A Facebook friend recently posted about Zanzibar and it took me back nearly 20 years to when I visited the island. This was my first real wildlife trip. I had been traveling on the mainland of Tanzania for three weeks, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and then going on my very first safari. I ran out of film, of course, because that’s what you did on your first African safari before digital cameras. I remember buying some off-brand film from a local vendor in Stone Town in Zanzibar. The scan is bad (also about twenty years old) but I did what I could with the file to fix the strange color cast and grain and all that. As for the monkey, it’s an endangered Zanzibar red colobus monkey. They were quite habituated to people (one of the reasons they are endangered — along with the bigger problem of habitat loss). Nikon FM2 with Nikkor 85mm lens. No idea of the other camera settings.
Hummingbirds get some of the best names in nature. Like this here black-throated mango. This was one of the many hummingbirds that I was able to photograph at the Asa Wright Nature Center in the mountainous central region of Trinidad. Nikon D300 with Nikkor 200-400mm lens (at 240mm) ISO 500, f/10 at 1/250th of a second, two Nikon SB-900 flash units.
It’s rare that I post a shot where you can’t see the animal’s face. In this instance, however, I think it works. A mother bear and her cub loading up on veggies, getting ready for the coming hibernation. I like that the cub looks like a round ball of fur with those two little ears protruding from the top. This is another one from my trip a year ago to Lake Clark National Park in Alaska. Nikon D810 with Nikkor 70-200mm lens (at 105mm) ISO 800, f/5.6 at 1/1600th of a second.
Long-tailed macaques, also known as crab eating macaques, are fairly common monkeys in southeast Asia and they can often be spotted living amongst human populations. This guy looks to be out on some wild mountainside, but he was actually above a temple that sees quite a bit of daily foot traffic. He was calling across an open area to the macaques on the other side. Nikon D500 with Nikkor 200-400mm lens (at 200mm) ISO 800, f/4 at 1/640th of a second.
I met my first white squirrel a few winters back in Olney, Illinois. I actually met quite a few white squirrels that day, all living near the town center. Olney is one of several towns in the US and Canada claiming to be the “Home of the White Squirrel.” They are actually just a color morph of the common Eastern gray squirrel. Nikon D300 with Nikkor 200-400mm lens (at 400mm) ISO 800, f/4 at 1/125th of a second.
This rockhopper waddled right over to me as if he had a few questions before allowing me to photograph the colony. They certainly had the most attitude of the five species of penguin that I was fortunate to photograph in the Falkland Islands. This colony was on Saunders Island — the first of the four islands that I visited. Nikon D800 with Nikkor 17-35mm lens (at 17mm) ISO 800, f/5.6 at 1/400th of a second.
A pair of crested ducks take a moment to relax and preen themselves after a good swim. This was in the town harbor of Puerto Natales where we stopped for lunch on our way to Torres Del Paine in Chile. Of course, I didn’t really sit for lunch as there were many ducks and geese and other birds around which took precedent. Nikon D500 with Nikkor 200-400mm lens (at 200mm) ISO 100, f/4 at 1/640th of a second.
A rare shot with no animal present, but make no mistake, there were pumas hidden in the grass down by that lake. We got to this location at first light to search for a mother and her three cubs that had been spotted in the area the day before. It started to rain, and our tracker wasn’t quite sure of the pumas’ exact location so we had to stay put in our van until he came up with a plan of action. I couldn’t let all that great light go to waste, so I got out and took a bunch of landscape shots. In front of me was Lake Sarmiento and the typical scrub brush of Torres Del Paine called mata negra (black bush) and behind was a spectacular rainbow, pictured below. Top shot: Nikon D810 with Nikkor 17-35mm lens (at 17mm) ISO 200, f/18 at 1/3rd of a second. Bottom shot: Nikon D810 with Nikkor 17-35mm lens (at 17mm) ISO 200, f/18 at .5 seconds
Two coastal brown bears just taking it easy on a sandbar near Silver Salmon Creek in Lake Clark National Park, Alaska. I suppose I looked somewhat similar about twenty yards away face down on the ground with my camera.
Nikon D500 with Nikkor 200-400mm lens (at 290mm) ISO 640, f/4 at 1/1250th of a second
2018 saw a lot of everyday life circumstances getting in the way of my photography. Hopefully things will get back on track in 2019 and I can return to where I enjoy being most — in the wild. That said, the year did start strong. Karen and I took a “non-wildlife” trip to Belize, which ended up yielding a surprising amount of incidental wildlife, especially of the under water variety. Shortly after that, I travelled to the southern tip of South America for a week of puma tracking. Torres Del Paine National Park in Chile clearly ranks toward the top of the most spectacular wild places that I have ever visited. Unfortunately, the remainder of the year consisted of the birds in my backyard and a single trip with my father to view seals off the coast of Cape Cod. I was busy with photos from other locations around the world, however, as I had quite a backlog of processing to do on all the images I’ve captured over the past 15 years. Lots of home time enabled me to tackle this ongoing challenge. That said, the following ten photos are the highlights captured this year.
10. One of the aforementioned grey seals photographed off the coast of Cape Cod in June.
9. A black howler monkey spotted while visiting the Mayan ruins at Caracol in Belize.
8. I used a slow shutter to capture this blurred image of a guanaco running up a hill in Torres Del Paine, Chile.
7. A southern stingray photographed at Shark Ray Alley in Belize.
6. Patagonian Hog-Nosed Skunk photographed on my final night in Torres Del Paine.
5. Puma in her habitat, Torres Del Paine, Chile.
4. Guanaco at sunset, Torres Del Paine.
3. Puma in shaft of light, Torres Del Paine.
2. Nurse Shark, Shark Ray Alley, Belize.
1. Puma in black bushes. Just a simple portrait of a young female, but this was the first puma I was able to photograph in Chile and the best moment for me this year — when she popped up at close range, with just enough light left in the day to capture the image.
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