Here’s another request, this time from my young friend David Koffler. In the spring, female snapping turtles will travel on land for great distances to find suitable sandy soil to lay their eggs. I came across this one as she crossed a freshly sprouting field of crops near Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware.
I had a request for another spectral tarsier, so here it is. It was actually quite dark when I took this one (tarsiers are nocturnal), but I used a tripod and a long exposure to take advantage of what little light there was (mostly from the full moon). Like the black-crested macaque from yesterday, these guys live in Tangkoko National Park in Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Not much to say here, just a simple portrait of a rather suave looking black-crested macaque.
This is a white-handed gibbon in Bukit Lawang National Park, Sumatra, Indonesia. These lesser apes were easily among the most difficult to photograph primates that I’ve ever come across. For several days I had unsuccessfully been trying to get a shot. I’d see the gibbon for a second and then it would be gone (or it would be too far away, or hiding behind foliage, etc). They were very wary of humans and usually fled before I even knew they were there. It became a bit of an obsession to get a shot and eventually I was rewarded this one quick look — not perfect, but in focus and in decent light. Gibbons are extremely agile in the trees with their long arms and after one click of the shutter this one disappeared.
Flinders Ranges National Park in South Australia is where the mountains meet the Outback.Very rugged territory, and full of kangaroos. We saw lots of both red and western grey kangaroos, plus lots of emus mixed in. This red kangaroo was racing to get somewhere just before the sun dipped below the horizon.
This guy was probably my favorite orangutan at Tanjung Puting National Park in Borneo. His name was Percy and he always seemed to be nearby, hanging in a tree or laying on the grass and making faces (very human-like faces).
Of course, I can never know for sure, but I’m pretty sure this pronghorn was flirting with me. This one was taken a couple of years ago in Badlands National Park in South Dakota.
Back when I lived in Denver, Great Sand Dunes was always one of my favorite places to visit. It’s about a 3 hour drive southwest of the city. Back then it was only classified as a National Monument but today it is given full National Park status. Mule deer and pronghorn are common grazers in the fields that lead up to the dunes. In this photo, a mule deer was keeping his eye on me as I pulled over to the side of the road.
I got up before sunrise everyday on my recent trip out West hoping for great clouds and fiery skies for landscape photos. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky on a single morning. And without the clouds, I usually resort to plan B — shooting the sun. This was in Monument Valley, another National Tribal Park on Navajo land in the southeast corner of Utah. Like yesterday’s post from Maroon Bells in Colorado, this is a location that gets photographed a lot — most notably as the backdrop to countless Westerns and Marlboro Man ads.
This is the most photographed spot in Colorado — the two Maroon Bells peaks as seen from Maroon Lake near Aspen. I tried to be at least a little original by including the geese.