Nayan Khanolkar’s photograph The alley cat won the Urban Wildlife category of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016. He photographed the leopard in Aarey Milk Colony, Mumbai, using a camera trap after waiting four months for the right image.
What the award-winning photograph shows
The image captures a leopard moving quietly through an alley in Aarey Milk Colony, a place where people and wildlife share space. The Natural History Museum in London, which runs Wildlife Photographer of the Year, records Khanolkar as the photographer and Aarey Milk Colony, Mumbai, as the location in its official award entry.
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The museum describes how Khanolkar positioned his camera trap so a passing cat would not dominate the frame. After four months, he captured the leopard moving through the alley. The photograph’s title, The alley cat, makes the familiar urban setting part of the image’s meaning.
How Khanolkar captured the image
Khanolkar used a camera-trap setup, leaving the equipment in place to photograph an animal when it passed. The museum’s entry lists the following equipment and settings for this particular 2016 photograph:
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- Nikon D7000 camera with an 18–105mm f/3.5–5.6 lens, set to 21mm
- Shutter speed of 1/20 second at f/7.1
- Three Nikon flashes
- Trailmaster infrared triggers and custom-made housing
These details document Khanolkar’s historical setup for this image; they are not a current equipment recommendation. The listing does not establish that a consumer trail camera would produce an equivalent photograph.
Why the photograph is about coexistence
Khanolkar’s aim was to document leopards in a human-dominated landscape. In a first-person account for WWF, he says he began documenting Aarey after hearing that conflict was rising, amid disagreement over whether leopards should be protected or relocated. He frames the broader challenge this way: “As the distance between cities and forests disappears, bringing people and wild animals into closer proximity, I think it’s our turn to adapt.”
The Natural History Museum’s feature on the image notes that Warli people in the Mumbai suburb regard leopards as accepted neighbors and that leopards also appear in traditional paintings in their homes. That is the museum’s account of this community; it should not be taken to represent every Mumbai resident’s experience. The feature also quotes Khanolkar saying, “They are beautiful creatures and should be respected and protected.”
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The Indian Express reported in 2016 that the competition received 50,000 entries from 90 countries. That entry count is contemporaneous reporting by the newspaper; the Natural History Museum’s award entry confirms the category and result but does not give an entry total.
In his WWF account published in 2022, Khanolkar described more than 50 leopards and almost 90,000 people living near the park. Those figures belong to that account and are not current population estimates.
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