I was going to post a shot from Australia or Madagascar or Costa Rica or some place else in the world besides Ecuador, but than I saw this photo and I said, yeah, I need to post that one tonight. This young sea lion was full of confidence as it confronted the front of my camera, protecting its mother in the background.

Nikon D700 with Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 lens (at 35mm) ISO 800, f/11 at 1/160th of a second

It was mating season for the Galápagos giant tortoises when we were there in November. The males had come down from high in the hills and were gathering at lower elevations in the fields of Santa Cruz Island. I found these four resting and cooling off in a small pond in the heat of mid day.
Nikon D800 with Nikkor 17-35mm lens (at 32mm) ISO 400, f/7.1 at 1/800th, 1/3200th, 1/1600th, 1/400th and 1/200th of a second (HDR)

We spotted this magnificent frigatebird chick on the island of Genovesa in the Galápagos Islands. As you can see, it kind of looked like it was wearing a boa. We saw quite a few of these chicks, but none quite as fluffy as this.
Nikon D700 with Nikkor 200-400mm lens (at 360mm) ISO 400, f/4 at 1/1250th of a second

The Galápagos hawk is the apex predator on the Galápagos Islands — meaning it is at the top of the food chain and has no natural predators. Even so, it is an endangered species and there are only about 150 mating pairs left in existence. This has to do with human disturbance to their natural habitat, a dwindling food supply, and predation by humans. All that being said, we saw quite a few of them, including this guy that we ran into on the island of Rábida. We were on a hike and he seemed very intrigued by us, following us for quite some time, landing next to us and then turning his head from side to side while he looked from face to face.
Nikon D700 with Nikkor 200-400mm f/4 lens (at 400mm), ISO 400, f/5.6 at 1/1000th of a second (0.67 ev)

Hope everyone had a great holiday break. Still lots of Ecuador shots to go through, but I promise to start mixing in some photos from other parts of the world this week. In the meantime, here’s another of the Galapagos sea lions that were playing with us underwater. They would swim right up to our face masks, mouths wide open, and then dive beneath us before circling back around again. This lasted for about half an hour or so before our guide had to practically drag us out of the water.
Nikon D800 camera with Nikkor 17mm lens (at 17mm) in an Ikelite housing with an 8 inch dome port, ISO 800, f/7 at 1/400th of a second (-0.67 ev)

The Hercules beetle is the largest of the rhinoceros beetles, reaching a length of up to almost seven inches. This one seemed to be close to that. Females are actually larger bodied than the males, but they don’t have the horn, so are considerably shorter in length. And not only are they one of the largest beetles in the world — pound for pound, they also have the distinction of being the strongest animals in the world, able to lift as much as 850 times their own weight. This one was photographed in the cloud forest of Ecuador.
Nikon D700 camera with Nikkor 17-35mm lens (at 17mm), ISO 1600, f/8 (0.33 ev) at 1/40th of a second.

This guy is one of the many species of glass frog that can be found in the tropical rain forests of Central and South America. This particular species of the emerald glass frog is native to Ecuador. They are called glass frogs because the skin on their underside is translucent and you can see straight through to their inner organs, including the heart, liver and gastrointestinal tract. Obviously, I wasn’t going to flip the little guy over, but you can sort of see the translucent skin on the second of the three shots down where the torso meets the leg.
Nikon D800 camera with Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 200, f/10 (first shot), f/14 (second and third shots), 1/60th of a second with two SB-R200 wireless flash heads attached to the front of the lens

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.