One of the marque items while exploring the Galapagos Islands is how docile the wildlife is. Most of the animals have no predators, so it is possible to get closer to the animals without them running away.

A lot closer to the animals.

While swimming near shore, an adult sea lion swam up and started to play around with me. The next day, a sea lion jumped up onto the back my my kayak and hitched a ride. It really is an incredible experience and I strongly encourage everyone to plan some time and set aside some money to go.

While exploring the fabled Galapagos Islands, it is easy to focus so much on the big-ticket items — century-old turtles, sea lions, sting rays, etc. — that it’s easy to forget about the smaller things. The caterpillar picture above is just wandering across the land. While hiking on one of the islands I saw him down by my feet and crouched down for a closer look.

He’s extremely colorful and I’m glad I was able to take pictures of him instead of unknowingly squish him beneath my feet.

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I’m primarily self-trained as a photographer. Some time back in my childhood my parents gave me a small film camera that, I think, took 110-style film. Later on I graduated to a 35mm camera and didn’t get very far with it. I remember exploring an extremely old cemetery in my teens, only to become very disappointed when I realized the camera was broken and after I took a picture it didn’t advance the film.

After purchasing a new camera, in high school I put together a small, monthly newspaper about whatever seemed super-important to a kid at the time. As our grade would go on field trips, I begun to travel my camera along with a roll of black and white film loaded in it (it was easier to print black and white images in my black and white newspaper). By high school I joined the yearbook club and attended all of one meeting. I did, however, enjoy the photography class in which we developed our own film in the lab.

Years later I didn’t do much of anything with photography. In college I had a Polaroid camera, which was the earliest form of Instagram. Beyond that, I didn’t do much until 2005 when I purchased a Nikon D70s before a trip to Italy. Since then, I’ve watched my photography grow from simply taking pictures while on vacation to taking specific vacations to take pictures. Those early images from 2005 through 2010 can be pretty rough. Sure, there are some things I’m proud of, but as the saying goes, “Every-now-and-then even a blind squirrel gets a nut.”

As the years progressed, my image-making improved. I’m pretty proud of some of the pictures in my portfolio. Additionally, some things not in the portfolio have been used in advertisements, travel brochures, newspaper articles and even hang on peoples’ walls.

Looking back at pictures through the years, like the above one of a flamingo in the Galapagos Islands, I’m amazed at how rough my photography was back then. As the years have progressed, so have my skills. If an overly-backlit flamingo in search of food helps me learn and advance my ability, then so be it. It all has to start somewhere.

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I’ve seen this picture pop up around the internet lately.

I highly doubt there is some actual event going on which makes it the current thing to write about. More likely, I think it’s just a popular image and just a coincidence I’ve seen it around as much as I have.

While plundering the Galapagos Islands, we woke up early to start our accent to the Island of Bartolome. As we approached the dock in our eight person raft (six guests, one guide, one raft pilot), a giant National Geographic Adventure boat roared up. The few of us on our catamaran commented how we really liked our experience on the smaller boat better than the large, ominous boat. I remember only thinking how much I wanted to get to the top of the Island of Bartolome before the massive boat unloaded its swarm of passengers.

Luckily, that’s exactly what happened.

The National Geographic boat took a long time to offload all of it’s passengers that we were already on our way back to our boat when the hoards of tourists were just leaving their boat for the dock.

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While in the Galapagos Islands, our catamaran was anchored just off shore from this beach.  While we went kayaking and swam around, we noticed how many rocks were on the nearby shore.

After lunch, we hopped in the small raft and took it to shore.  As we approached the sandy, boulder-filled beach, we realized the shore was full of sun bathing sea lions, not boulders.

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In the Galapagos Island, this may be one of the more famous birds.  It has a variety of reasons for its notoriety.  Its name, for starters, contains every man’s friend.  The other note about their name is it comes from the Spanish word for “bobo,” which means, well, “dumb.”

The birds are, however, fairly intelligent animals.  They have tremendous vision and are fantastic shallow water divers.  The boobies mating dance could get them made fun of, though.

The males flaunt their blue feet, dancing to impress the female boobies; they’ll spread their wings, stomp their feet and squawk.   If she likes him, the mating process will take less then five seconds.  Together mom and dad watch the eggs, keeping them warm by holding their webbed-feet over them.  After nearly nine months of incubation, the eggs will hatch and the parents will walk around with the chicks on their feet getting around.

And they’re cute birds, too!

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