be bombs going off in the capital, Colombo, quite often very close to where we are, once every 2–3 months or so. So we did go into Yala. Wilpattu was completely off limits. The separatists would get in and close off the park or, you know, kill some of the rangers, the wardens and all of that. So I did have excursions into the national parks, but not a lot, and the situation was quite tense growing up security-wise. So we couldn't really see a lot of the country.

Toby Jermyn: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned now Wilpattu in the north was completely off limits. I mean, it's only been open I think now 15 years or so, isn't it? Maybe a bit longer.

Riaz Cader: It opened in 2010. There was a brief ceasefire about 2001–2002. So I was almost 17–18 years old when I went into Wilpattu for the first time, but then it—I mean, it properly opened up after the war ended in 2010. And I mean, the sightings when it opened were—the animals were quite scarce and shy and taking off at the sound of a vehicle. And I mean, it's come a long way in the last 15 years.

Toby Jermyn: Let me go—let's go back and talk about the leopards. Have you noticed leopards becoming more habituated or confident over time as they, you know, decide to relax?

Riaz Cader: Absolutely. I mean, if you look at the story of Wilpattu for example, like right now you have quite a few leopards who just completely ignore the vehicles and walk through, and you're sort of backtracking the vehicle to give them space. You know, in Yala, you've got a big male leopard called Lucas who's absolutely unperturbed and will sleep under the vehicle sometimes, around it, and, you know, causes his own chaos. And in Horton Plains as well. Now you've got maybe the third generation of leopards that are, you know, getting used to vehicles and all that, but it's quite a small park. So, yeah, it's happening. I wish it happens in more national parks, but it's definitely happening.

Toby Jermyn: It's a real success story, I think, for Sri Lanka, especially after the troubles that you had at the turn of the millennium as well. Just to reassure people, everything is fine at the moment. There's no issues with separatists. There's no political unrest. It's a very peaceful country. Very, very lovely people. A less manic energy than you might expect if you compare it to your neighbor in India. I found Sri Lanka to be much more relaxed.

Riaz Cader: Yeah, it's a lot more chilled out. It's not as bustling and chaotic, and I mean the people will give you a little bit more space. And I mean you just look at cricket—like in India, like a cricketer can't walk on the street, they'll just get swamped. In Sri Lanka, they can just do their own thing, and the odd person may take a selfie or whatever, but, you know, you can get by.

Toby Jermyn: There we go. So if you're an international cricketer, I would suggest going to Sri Lanka over India every day. There we go. Top tip. Okay, let me move on to your second image, which is fantastic. I'm glad we touched on the fact there's amazing wildlife offshore as well. So, please, please describe this image to the viewers and listeners.

Riaz Cader: So, this image is of a striped dolphin leaping up very high out of the water. I mean, must have been 10 ft in the air or something like that. It's ridiculously high. I have never ever seen a dolphin jump that high. This was in Kalpitiya, which is in the northwest part of Sri Lanka, and it's an area known for large pods of spinner dolphins. I mean super pods. Early mornings you get about 1,000 to 2,000-plus individuals. But on this particular day, we were looking for whales further out, and then we came across a pod of striped dolphins, which you don't often see. And I've tried really, really hard with a lot of failures in terms of capturing, you know, dolphins when they leap up and they sort of take off, just to capture that moment. I found it very difficult to do, and then I realized the trick is you have to sort of get to the front of the boat. And quite often you're with big 100 to 400 lenses or, you know, you're trying to shoot at 400. But with dolphins in particular, I use a 70–200 mm on this particular image. So I was shooting at 70, and then what I do is I'm at the front of the boat, and I'm observing the movements of these dolphins under the water, and then when they're about to take off, I just make sure that my settings are sufficient to freeze the action, because I mean, the lighting and all that's pretty good out at sea during the morning hours. And for my luck, this dolphin just took off right in front of the boat. And I just—

Toby Jermyn: —and you got it.

Riaz Cader: I clicked blindly, hoping that something may have come out, and there were about five, six pictures in the frame, and the one that I wanted the most was this one, which came out perfectly. So yeah, I was amazed. And people have actually asked me, "Oh, did you Photoshop that dolphin and put it in there?" I'm like, "No, that's pretty much how I took it."

Toby Jermyn: Yeah, straight out of camera. It's really lovely. Tell me about the behavior. So this is a striped dolphin. So the spinner dolphins, obviously by their very name, we know what they do. They jump out of the water and they make two or three spins before going in. I don't know anything about striped dolphins.

Riaz Cader: I don't know too much about them either cuz they aren't seen that often, but they jump out like what you'd see with the bottlenose dolphins and even the spinner dolphins while they're moving. But I'm not sure what the exact behavior was, but I mean they were leaping around a little bit, but this individual just took off.

Toby Jermyn: Yeah. Okay. Do you know why it's doing it? Because it can. That's why it's doing it.

Riaz Cader: Yeah. Yeah. It's probably a young animal that had a lot of energy and just felt like stretching itself.

Toby Jermyn: It's a really stunning image because normally, especially when we photograph like dolphins off the coast of South Africa, for example, everyone tries to get as low in the boat as possible, because ideally what you want is as the dolphin leaves the water, you need to have the horizon line below the dolphin so you've got clear separation from the sea. But what I really love about this is the trail of water arcing behind the dolphin as well. That really makes it. That's quite difficult to Photoshop in every single droplet. So that's why I think you can claim it's definitely authentic.

Riaz Cader: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I was doing the same thing. I was staying low down to just get normal dolphin jumping shots. And then when this thing took off, I just pretty much just went like that while, you know, pressing the shutter nonstop. And these were before mirrorless cameras came into existence, so I was pretty happy with the way it came out.

Toby Jermyn: I think it's a glorious photograph. Sri Lanka is known for the megafauna which come past Sri Lanka because you have several whale species which, I mean, obviously you have blue whales as well. When are the blue whales in residence?

Riaz Cader: The blue whales are resident I mean year-round. It's just the limiting nature of the monsoons that permit the boats to go out off the south coast, which is where Mirissa is, and then off the northwest coast off Kalpitiya, and then the season's sort of October, November, maybe September if you're lucky, to about mid to late April. And then on the east coast, you've got a season that's starting from about March through to August, September. So, you've pretty much got a 12-month marine mammal watching window, but separated by the monsoons.

Toby Jermyn: Actually, when I was there, that's one of the reasons we have to come back, because the two days that we had to go out, the weather was foul, so we never managed to get out to go see it. But anyway, any excuse to come back. Okay. What we're going to do, Riaz, we're going to take a quick break, and then when we come back, we're going to talk about your third image. But before I go, if you haven't done so already, make sure you subscribe to the channel, give us a like, let us know in the comments if you've been to Sri Lanka, if Sri Lanka is now on your list. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in a second.

Welcome back to the second part of the Pangolin Podcast with my guest today, Riaz Cader, all the way from Sri Lanka. Riaz, let's move on to your third image, shall we? Now, this is an animal that people probably wouldn't expect to see in Sri Lanka. Tell us about this image.

Riaz Cader: This image is of a sloth bear having a very close-up encounter with the safari jeep I'm at. A lot of people wouldn't expect to see bears in Sri Lanka, but we have the sloth bear, which is found in India and in Sri Lanka. And it's one of the species that's quite difficult to see, more so than a leopard. But I went through a period of time where I've sort of upgraded my gear, and I was really, really struggling to get a good sloth bear image. And I'd line it up and it'll move in the other direction, or, you know, I'd get the perfect shot framed, and then there'll be another jeep or something coming in, blocking my shot. So I'd had like tons of misses. I know quite a few friends were laughing at me about it and all of that. And this particular bear is still alive. He's much older now. This was taken about 10, 11 years ago, and it's a male bear that's got a bit of a limp, and it's quite a habituated animal. And it was feeding by the side of the road, very close, right next to the vehicle. And then it lifted its snout, and it was looking right at me, and I clicked a few pictures and I realized like, again, this was on the 70–200. So I always have a setup where I've got a 70–200 and a 24–105 for, you know, close-up encounters, and a 400 2.8 with teleconverters for anything much further away, cuz otherwise you keep missing opportunities. So this particular bear just reared his head and he was looking basically right at me. But their vision is really poor, so I still don't think he recognized that he was so close to the vehicle or anything like that. I mean, I was really concentrating on getting the face and the paws in, and if you're in the moment, you're taking a species you've struggled with for a long time. And, you know, that was sort of direct eye contact, and then I realized, hang on, this guy's less than a few feet from me, you know? So I just took my eye off, and it was only then that he realized that he's so close to the jeep and so close to me, and then moved off. But yeah, absolutely phenomenal encounter, and I think it looks really nice as a black-and-white image rather than a colored image, because I mean, the bear is black, and it takes out the distractions, and it brings out the eye contact and all that quite nicely.

Toby Jermyn: Yeah, I absolutely agree, and it accentuates the claws as well, cuz they are formidable claws.

Riaz Cader: Absolutely. I mean, these are dangerous predators. These are not animals you mess around with. You go in on foot, you walk around, you see some elephants even close up. 80–90% of the time you can do something and, you know, get out of the situation or chase it off or, you know, call its bluff. With a leopard, 99.9% of the time out of 100 you should be able to show it off, provided you don't panic or crouch down or anything like that. But with a sloth bear, it's 50/50. So there's a 50% chance it's going to go at you, or a 50% chance it's just going to like bolt and go off in the opposite direction. So it's mauled a lot of poachers who have gone into the forest. They've mauled forest guards, rangers. So yeah, they aren't animals to be taken lightly by any means.

Toby Jermyn: You mentioned that there are issues surrounding wildlife poaching, as there are around, you know, most national parks around the world. Is that something that is frequently happening? I noticed obviously with the elephants, and we'll talk about elephants later on, the majority of elephants in Sri Lanka don't have tusks. So are they not poaching them? What are the poachers coming for in the national parks?

Riaz Cader: Yeah. So most of the poachers are, I mean, coming into the fringes of the national park around the borders where it's quite away from the roads where the safari jeeps go on. They are primarily targeting game. So spotted deer, sambar, wild boar for bushmeat. But that being said, if they stumble upon a sloth bear or a leopard or an elephant or anything like that, then, you know, they can get shot and killed. It does happen, but it's not the norm.

Toby Jermyn: Okay. And tell me about—going back to your wildlife journey as well. We mentioned previously that you were working as more a generalist guide and organizer of tours around Sri Lanka. When did that morph into wildlife photography? There's quite an active wildlife photography community in Sri Lanka, isn't there?

Riaz Cader: Absolutely. There's—I mean, there's a few thousand really good photographers now with all the new technology and the gear and everything like that. Um, so for me, from the time I was about 10, 12, 13 years old, I knew I wanted to get into photography and I started off on sort of really manual film cameras, but it didn't last for too long. I was in university in Australia, studied accounting, finance, worked in the finance sector for about two years and I just found it a bit dull. I wasn't really getting the lifestyle that I wanted. And then the war ended in Sri Lanka and then I thought, you know, there's opportunities to sort of try and go back home and make something out of it. And then I was looking for jobs in the corporate sector when I joined a travel company that specializes in wildlife and birding tours and all of that. And yeah, I joined in as an intern looking for other jobs in the corporate sector, hoping that at least I can use my weekends for my photography. And then, yeah, I loved it so much I got into it, and then I've been in wildlife, nature-based, luxury travel since 2010. And then I, you know, kept upgrading my gear, the lenses, the cameras, as everyone does—you just get caught hook, line, and sinker, and then every bit of your savings goes towards it. And then through work, through various projects that I've handled, I've had the opportunity to sort of travel around the country and get some incredible images along the way.

Toby Jermyn: Are you still able to—I mean, obviously I mentioned you've got a successful safari business, you've got a young family—are you managing to get any time for yourself to get out there and take photographs still, or are you now deskbound?

Riaz Cader: Uh, no, no, we still go. Maybe not as much as what I used to do, but like my wife, Nidal, is fantastic that way, because she's also very supportive and she wants to immerse the kids to be around what we're doing. So just because there's a baby, it's not a hurdle to go into a national park. So our seven-month baby's gone twice to Kumana already, which is an eight-hour drive away from Colombo. And when I showed you the picture of that leopard cub, my other daughter was about a year old then, and she was in the jeep. And so she was quite lucky for the first couple of years. I mean, we had some fantastic leopard encounters every time she was with us. So number two is yet to deliver, but yeah, at least we're getting her involved in the process.

Toby Jermyn: There we go. I mean, I hope this isn't some sort of elaborate baiting scheme as well. You sort of take a small child into the national park, and then the leopards are like, "Hang on a second, there's something new here."

Riaz Cader: Absolutely not.

Toby Jermyn: Just checking. Just want to make sure. Okay, no problem. Okay, we're going to move on to your fourth image now. Describe this image to us and tell us what's happening and how you got this shot.

Riaz Cader: So this image is of a bull Asian elephant breaching an electric fence to get across from the forest into some of the areas where there's cultivations, and there was a garbage dump where they were sort of, you know, feeding on scraps of waste. So it's taken at the moment where the elephant's foot is on the fence and is at the point of impact. It's the plight of the Asian elephant in the sort of Asian region. It's a species that cannot just be confined to forests. They are coming out of the forests. They are very, very intelligent, so they keep learning how to navigate through man-made boundaries. So, you put up electric fences. They're successful for a while, but then they figure out that most of the time it's not going to kill them. This particular animal was used to taking the hit from the electric shock and then gets over the fence quite effortlessly. And then another three, four bull elephants followed. But unfortunately, what does happen is also people deliberately short-circuit the electric fences, and then there's elephants getting electrocuted as well. And in Sri Lanka, over half of elephants live outside protected areas. So they are around forested patches and man-made lakes that border villages and paddy fields and other sort of cultivations. So managing the conflict between humans and elephants and looking at coexistence is one of the biggest socioeconomic issues in the country at the moment.

Toby Jermyn: Yeah, this is always going to be a problem, isn't it? With the encroachment of human populations on wildlife areas and wildlife leaving protected areas as well in search of food, in search of space, it's always going to be a conflict. What were you doing when you took this photograph? How did you get to be in this situation to witness it?

Riaz Cader: So, we knew of a spot where they come quite often to break the fence, cuz they repair it and then it just keeps—they keep breaking it. So, we were by that for a few hours, and this was with a local camera crew that were filming a human-elephant conflict story at the time. So, the cameraman was in the jeep, you know, with a tripod, and I managed to keep a safe distance and was out of the jeep just to get myself a lower angle and, you know, knowing I had protection around me in case of any issues. So, we're just waiting for the moment we saw it. It just happened so quickly. I mean, within about 30 seconds, it came up from the edge of the stream and within a couple of seconds, the fence was broken. It was on the other side. So, I mean, they're big animals, but they're deceptively fast.

Toby Jermyn: Yeah. You mentioned this was working on a film. Now, you've done quite a lot of location scouting and then assisting with film work. We've spoken in the past where you said, "Well, I'm filming for a couple of months at the moment." What was the most recent film you worked on?

Riaz Cader: The industry has been a little bit quiet now. So the last film I worked on was Survival of the Beast with a presenter called Max. They did filming of sloth bears and leopards of Wilpattu and Kumana. It was also sort of made for kids, which shows different adaptations that these animals have to survive in the wild, and then the presenter would mimic it and then go and find the leopard or the bear doing the same sort of thing in the wild. So yeah, fun.

Toby Jermyn: Yeah. The lighter side of wildlife. Why not? I love the fact that you're getting your kids into wildlife from a young age, and as this program is as well. Is that prevalent in Sri Lanka? There's a lot of communities around the world who are very anti-nature. Nature represents danger. It represents something out there. What's the culture like in Sri Lanka as regards wildlife?

Riaz Cader: It's quite good. I mean, the people who live around areas affected by elephants and other wildlife are—I mean, they're incredibly patient and resilient people. They've grown up with elephants coming into their paddy fields and plantations, and they've managed to work around it to the greatest degree without harming the animals. But I guess a lot of that is also due to the majority of the country being a Buddhist country, where the philosophy is that you don't, you know, harm any animals and you have that respect for life. So I think that plays a certain part. But I think over the years, unfortunately, you're seeing that deteriorate, because I mean, economically, people are also finding it a lot harder over the years, and they can't really afford a big hit taken by an elephant or a group of wild boar coming and raiding their farms. So you are getting more incidents where elephants and other animals are getting shot at and chased out, sometimes fatally. But I think overall, if you look at it compared to, you know, what would happen in Europe or in parts of America or whatever, they would just instantly go out there and shoot an animal. It's significantly better. People are far more patient and tolerant, and by law, they can't shoot an elephant or wild animal as well.

Toby Jermyn: They are well, very protected animals, obviously, all the way through. You've got to be out of the parks. Sunrise to sunset is generally the rule in Sri Lanka. But we did a couple of evenings in, I suppose we would describe them as buffer zones in and around Wilpattu, looking for the nocturnal species as well, which was great fun.

Riaz Cader: Yeah, absolutely. So, in the national parks or the protected areas, you can only enter from sunrise to sunset. It's just to ensure that the lights aren't switched on in the park, you know, animals are not getting run over, and it's just to have the same rules for everybody. But there are certain, you know, man-made lakes and water holes, and quite often the chain of farmland and like the scrub jungle around it, that's incredibly good for animals like gray slender loris, the fishing cats by the edge of the water. Then you have the jungle cats hunting rodents. If you're lucky, you may see a rusty spotted cat, you know, brown fish owl, barn owls. Yeah, you get a good variety of animals after dark as well.

Toby Jermyn: We haven't actually talked about the bird species as well in Sri Lanka, because it's extraordinary birding. I mean, it's a real birding hotspot. How many species of birds do you have in Sri Lanka?

Riaz Cader: So, yeah, we have about 450-plus, including resident species, migrants, and rare vagrants. So we've got 35 island endemics.

Toby Jermyn: And is there any species in Sri Lanka that is your bogey species, the one you haven't seen and photographed yet that you keep going back for?

Riaz Cader: If you look at the birds, the endemics, I've got pictures of the Sri Lanka scaly thrush, but not a good one as yet. I've kept missing it or, you know, it moves away, or I've seen it in really low light. So that's on my radar. And I guess the other animal that's been elusive to me is the Eurasian otter, which we have in Sri Lanka as well. Can be seen on the night drives, can be seen in Horton Plains, but yeah, just working on it still. Yeah, I mean, if you asked me this question a year ago, I would have said the rusty spotted cat. That's the world's smallest wild cat. It's less than 1 kilo. And I've seen it a few times, but always in the dark. But last January, I was guiding four American guests in Wilpattu, and at the breakfast area where you sort of take—you know, you stop, you can get off and use the toilets and you have a sort of a bush breakfast. And one of the jeeps came and said, "Oh, there's a small cat on a tree." And two or three other jeeps were talking about leopards. I'm like, "Look, guys, you got to get in. It could be a fishing cat on a tree, but I have a feeling this could be a rusty spotted cat." And a little tiny rusty spotted cat was on an open branch, sunning itself on a quite a cool January morning, which is amazing. You just don't see it like that.

Toby Jermyn: That's a very cool sighting indeed. Okay, brilliant. We are going to take another break, and then when we come back, we are going to reveal the image that was taken by another photographer that you admire, that maybe you wish you'd taken yourself. But before I do that, just a gentle reminder to sign up to our world-famous Friday Focus newsletter, which goes out, as the name would suggest, every Friday, full of photo tips, new video announcements whenever we release a new episode of Meet the Pro, plus all sorts of information about wildlife photography. So, we'll put a link in the description. There'll be a QR code on your screen, which you can scan if you're watching on TV. But we're going to take a little break now, and when we come back, we will reveal the guest image by Riaz. So, see you in a second.

Welcome back to the final part of The Pangolin Podcast with my guest today, Sri Lankan wildlife photographer and tour operator, Riaz Cader. This is the part of the show where we've invited Riaz to share an image taken by another wildlife photographer that he admires and maybe he wishes he had taken himself. So, Riaz, who took this photograph and why did you choose it? Well, tell us about the photograph first of all.

Riaz Cader: Yeah. So, this is taken by one of the world's top wildlife photographers, Andy Rouse. And he's a photographer I learned a lot from and admire, I think from the age I was about 10 or 12 years old. So, this image is of a mother tigress with its two cubs just cooling off on a hot summer day in, I think, in Ranthambore Tiger Reserve in India.

Toby Jermyn: It's a glorious image, and we haven't touched on the fact that obviously you are a Sri Lankan, you know, born and bred—that's your home turf. But you also do quite a lot of safaris in India as well, don't you?

Riaz Cader: Yeah, I mean, India is just, you know, the neighboring destination. It's got fantastic wildlife, and we have some of our foreign guests who want to go into India and do extensions. Then we have Sri Lankans who want to go over and have a look at the tigers or lions or the other wildlife. So because we're so close by, we do operate to India as well, and I lead tours as and when required. And yeah, what I really like about this image is it's just—the tiger is known as a very solitary sort of an animal, a predator, but this shows that intimate side of it. It's a mother who's looking after her two cubs, and you've just got this beautiful moment where the mother's just relaxing in the water and the two cubs are behaving well. You know, one's looking to the side, one's looking towards the camera, and the mother's staring directly at the camera. It's just got a beautiful composition in terms of how it's set up.

Toby Jermyn: It really is. We talk on this show—we talk about the punctum, which is the unexpected part of the image that really strikes home for you. The punctum for me is the way the middle cub, its side profile fits perfectly into the outline of the cub on the right.

Riaz Cader: Yeah. If you look at the nose, you know, the way the face, the mouth—there's a perfect symmetry in terms of, you know, that gap fitting into the shape of the stranger cub's sort of body and face and all of that.

Toby Jermyn: It's like a classic portrait, isn't it, of a scene that, you know, you can imagine a classic painter would paint of different people looking in different directions with different expressions. Have you photographed with Andy? Do you know him personally?

Riaz Cader: No, I haven't photographed with him. I'd like to, but yeah, no, I haven't.

Toby Jermyn: Well, there we go. What we'll do is we'll get him on the show, and when I've got him on the show, I will invite him to go and visit you in Sri Lanka to come and photograph. I personally—I've never seen a tiger. I've yet to. We do trips to India to see tigers, but that's on my list when I get time as well. Maybe you and I should go and photograph some tigers together. So Riaz, I want to thank you very much for making time in your schedule to join me on the podcast today. For those of you interested in learning more about Sri Lanka, I did write quite a lengthy blog post about my travels and the trip that Riaz organized for me. So I'm going to leave a link in the description to that. But before I go, I have to ask Riaz the question that all the guests get asked: If you were to be able to choose where your humble dwelling is going to be, where you're going to be living in perpetuity, where these images are going to be hanging on the wall, where in the world is your humble dwelling going to be?

Riaz Cader: Yeah, interesting question. I mean, while I would like to go and photograph wildlife from all parts of the world, I can't see myself leaving Sri Lanka. It's too nice a country to leave. So I would think the southeast part of the country near Kumana, Arugam Bay, that area is absolutely where I would love to be. You've got the jungle with the elephants and all that around you. You've got surfing beaches close by. You've got rocky outcrops and areas you can go into and see animals, including leopards outside protected areas if you're lucky. So, it's a stunning area that, you know, I would pick as my humble dwelling if I could.

Toby Jermyn: You don't want something colder? You don't fancy an Antarctica or something like that to get out of the heat or anything?

Riaz Cader: Oh, God, no. I mean, I went to the UK in March and I struggled, so I'm not going to last in Antarctica. Maybe I will put up with it just to see, you know, see what I can photograph in terms of penguins and the wildlife. But yeah, I'm not a cold weather person by any means.

Toby Jermyn: Not a cold weather person. Riaz, it's been really, really good to see you, and thank you so much for reaching out during COVID. It was a lovely way to connect. I'm glad we did. It was lovely spending time with you and your wife in Colombo as well, and I look forward to returning at some time soon.

Riaz Cader: Thank you so much for having me, Toby. And yeah, it's been a pleasure chatting, networking, traveling. Let's stay in touch and hope to, you know, see each other maybe in Africa next time around.

Toby Jermyn: Thank you for joining me on another episode of The Pangolin Podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. As always, I'd love to hear your comments and feedback, so please leave them in the comments down below. If you're an audio listener, we'd love it if you could give us a star rating or a quick review, too. And if you don't want to miss the next episode or any of our other wildlife photography videos, make sure you subscribe to the channel. Finally, don't forget to sign up to the Pangolin Photo Safaris Friday Focus newsletter. You can do that by heading over to pangolinphoto.com, or you can scan the QR code on your screen now. I very much look forward to seeing you on a Pangolin Photo Safari soon. And all that's left for me to say is that The Pangolin Podcast was hosted by me, Toby Jermyn, and produced and edited by Bella Falk. Thank you.