Sometimes the sun is kind and puts itself right where you’d put a flash.
Tag Archives: Peru 2015
Peru 2015 – Monkey
Peru 2015 – Egret
Peru 2015 – Marmoset
I hesitate sharing this one because, objectively, it’s not very good. However, the situation was this …
I was in a skiff on the side of a river tributary. The guide was pointing into the trees and saying “monkey”. All we could see was movement, but it was extremely dark, as the sun was setting, and the monkeys were about three trees in, under the canopy. I had to shoot “wide open” to maximize the light gathering of the lens, at the cost of focus ability. Also, it was so dark, the the ISO was set extremely high (creating the noise).
So I was bouncing up and down, moving left to right, aiming and trying to focus in the dark on little monkeys that were each smaller than my hands … and I still got a shot better than the bigfoot hunters.
Peru 2015 – Throwback Thursday
In the Amazon, there is a high- and a low-water season. In the low water season, the water flow is much slower and it comes from much nearer than the mountain highlands. This means that the water where we were is poorly oxygenated, so the fish swim to the surface to get the oxygen they need. This results in rivers of fish within rivers of mud. A cornucopia of fish, if you will.
Peru 2015 – Caiman
Peru 2015 – Bug
Peru 2015 – Sunrise
Peru 2015 – Black-capped Squirrel Monkey
Cormorant
Peru 2015 – Cicada
For as long as I remember, I wanted to see a cicada coming out of its shell. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to watch one climbing a tree, but had to leave before I could get any shots. On the one night hike in Peru, at the very end, my brother point this little guy out. I had about two minutes to get the light set up correctly, using minimal equipment, while there was significant pressure to end the hike and get back in the boats. On one hand, I think I got a great shot giving the conditions. On the other, it was one more example of why large groups and I don’t really work out very well.
Peru 2015 – Bird
Peru 2015 – Moon
Peru 2015 – Stork
Peru 2015 – Caiman
Peru 2015 – Kingfisher
Peru 2015 – Turtles
Peru 2015 – Bird
I think this might be a caracara. One of the difficult things with doing this kind of photography is that, because of the movement of the boat, you have to shoot at a high shutter speed. Since the animals are moving, you need a small aperture to increase the depth of field. This helps keep it in focus if it moves too quickly as you focus. However, to shoot at high speed and small aperture, you have to boost the ISO level to where it’s unacceptably sharp … or deliberately underexpose. Underexposing works well, but when you bring it back up to being bright enough to see things, the colours are off.
So you switch to black and white.
Peru 2015 – Frog
As the trip was largely boat-based, going from the big boat where we slept to little skiffs for excursions, and back, the opportunity to see animals on land was rare. So I was lucky to finally see one of the frogs with transparent stomach skin. I wish I’d been able to move it into a better position, but it hopped away really quickly and I only had the time for two shots.
Peru 2015 – Kingfisher
There were a great many kingfishers in Peru, and I couldn’t keep all the names straight. Modern photo technology is good enough to track a flying bird, but kingfishers fly too fast and in too dark of light to get a really good shot of one of them in the air, so most of what I got were of them perched.