Photophys.com: The Science of Photography

On May 17 we returned from a wonderful tour of the Galapagos Islands.  I was not prepared for the underwater wonders.  My vision is limited without glasses, and I had not arranged for contact lenses.  Also, I did not have good underwater photographic equipment.  However, land, sea, and air visible above water provided unequaled opportunities for nature photography.  I made a couple of thousand images primarily with a 100-400mm IS lens on my Canon 40D camera.  A sampling of these images can be seen at this link.

I find that portraits of animals and birds in their natural habitat can be satisfying.  However, it is much more of challenging and satisfying to capture wildlife in action.  I was fortunate to be able to see birds catching fish, lizards, and even other birds.    One of the photographs linked above shows a Lava Gull with a lizard in his beak and apparently attached to his eye.  This was one of a set of six photographs of the Gull-lizard encounter.  As you can see from this set, the outcome is not clear.   I also observed and photographed a Galapagos Land Snake attempting to eat a lizard.

I love nature photography because it gives me a new window on the world.  I see things in detail that I previously missed.   Sometimes this involves the microscopic world that is revealed by macrophotography.  Other times it comes from action shots that catch things that were too fast for my eyes and brain to register.  My images from the Galapagos show many things that my “naked” eyes missed.  One striking example involves Storm Pertels.  These small birds dart about and are very difficult to photograph.  I thought that I would have to be satisfied with a wide angle shot of a swarm of petrels above their nesting area in a lava field.  I was also photographing frigatebirds in that area, and on inspection of the images I found that a female frigatebird had sagged a petrel in flight.