From climbing roughly 300 stairs to reach India Gate’s top to coming down the slippery 130 steps of Jama Masjid’s minarets in Delhi, he has covered miles to make memories that are milestones for any photographer. But this is no ordinary lensman as he is armed with a camera in his front pocket and a gun in the rear. Meet Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of the 2009 batch, Shivendra Kant Tewari. Currently serving as Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to Lieutenant Governor (LG) of Delhi, his precision in shooting with both is admirable!
One look at the rare photograph of a snow leopard aka The Grey Ghost of the Mountains in the same frame as its kill, and it becomes impossible to believe that the man behind the lens has never received a full-time professional training. “It was in college when I first borrowed my maasi’s hotshot film camera to take some photos on a college tour, and became a photographer for my group of friends,” recalls Tewari, who has today travelled close to 45 countries and shot thousands of intriguing photos covering the length and breadth of India including the Indian village, which is on the highest altitude close to the Indo-China border as well as the Indira Point that marks the southernmost spot of Indian territory.
“But there are still a lot of places left. Like I’m yet to explore the Northeast India and that is on the top of my list now,” he says, as his memories flashback to the time when he invested a priced possession. “In 1998, I first picked up a Canon camera from Jackson Heights in New York (US) when I was heading the security of our former President KR Narayanan. Then in 2003, I told a friend travelling to Hong Kong to please bring me Sony’s digital camera. After that there was no stopping as I didn’t have to wait for the negatives to get developed to see the end result of what I had clicked,” recounts Tewari, whose passion for photography grew just like in his rank on the profession front. He would discuss his frames with official photographers on tours, who would happily guide him all along. But the turning point came with Covid-19 pandemic, when he got a chance to learn through online discussions and workshops.
{{/usCountry}}“But there are still a lot of places left. Like I’m yet to explore the Northeast India and that is on the top of my list now,” he says, as his memories flashback to the time when he invested a priced possession. “In 1998, I first picked up a Canon camera from Jackson Heights in New York (US) when I was heading the security of our former President KR Narayanan. Then in 2003, I told a friend travelling to Hong Kong to please bring me Sony’s digital camera. After that there was no stopping as I didn’t have to wait for the negatives to get developed to see the end result of what I had clicked,” recounts Tewari, whose passion for photography grew just like in his rank on the profession front. He would discuss his frames with official photographers on tours, who would happily guide him all along. But the turning point came with Covid-19 pandemic, when he got a chance to learn through online discussions and workshops.
{{/usCountry}}Though wildlife photography remains his favourite, his tryst with portraits of humans at the Maha Kumbh Mela, held in 2025, is noteworthy. From the all-attentive gaze of the tigers to the aesthetics of ascetics, he enraptures the onlookers with his catch and captures. And among his landscape shots, he points to the orange molten skies in one of the frames to explain, “This is from when I was posted in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It was here that I photographed the rarely visible Narcondam hornbill, and it got selected for a magazine... My photographs from the Indian Air Force Surya Kiran Aerobatic Team show were published in Nikon’s coffee table book.”
Yet, he has no plans to exhibit or publish his works anytime soon. Why? “It’s a lot of investment. May be after I retire I’ll think about it, but right now I could use the money to buy another lens.”
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