Sometimes the sun is kind and puts itself right where you’d put a flash.
Tag Archives: Peru 2015
Peru 2015 – Monkey
Mmmm – pods
Peru 2015 – Egret
This is the most common bird on the amazon. So common, in fact, that you kinda stop shooting them. Then you notice a perfect pose in the perfect light and remember that they’re actually kinda neat.
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
I guess when you eat dirty fish your entire life, mud doesn’t taste quite so bad.
Peru 2015 – Bug
When you get six of these bugs together, you can make an apple.
Peru 2015 – Sunrise
On land, where you can use a tripod, you can use techniques like HDR to make everything look nicely exposed. When you’re shooting from a skiff, you have to settle for just making things look pretty.
Peru 2015 – Black-capped Squirrel Monkey
Gotta keep hold of your tail. Never know what’s going to come to get it in the jungle.
Cormorant
It’s interesting how cormorants queue up and then fly off in order when scared. I’m sure it’s nice from a social perspective, but it seems maladaptive from an evolutionary perspective.
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
In a zoo scenario, this photo would not be acceptable because of the branch that cuts across the beak. However, in the wild, you have to make due with what you get.
Peru 2015 – Moon
Turns out they have the same moon in Peru.
Peru 2015 – Stork
And then Evolution took a step back and thought “Yep. This is exactly what I was going for.”
Peru 2015 – Caiman
The caimans come out at night, mostly. This was early evening, so this one must have been an early riser.
Peru 2015 – Kingfisher
One of the guides mentioned that most kingfishers go blind because they hit the water with such force, over and over again, that they damage their eyes over time.
I have not yet found a ornithoptimologist to verify this fact.
Peru 2015 – Turtles
This photo was taken at a manatee rescue center. As you can (hopefully) tell, these are not actually manatees. They do other work there too … like turtle counting.
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.