Kalyan Varma

Kalyan Varma is a wildlife photographer and filmmaker from Bangalore, India who has won awards. He freelances with the BBC Natural History and National Geographic Channel (India), works with grassroots NGO's to highlight environmental issues in India, and is an active evangelist of Free Software and Creative Commons. He is an expert on application security and cryptography.

Early career
Varma completed his degree in Mechanical Engineering from the PES Institute of Technology. While in college he trained at Exocore Consulting, then joined Yahoo Asia, where he worked as an application security engineer. He won the Yahoo Superstar award in 2003. In 2004, he left Yahoo to pursue his interest in wildlife, photography and conservation.

Current work
Varma works on projects for the BBC Natural History Unit, National Geographic Channel and Icon Films as their natural history cameraman and photographer. He has been involved with many BBC Natural world programs. He is also a BBC Earth Explorer. He worked on the 2011 documentary series, 'The Secrets of Wild India' for National Geographic.

He is actively involved with many wildlife NGOs and conservation bodies in India, such as the Nature Conservation Foundation and VGKK. He is a founding member of India Nature Watch. He has been featured in the book 'Connect the dots' as one of the top non-MBA entrepreneurs in India. In 2011, he was one of the INK fellows

Free and open source software
Varma is active in the Linux and free and open-source software community in India, and brings technology benefits to wildlife conservation projects. In 2008, he was invited to deliver the closing keynote at FOSS.IN.

He regularly gives lectures and workshops on digital photography and wildlife photography.

Awards

 * One of the ''BBC Wildlife photographer of the year winners, 2013
 * Winner, Sanctuary Wildlife Photographer of the Year award, 2005.
 * Secrets of Wild India won Best TV series at the International Wildlife Film Festival, Missoula