Today in our Meet The Mentor series let us introduce you to Dinesh Maneer a passionate photographer from Bengaluru, India. Dinesh is a mentor for our ‘Sky, Earth & Water – Landscape Photography Workshop – Gokarna’. His 
photographs are mainly focused on landscapes, portraits and culture of his home state Karnataka. By profession he is a mechanical engineer but spends his most of the free time traveling through all over Karnataka documenting unknown fading cultures and unseen landscapes . His photos and articles have appeared in many group exhibitions, magazines such as National Geographic, online magazines and leading national and local newspapers. He also likes to wander in Himalayas which he feels the nature here is more spiritual and philosophical . Dinesh is always thankful to his mentors and little family of parents, wife and his little daughter for the inspiration in this photography journey.
Dinesh is also working on many longtime projects which are focused on the nature and traditions of his state Karnataka . He has given number of seminars on folk cultures and traditions of Karnataka and have conducted many photography workshops. For these projects Dinesh crisscrosses his home state of Karnataka to photograph the vibrant landscapes of coastal areas, misty mountains and the indigenous people and traditions that are fast becoming a thing of past.
We asked Dinesh to help us understand his photography process, motivations and this is what he has to say :
Well, it is tough to give self introductions as self perception changes over time. But here is a try which I think may stay long in my head. I started right from pictures of a plain sunset which was my early understanding of beautiful nature. I often lost in the colors it produced which made me emotive and lost in thoughts. Once in awhile painting using water colors helped me to imagine, reproduce the colors and the little connections between the nature’s elements such as sky, water, earth and natures creatures.
As I grew I started realizing that man is the most brilliant element of nature that is ever produced (being produced) by nature .I started seeing relations between man and the nature and soon man within the nature. Now I know when you freeze nature in a 2-dimension space it consists of minimum one human being that is the one who captured the picture.
So every nature or landscape picture cannot be a picture without a human.
Now I am on a journey to explore the deep relations that are hidden within the nature be it weather, culture, tradition, people, destruction, emotions, colors, philosophy or just plain nature. And I know I need not travel distances to capture these. I need not paint my pictures always exotic and eye popping with dramatic colors! All I have to do is feel and observe!
“
Well versed with landscape, people and traditions of Karnataka, Dinesh mentors our Sky, Earth & Water – Landscape Photography Workshop – Gokarna. You can follow his work on his website: Dinesh Maneer