25-JAN-11: Isla Fernandina
Another long night of dozing, not sleeping as the Flamingo crawled about 150 miles west to Isla Fernandina; from the northeastern most island, to the far northwest of the archipelago.
Within five feet of our landing point, there were six or seven iguanas sitting there amidst a tiny clearing in the mangrove trees. All the cameras came out, while Karina, our guide, attempted to tell us that the most important thing on this island was to not step on the iguanas, but that if you do, don’t freak out if they spit out you: it’s just salt water.
Right, how could I step on an iguana? Yeah, they have camouflage, but… there can’t be that many.
When we got out from the little clump of mangrove trees to the rocky coast, it was iguanas as far as the eye could see. Stepping on one? The challenge in some places was finding a place to step that didn’t already have an iguana resting there. There must have been a thousand little marine iguanas sitting motionless on the pahoehoe lava flows.
I tried to take a landscape with the iguanas in the foreground, but it didn’t turn out well: black iguanas on black rock, white foam from waves, pale blue sky and white clouds… Either the mid- and back-ground was blown out, or the foreground was so dark you could barely distinguish the iguanas from the rock. I tried everything I could think of. A circular polarizer. A graduated neutral density filter. I probably needed a much stronger neutral density filter to fix that contrasty mess, though.
I also was struggling with my “tripod.” I didn’t bring my usual tripod, because it can be a hassle to handle, and it adds a ton of weight to my backpack. Also, with the subject matter of the Galapagos, I didn’t think I’d be taking many landscapes or sunset shots that’d require a tripod. A monopod should be enough to steady my hand for wildlife shots, and one of those twisty little “wrap-it-around-a-tree-limb” tripods would serve if I had any landscape opportunities (you want your camera close to the ground for those shots anyway. Anyway, the little thing was awkward to set up, and so low to the ground I could barely see through the viewfinder. All of my shots ended up a couple degrees askew from the horizon line.
Meh. The shot above… I brightened up the shadows as much as I could, cropped out half the shot to make it a vertical landscape, and did a bunch of color adjustment to bring out the blue in the waves and the lighter brown on the backs of the iguanas. Still not a great shot. As I look at it, I think I would’ve done better to get way more iguanas in the foreground.
The saving grace of the photographic day were the flightless cormorants. Further on in the walk, we came upon a group positioned such that the morning sun was behind my back, lighting up the cormorants beautifully. Then one popped out of the water, stood off by itself, and spread its stubby little wings out to dry. And every once in a while, it turned its head to catch the warmth of the morning sun, lighting the shot perfectly.
Panchito, the bartender gave me a couple band-aids the day before for my big toe. I went through two that morning, but with the strap of my sandal rubbing against the wound… by the end of the walk, I was limping along, resting my weight on my monopod like it was a cane, and wearing the sandal like a reverse flip-flop (the strap along the ankle the only one in use).
I had another battery mishap: the shoulder strap on my camera suddenly came loose, and the camera landed on the battery casing. The impact was hard enough that the casing cracked and bent outward. Something tells me the weather seals were compromised. I hope it doesn’t rain when I’m out shooting.
Our underwater shots the prior times snorkeling had been green and dull. I thought maybe turning the flash on would be a good idea to brighten things up, and Katie figured out how to set it to “always on.” This wasn’t a brilliant idea, as you can see from the photo I took of her, below (the flash bounces light off of all the crap in the water).
The first bit of excitement was a marine iguana feeding on algae in a tiny little inlet. With Katie and a fellow passenger, Jeff, in the inlet, I didn’t have much room to maneuver. I was so close to the iguana, the small waves were enough to move the iguana’s head in and out of the shot. I couldn’t zoom out any further, and I couldn’t move any further back with the other two people there. I ended up without any decent shots in the minute before the iguana went back on land. The shot below was the best I could manage.
The next bit of excitement turned out to be a feeding frenzy caused by lobster heads dropped off a fishing boat. In addition to huge clumps of fish, we saw a huge ray. But the water was deep enough, I couldn’t swim down to get a shot of the ray from the front.
