Anand Varma

Anand Varma has been drawn to natural history since he was a boy, exploring the streams and wooded lots near his home Atlanta, Georgia. In high school, he picked up his dad's old camera on a whim and found that he could use it to tell stories about his adventures.

During his first two years as a biology student at UC Berkeley, he spent most of his time and energy pursuing opportunities in research. Photography was little more than a hobby until a graduate student in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology on campus put him in contact with National Geographic photographer David Liittschwager. From his experience working as David's assistant, he realized that photography was the ideal tool to feed his curiosity about the natural world and share his discoveries with others.

After graduating with a degree in Integrative Biology, he has split his time between working on National Geographic projects and helping biologists communicate their research through photographs. He has worked on projects that study primate behavioral ecology, hummingbird biomechanics, amphibian disease ecology, and mangrove forests. Since 2006 he has assisted National Geographic photographers David Liittschwager, Chrisitan Ziegler, Tim Laman, and Joel Sartore on 13 articles for the magazine.