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Dark skies on sunny days - makes for majestic photography

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Vincent and Claudia at Halfmoon Cay with the Nieuw Amsterdam behind. Dramatic lighting has a way of making a scene pop when it may otherwise be somewhat ordinary.  In the scene above, the Holland America ship is illuminated by the sun against a dark sky.  The couple in the foreground are highlighted against the dark sea behind them. This was photographed in Alberta 22 years ago - the dark skies making an ominous background. The problem with getting these shots is that everything has to be just right.  You need a heavily overcast sky with breaks in the cloud cover to illuminate your foreground while your background is dark.  You can do this with flash, but the problem is that a flash will only illuminate the subject and not the entire foreground.  There are exceptions, such as the photo I took of my wife while staying in Hawaii overnight on a cruise ship. Night provided the dark skies while artificial lighting illuminated the foreground. The contrast between for...
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Sometimes, its the colour that makes the photo. Yelapa, Mexico.

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Colour can transform a photo and, sometimes, be the subject. While visiting Yelapa, Mexico, on an excursion, we came across an interesting bench.  What caught my eye was the bright array of colours.  The various shades of blue were accented by other colours making up the plants, signs, and even stones.  As with many things in Mexico, it was a colour feast for the eyes. I converted the original image (left) to black and white (right) to show how colour affects the scene.  Although there are still dynamic details present, the fact is that the colours are the image's greatest asset.  Part of that reason is that the colours are vibrant.  Soft, muted colours would lend a bit to the scene, but not in the same way.   Black and white images tend to be especially dramatic and interesting when details are important.  Have a look at the cropped image below.  I took the original raw photo and converted it with an emphasis on the bench and extracting...
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The green iguana - Not the best lizard to keep as a pet.

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Green Iguana - Iguana iguana - A name so nice, they used it twice. I like lizards and would love to have one as a pet.  They need to be fed every day and require lots of room, so owning one has never been a reality.  If I were to get a lizard, it would not be a green iguana.  Owning a green iguana as a pet would be a mistake.  They start off small, as all young organisms do, but they can live up to 20 years of age and grow to a whopping 6 foot, 20 pound somewhat aggressive and moody creature.   That's not to say that people don't own them, and they are found in the wild from southern Texas well down into South America.  They have been introduced in parts of California and Florida and can also be found on some Caribbean islands.  Green iguanas are primarily vegetarians, but will take living organisms occasionally.  As pets, they are easy to feed; they take a wide variety of fruit and vegetation.  However, their large size and capacity fo...
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Wild Muscovy Duck - and now for something completely different.

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Left - my photo.  Right:  taken from:  https://gvzoo.com/animals/domestic-muscovy-duck Native to Central and South America, the Muscovy duck has been domesticated and bred across much of the world.  Wild populations differ markedly from domesticated ones, as you can see in the above image.  It's interesting that this bird can be found in its ancestral form.  What's odd is that the bird is often left out of field guides because many individuals are considered farm animals and not wild stock.  I suppose it would be like putting cows in a book on the mammals of North America. However, there are wild populations of Muscovy ducks that retain their ancestral DNA - they have never been domesticated, as the one I photographed above while visiting Guatemala this year.  It is fairly easy to differentiate between the two groups. We don't see wild Muscovy ducks in the north because they are not adapted to cold winters.  They can fly, but only for sh...
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Central American agoutis - have a mutualistic relationship with Brazil nut trees.

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Central American agoutis - they run freely around the Guatemala Zoo. If a guinea pig and a capybara conspired to produce offspring between them, I suspect that the resulting adults would look a lot like agoutis. I first saw these good-sized rodents hurrying along near fences and other structures at the drive-through zoo we visited in Guatemala.  The zoo was interesting in itself, and I will do a blog on it eventually, but these little creatures got on my radar early.  They weren't caged, penned, or restrained in any manner.  They had the run of the place, no so different from what we see when visiting a park occupied by grey and black squirrels.  They were content to be in the open, although they liked the security of a nearby wall or fence.  They would scurry towards an animal's food and either eat it right away or carry some away to eat elsewhere. Agoutis eat fruit and nuts; their very sharp teeth can gnaw through the tough outer shell of Brazil nuts and even ...
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Brown basilisk lizard of Guatemala - Can it really walk on water?

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Male brown basilisk lizard I photographed this year in Guatemala. Although basilisks are not a type of iguana, they are closely related, belonging to the same suborder (Iguanidea).  The brown basilisk is a fairly large lizard, up to two feet long, and weighing around a pound, with females being smaller than males.  Males can be identified by their prominent crest, which is clearly visible in the above image.  I have included a second image below showing a close-up of the head and crest. Brown basilisk close-up of head and crest. They tend to be found around places with both water and trees.  They are excellent climbers and swimmers, but their real claim to fame is their ability to run across the surface of water a modest distance, up to 60 feet for smaller ones, which helps them avoid predators.   Basilisks are predators, eating mostly insects and other invertebrates and small vertebrates.  They are also known to eat some plant matter.  They are f...
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Brown booby fishing - what's wrong with this picture?

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Brown booby flying with its head twisted sideways, looking for fish. OK, this one was weird.  We are cruising along on our ship, and I am on the Promenade with my camera and long lens, photographing the various boobies that are searching for fish.  You can't actually see what they are doing very well, even with a good telephoto; the most you can usually do when the birds are flying is to try to keep them in the viewfinder and maintain a focus lock.  It's not until you get the photos back to your computer that you can really review them well. And then I see it.  This booby, with its head rotated 90°, is flying along, looking straight down.  Not with both eyes, with one.  Now, many birds have lousy binocular vision to begin with, as their eyes are at the sides of their heads instead of in front, like owls.  And flying horizontally with your head facing down is not very aerodynamic.  So, this bird seems to have found a solution to that problem. ...
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