Our Day 3 adventure
It was at this point of the trip – only 2 days in – where I had a minor freakout that I was going to run out of space on the memory cards. I had brought what I thought was more than sufficient: Five 128 GB cards, or 640 GB. That should have been enough for more than 20,000 raw photos, or something like 1400 per day. The problem is that I was shooting well above that rate the first two days, and calculated that I would run out of space on day 10. Not ideal.
What I wish I had known is that the first 2 days – Genovesa and North Seymour – are by far the most photo intensive days of the trip, and I needn’t had worried. Without that foreknowledge, however, I made 2 decisions at the end of day 2.
- I would spend some of our down time deleting obviously bad photos (out of photos, bad exposure, etc.). With raw files running near 30 MB, this was an easy way to clear a lot of space, and honestly, it’s good to do a photo review anyway to make sure you’re dialed in.
- I would switch between jpg and raw depending on the subject. Generally shoot jpg for ‘snapshots’ then switch over to raw for photos of animals that I might end up printing, or in conditions that had sharp contrasts between shadows and highlights. This generally worked ok – I don’t need a 30 MB raw file for something going on Facebook or instagram, for example. But sometimes I’d forget to switch back and kick myself for not having the raw file available. On Day 3 I forgot to switch to raw for most of the day, and I wish had the raw flexibility on some of the photos, as you’ll see below.
After the excitement of the first 2 days – just totally overwhelming – Day 3 was a rather slow day. Kind of a let down to be honest. We spent the entire day on and around the west end of Santiago island (later in the trip we’d visit the east end which was also a slow day). The trip overnight was not quite as bad as the previous night, but we still had to cross perpendicular to the currents. So we were all a bit tired.
We first set upon the black sand beach at James Bay (lower left in the map above). You’ll note something different about this map than the Genovesa map – almost no animals listed. And that was generally true. One item that stands out are the ‘wild goats’ – but those were smartly removed from the island some years back. We spent what felt like an eternity at the beach, with very little to photograph…
… other than a baby sea lion – which I did not spend much time on. I seem to be very much alone on this, but I don’t find sea lions particularly photogenic. You can tell in the photos below the sun was behind a very thick cloud layer, so the colors were quite muted, and I had to crank up the ISO to ~22,000, which led to some noise. Because I was shooting in jpg rather than raw it’s more difficult to remove this noise in post-processing.
There were a couple of Sally Lightfoot crabs, and I’m fairly certain the one on the left spit at the other, which is apparently a thing Sally Lightfoot crabs do. There was also a ‘wall of crabs’ that Tui discovered. This involved wading out onto the slick rocks (that they told us to not walk on!) while standing in the surf, facing the island.
It was an otherwise unphotogenic, but pleasant, landscape. Those rocks in the tidal zone, by the way, are covered in algae and were very slippery.
We eventually walked over to the grottos, which was a nice place to lounge. I managed a decent shot of a marine iguana, below, but nothing else I’m particularly happy with (note that I did have the wherewithal to switch to raw here, with obviously better results).
This was also the first chance I had to try and mix animals in a shot. Here the Sally Lightfoot serves as foreground. Later in the trip I tried to use the bright red crabs as background. The crabs move around quite a bit, but they are the easiest to incorporate into this type of composition (compared to the birds, where it’s pretty difficult).
The snorkeling was really quite nice, in James Bay, with a couple of very playful sea lions. Or fur seals? Even after reading up on the difference, I couldn’t tell you. I am certain the difference is not that one is furry, like a bunny.
The afternoon panga ride up around the corner at Buccaneer Cove was filled with disappointing photos of what might have been. First up: blue-footed booby taking off from the water
I was shooting jpg, and I think I could have pulled something out here with raw. The sun was out and there was some sharp extremes in highlights and shadows that don’t work well with the jpg. The color balance is off as well, and I’ve tried everything to correct to no avail. But even switching to B+W doesn’t work. The jpg keeps it too harsh, and I can’t balance it out.
This next one drives me nuts. I took 96 photos of this marine iguana walking across the surf zone. The red sand, the reflection as the wave recedes – it really should have worked. But it doesn’t. It’s possible I need to dial back the sharpening on the Z6 jpg setting; if I reduce ‘clarity’ the photos look a little better to me (see comparison below). On the D600, I had increased the in-camera sharpening from the default setting, and did the same on the Z6. That might have been a mistake. Again, wouldn’t be an issue if I had remembered to switch to raw….
To give you a sense of what reducing clarity does, and how it improves (I think) the jpg coming from the camera, here’s a comparison. It’s a bit subtle on the iguana, but reducing clarity tames the harsh sand and water. Mostly this is an excuse to use the WordPress slider feature, which I’ve just discovered. Expect more of these in the future!
Our last stop of the day would be Espumilla Beach, which was primarily about lounging and enjoying the sunset.
It was quite beautiful, with a sea turtle digging a nest, booby’s diving for fish, and ghost crabs digging their holes. Rather than try and force some photos, we found a spot near a playful pelican, and just hung out. Pretty soon we noticed a ghost crab just behind us, cleaning sand out of its home. I managed a video, below, which is pretty adorable.
Full gallery from the day here. Back to Day 2, forward to Day 4.
