I haven’t really posted anything yet from the Galapagos that shows the landscape. This is a typical scene — a black lava rock fringed shoreline with a sea lion or two posing for the camera. Not visible in the photo, but also present were countless marine iguanas and sally lightfoot crabs, sea turtles, herons, lizards and all manner of other interesting creatures. This was on Fernandina, my favorite island of the eight or so that we visited. Fernandina also happens to be one of the newest islands in the archipelago and the most volcanically active.
Nikon D700 with Nikkor 17-35mm lens (at 17mm), ISO 400, f/4.5 (-1 ev) at 1/8000th of a second.

While in the Galapagos, we spent three nights on the island of Santa Cruz at an African style safari camp. Each night just after the sun went down, a couple of barn owls would call each other from the trees right next to our tent. In fact, this guy actually spent a bit of quality time on our front porch checking us out as much as we were checking him out.
Nikon D700, Nikkor 200-400mm lens (at 400mm), ISO 800, f/5.6 at 1/60th of a second, SB-900 flash (off camera)

We saw quite a few butterflies in the cloud forest of Ecuador. This one — a species of erato longwing — was one of my favorites. People have been asking for more technical information, so I’m going to start including the vital stats more often: For this shot, I was using my 105mm macro lens at ISO 800, f/6.3 and 1/200th of a second. Also want to remind people that all blog posts are available as high quality prints — not just the photos that are found in my “galleries” section. I’m still, however, trying to figure out how to get the shopping cart function to work with blog posts. If interested in a print of one of the blog posts, check the pricing in galleries and send me an email with the size and image that you want. As always, thanks for checking out my photos every day.

Sally Lightfoot crabs are perhaps the most ubiquitous creatures in the Galapagos Islands. They are found virtually everywhere on rocky coastlines. They are also found crawling over marine iguanas, up the backs of sea turtles and under resting sea lions. As for the name, I offer this explanation from answers.com: “According to antique seamen’s lore, Sally Lightfoot is a night club dancer in the Caribbean. Although wearing hardly anything to cover her divine body, her dress is bright and colourful, red, orange and yellow. By profession, her movements are light and swift. A quick step sideways to avoid the odd hand snatching is her specialty. After months at sea and rounding Cape Horn, sailors anchor at the Galapagos Archipelago to take in fresh water. Brightly coloured crabs, red, orange and yellow, abound at the beach. High on their legs they move swiftly sideways. There is no doubt in any sailors mind; this is Sally Lightfoot.”

Just when I was starting to think that the cloud forest was only going to grant me insects, birds and frogs, this guy appeared. It’s called a tayra and it’s in the mustelid family (weasels, otters, ferrets, etc.) I had caught a glimpse of one before in Bolivia but wasn’t able to get any photos. That fleeting encounter had immediately put it at the top of my must photograph list. They are pretty rare to see in the thick forest, and easily spooked so I was very excited to not only see one, but two (this adult and a juvenile, which I’ll upload in a future post). Tayras are all around athletes, being expert climbers and leapers when in trees, fast runners while on the ground and excellent swimmers.

In the cloud forest of Ecuador I was able to photograph about a half dozen different species of hummingbird. This one is called the brown Inca hummingbird. I used a fast shutter speed (1/1600th of a second) and flash to freeze the motion of the wings. Depending on the species, hummingbirds can flap their wings between 12 and 80 times per second.

This is one of my favorite underwater photos from the Ecuador trip. We were swimming with the sea lions and they were moving into and out of a shadowed area caused by a nearby cliff. Whenever they went into the dark area I was getting pretty slow shutter speeds due to the lack of light. Knowing this, I tried panning with their movement as they swam below me. On this particular exposure, I was able to keep the focus point on the sea lion’s head to get sharp focus on the eyes while blurring out the colorful background.

I got engaged this weekend so thought it fitting to find my favorite two lovers from our recent trip to Ecuador. These two exceedingly attractive marine iguanas seemed to fit the bill. Here’s to romance in all its many forms.

We saw a grand total of one flamingo in the Galapagos Islands. They number only 500 total in the entire archipelago so I guess that’s not too bad. The Galapagos flamingo is thought to be a separate subspecies of the greater flamingo. I was hoping for this one to fly or do something interesting, but ultimately I had to settle for a ground level reflection shot as it waded in a shallow lagoon feeding on algae and plankton.

Our Ecuador trip wasn’t just to the Galapagos Islands. We also spent three nights in the cloud forest on the mainland. Basically, the cloud forest is where the Amazon rises up to meet the Andes. Clouds bump into the sides of the mountain and have nowhere to go so they just sit there. Everything is always wet, and therefore, very green and lush with vegetation. I was in search of all the exotic wildlife that lives in this region — pumas, ocelots, spectacled bears, etc. I knew that I was in for trouble when the first thing our guide asked was if I liked bugs. For the most part, that’s what we saw, bugs, until a surprise visitor on our last day (but that’s a story for a future post). For now, I present one of the great bugs of the cloud forest. This is a giant green leaf insect. It was about six inches long, oddly handsome, and a dead ringer for one of the stars of the animated movie “A Bug’s Life.” Unfortunately, this was the last photo ever taken of this poor guy. About ten seconds after snapping the shutter (while I was changing lenses) a hawk swooped down and ended it all. R.I.P. my little green friend.