This infant orangutan was only a few days old when I took this shot. The mother was extremely gentle and attentive with the way she carried it around in a very human way. The baby seems almost defenseless and sick in this photo, but a few minutes later it was crawling around in the mother’s lap and breastfeeding.
Every evening, just after the sun went down, the red eye tree frogs in Tortuguero National Park, Costa Rica came down from their daytime resting spots high in the trees. The males croak to establish territory and to attract mates. I often will go out spotlighting alone, and finding the frogs in this particular location wasn’t difficult. The hard part was aiming the headlamp on the top of my head at the frog while at the same time looking through the viewfinder. Luckily, tree frogs tend to be patient subjects.
Going to Uganda to photograph gorillas caused me a lot of anxiety. In my short visit, I knew I’d only get one brief opportunity. The problem isn’t finding the gorillas. That’s pretty much guaranteed, although you may have to trek a while first. The problem is, once you do find them, you only get one hour to visit. This is so humans have as little negative impact as possible. While tracking, I was hoping, praying, pleading for decent, overcast light when we came across them. And then just as the sun dipped behind a cloud they appeared.
Nikon D700 with Nikkor 70-200mm lens (at 150mm) ISO 800, f/2.8 at 1/125th of a second
I was staying in the town of Maroantsetra on the north east coast of Madagascar. This was merely a stopover point before taking a boat over to the Masoala Peninsula, but due to bad weather I was stranded in Maroantsetra for a couple of nights. Trying to make the best of a bad situation, I spent a day walking the grounds of the Rulais du Masoala hotel, and its nearby forests, looking for whatever wildlife I could find.
Unlike most tree frogs that are nocturnal, many of Madagascar’s 300 plus species, including the Madagascar reed frog, can be found during the day. When these frogs mature they turn a beautiful light blue and yellow, but as juveniles they are almost purely yellow, making the yellow pachypodium flower the perfect hiding place.