Capturing life through the lens
I'm Shanu Rana — a nature and wildlife photographer, traveler and filmmaker.
It started simply: early walks, a camera, and the slow realisation that the world looks different when you wait for it. The roe deer that cross the hay fields at exactly the wrong light — until one morning it's exactly the right light. The fog that swallows the river and gives it back, one tree at a time.
Home is the Rhine valley in Germany — most of my wildlife work happens within cycling distance of my front door, around the lakes and fields of Hessen, with a Sony A7C and a long lens. The deer, the swans, the kestrels and the dewdrops on this site all live in that ordinary, extraordinary neighbourhood.
When I'm not waiting in the fog, I'm in the mountains — climbing via ferratas in the Karwendel, hiking above Chamonix and Châtel, standing on Alpine summits at sunset. And my roots reach further still, to the Himalayan foothills of India. Along the way I film what I see and share it on my YouTube channel — small, honest films about wild places and the quiet moments in between.
And then there is my other craft: by profession I work in statistical programming for clinical research. I build and validate the data and analyses behind clinical trials — transforming raw study data into the datasets, tables and figures that regulators and researchers rely on, programming in SAS and R to global industry standards, and working alongside biostatisticians on therapies that matter, including cancer research. It is exacting work: every number has to be right, every step reproducible, because real decisions about real patients depend on it.
People sometimes ask how that fits with the fog and the deer. Honestly? They are the same discipline wearing different clothes. Both start with something raw and untidy — a study database, a grey November morning — and both demand structure, patience and an obsessive eye for detail before they give you something true. Programming taught me the rigour I bring to composing a frame; the wild taught me the calm I bring to a deadline. Neither is a hobby version of the other — they stand on their own, and each makes me better at the one I'm not currently doing. The professional side of the story lives on LinkedIn; the rest of it is this website.
This website is my field journal: the photographs, the films and the journeys behind them. Thank you for stopping by — and if something here makes you want to get up early and go outside, it has done its job.
