Cinematographer Santhana Krishnan started out in cinema as an assistant cameraman, working in Bollywood films like Goliyon Ki Rasleela Ram-Leela (2013) and Happy New Year (2014) early on in his career. Subsequently, he made his debut as an independent cinematographer with the Malayalam feature film Two Countries in 2015.

Since then, Krishnan has helmed the camera department in movies across all major film industries. Significant among these are the Bollywood action thriller Baaghi 2 (2018), the bilingual political thriller NOTA (2018) and Dhruva Natchathiram (2018), Mardaani 2 (2019) and Baaghi 3 (2020).