Only about 4,500 Baird’s tapirs remain in the wild, a thousand of them in Costa Rica where I took this photo. It is the largest mammal in Central America and the threat to its survival is twofold — both habit loss and poaching. I was able to get some pretty good looks at this rather large, but difficult to see animal. By sitting still for hours I got very close and most of my shots were with my wide angle lens, but for this exposure, I put on my longer lens for a ground-level portrait. There wasn’t a lot of light in the deep forest so I had to jack up the ISO for a useable shutter speed. Nikon D700 with Nikkor 70-200mm lens (at 98mm) ISO 3200, f/2.8 at 1/160th of a second.
Thanks for all the technical and physical effort to get this shot right. Trying to get a picture in such low light is really a challenge–but you wouldn’t know it from this photo! He seems to be a gentle creature.
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Only about 4,500 Baird’s tapirs remain in the wild, a thousand of them in Costa Rica where I took this photo. It is the largest mammal in Central America and the threat to its survival is twofold — both habit loss and poaching. I was able to get some pretty good looks at this rather large, but difficult to see animal. By sitting still for hours I got very close and most of my shots were with my wide angle lens, but for this exposure, I put on my longer lens for a ground-level portrait. There wasn’t a lot of light in the deep forest so I had to jack up the ISO for a useable shutter speed. Nikon D700 with Nikkor 70-200mm lens (at 98mm) ISO 3200, f/2.8 at 1/160th of a second.
You made it look like middle of the day for this shot
Not a very attractive creature but part of nature
Thanks for all the technical and physical effort to get this shot right. Trying to get a picture in such low light is really a challenge–but you wouldn’t know it from this photo! He seems to be a gentle creature.
I don’t mean to be cruel, but I have never seen a worse nose job than that.
What a beak! Well done!