Here are some of the stories behind the photos.

I found this beautiful little hummingbird’s nest on the first night walk i took at the lodge, and spent a couple hours a day for a few days trying to get a perfect photo of her as she returned to the nest, but was only ending up with good ones. I went out towards the end of my stay on an overcast day to try one more time, and set up my tripod and camera to await her return. I could hear thunder getting closer and the tops of the tallest trees beginning to toss, and suddenly the forest darkened and a strong wind front slammed into the trees. I knew it was dangerous to stay because there were branches falling from 150 feet up all around, so i gave myself one more minute before leaving, and even started counting to sixty. Then i heard her distinctive humming and was able to get off a few shots before she settled in the nest, and then i threw my camera gear in its bag and ran down the trail towards the lodge. I had intended a brighter exposure for the photo, but, as often happens, it turned out better than i intended. The biggest challenge for the photo was getting her face and chest in focus, because i had to manually set the focus ahead of time based on where i thought she would be hovering, and the plane of focus was probably 2 millimeters.

Canon 5d Mark ii, Canon 135mm f2 lens w/1.4X teleconverter, 1/160 sec at f2.8, Gitzo tripod, ISO 1600, cable release



I would say that this is the most unique photo I got on the trip, of an Amazon Wood Lizard letting me know to keep my distance. I was walking back to the lodge after a few hours spent in the jungle, and i knelt down to look at something on the trail. As I was getting up I noticed him watching me. It makes me wonder how many amazing animals I walked right by, because I never would have noticed him if I had been walking along normally. For this photo I used my 300mm lens because he was pretty big, and if I had used the 100mm macro lens the background would not have been sufficiently blurred. So I laid on the ground with the camera on the tripod and as low as I could get it, and then walked over and used my presence to elicit this response, and my shadow to darken the background of the photo. As soon as the shutter tripped and I went back to look at the photo, he took off and disappeared in the brush, and I never found him. I didn’t expect the focus to be right, because once again the depth of field was so small and the lizard was moving, but it turned out that when he leaned back and opened his mouth, it aligned his body perfectly with the focus plane!



Canon 5d Mark ii, Canon 300mm f4 lens, 1/6 sec at f/4, ISO 400, Gitzo tripod



There was a tree along my favorite trail that was covered with large, round thorns, like stubby rhinoceros horns about two inches long, and as i passed it one day i decided to stop and check it out closely. I found this tiny, centimeter long insect hiding amongst the thorns and spent the next hour or so trying to photograph it. It was difficult because it was both tiny and active, so by the time i had set up a shot it was usually about ready to move somewhere else. This shot is at my macro lens’s maximum magnification, so the front of my lens is about 4 inches from the plane of focus, and the size of the photo is about an inch by an inch and a half.



Canon 5d Mark ii, Canon 100mm Macro Lens, 2 sec at f2.8, ISO 400, Gitzo tripod



One morning after breakfast I went with Wicho, Don Linho, and Jefferson to the mammal clay lick deep in the jungle to build a new observation platform about 15 feet off the ground, and i decided to bring my camera bag along, because you never know. When we arrived at the building site we all sat down for a break, and i looked to my left and saw a white flower sitting on a leaf. As i went to look at it i realized, of course, that it wasn’t a flower. We were there to build a platform, so whenever we had a break i would spend some time with this spider, and eventually i got this shot of a small fly hovering much too close, probably thinking it was a white flower, as i had. It nearly turned out to be a fatal mistake, because just after i got this shot the spider grabbed at the fly and barely missed. My back was covered with mosquitos while i was being still and trying to get this shot, and that’s true for just about every photo i got in Peru.


Canon 5d Mark ii, Canon 100mm Macro Lens, 1/40 sec at f2.8, ISO1600, handheld



This was the first good shot I got on my trip, on the morning after I arrived. It had been raining so much recently and the river was so high that it dropped twenty feet over the next two days. All the low areas in the jungle were underwater, and as i walked around in my rubber boots the only critters i saw on the water were these tiny spiders. Shooting them was difficult because they were so small that if I moved my feet at all, the ripples I caused moved them out of the frame, not to mention I was wearing a thin shirt that was no barrier to mosquitos. I’m really happy with the new macro lens i’ve been using that has Internal Stabilization, but i’ve found that with subjects this small it’s too difficult to get the subject within the tiny focus plane and a tripod is necessary.



Canon 5d Mark ii, 100mm Macro Lens, 1/15 sec at f2.8, ISO 400, Gitzo tripod



One of the most important things to remember about photography, in my opinion, is that there are many different angles from which to approach your subject, and it is rare that the perspective you would have just leaning over to look at something is the best one. This is especially true of macro photography, because just moving an inch or two to one side can completely change the background and your perspective of your subject. I often try, if possible, to approach a macro subject from their level or below, because it gives an interesting feel to the photo and allows you to use the background more. For this photo, I was laying on my stomach on the jungle floor, and pointing my lens slightly upward at this little frog as he watched me from the edge of a water-filled leaf.



Canon 5d Mark ii, Canon 100mm Macro Lens, 1/40 sec at f2.8, ISO1600, handheld



One reason I love macro photography is that there are subjects everywhere, and you are only limited by your ability to find and capture them. It’s both heartening and discouraging to me to realize that for every good subject I see, I walk right by 50, 100, who knows how many. As I was walking down a trail one morning this tiny mushroom caught my eye. It was off the trail, about 7 feet off the ground, and about an inch tall. It was sprouting from a small decaying stick in the center of a fern, so I was able to get a young emerging frond in the background. I got a couple of photos, including this one, that would have probably been impossible with film. For one thing, it was so high off the ground that i couldn’t put the viewfinder to my eye, and had to hold the camera above my head and use live view to see the composition. I also needed to use ISO 1000 to get a fast enough shutter speed to get the mushroom in focus, and the fastest good film is only ISO 400.



Canon 5d Mark ii, 100mm Macro Lens, 1/40 sec at f2.8, ISO 1000, handheld