All My Blogs

Queen Conch Snail - I photographed the diver as he plucked it out of the water. Ever seen a 12-inch snail that weighs 5 pounds?  While visiting an island in the Bahamas, I photographed a diver who pulled a queen conch snail out of the water.  I have seen the shells before, often fairly beat up and not nearly as colourful as this one.  What's impressive is that the snails may live up to 30 years old. Queen conch snails have two problems.  The first is that their shell is attractive and used by collectors and jewellery makers.  The second is that the snail itself is edible; in fact, it is downright tasty.  It has been compared to abalone, which is popular in the Pacific Northwest.  And, just like abalone, over hunting has reduced the numbers to concerning levels.  Because of this, the species is now protected.  If you find or buy an empty shell, you are allowed to bring up to three back into the US.  In Canada, you have to meet specific ex...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...