This blog brings some of my own personal experiences as a professional photographer in Brazil and thoughts on photography, birding and neotropical nature.
I’ve had a photo and a short text published on the brazilian edition of National Geographic this month. The photo is of a rare Atlantic Royal-Flycatcher, an amazing bird that inhabits the dark understorey of well preserved Atlantic Rainforest. I got a photo when the male fully opened its gorgeous huge crest, which isn’t something very common… actually I’d say it’s pretty darn rare! It suffice to say that I spent 15 days inside a blind, getting tons of mosquito bites, to get this one shot. Of course I got tons others and we even discovered new biological details of the species to be published this year by my friend Guilherme Ortiz, but this was the only good shot with the crest fully opened in a totally natural situation.
I also had this month a full story and photos published by a national nature magazine called Terra da Gente. This is a story on my newest ongoing project, to photograph the most well preserved Atlantic Rainforest, areas with many thousands of square kilometers of primary rainforest, home of huge ancient trees, rare birds and even jaguars!
I often like to study the work of great photographers, to find inspiration and extract some of their knowledge. One photographer whose work I like very much is Sam Abell. One of his main tips is to make the composition and wait. This is a good thing to keep in mind, instead of running around trying to stumble on a nice scene, why not just make the composition and wait for the best light, the best moment? The best photos are usually a product of insistence and patience.
This wait can be of a few minutes, a couple hours, days, weeks… even years! You have the image in your head, the location.. it just needs the right combination of factors to come out of your mind and into a real photograph.
This photo in the Atlantic Rainforest was taken at 08:45 AM. The light is pretty flat with the heavy cloudy sky, but I decided to just wait there and see what would happen.
The same view at 09:26 AM, when the sun found a break in the clouds for a minute, casting a much more dramatic light into the trees in the foreground and the mist rising from the forest. This is the photo I wanted.
The wait for this photo was actually much longer, as I already had this photo in my mind for several weeks, and so I kept returning there to find the best light.
A dinamic detail in the photo can also add a lot of interest. During an assignment in Florianópolis, South Brazil, I was shooting a beautiful beach from a helicopter. The scenery was great but something was missing, and our helicopter time was limited. When I saw a boat speeding by at the “entrance” of the beach and the area where boats moored, I asked the pilot to fly there quickly to get the action. The client chose this photo instead of the one without the boat, which was the scene I first photographed when we arrived. I could have moved on to other shots, but by focusig on the main shot we got what we wanted with a little patience.
One place that I really really love to photograph is at the natural sinkhole south of the Pantanal where hundreds of Red-and-green Macaws (Ara chloropterus) nest. This is where I lead a couple of extension tours after our main photo tour in the Pantanal photographing jaguars, and everybody loves it. The sinkhole, one of the largest in the world, was formed many thousands of years ago after the ceiling of a cave collapsed. This region has many places like this and even construction has several limits because of the danger. Essentially, the region is like a Swiss cheese. Most sinkholes in the region are filled with crystal clear water, which makes them spectacular diving sites. This one however is dry and macaws and other birds nest at its big vertical walls, filled wih small caves.
A pair flying inside the sinkhole
Outside of the sinkhole the region is comprised of natural cerrado, a dry vegetation typical of central Brazil and with lots of interesting birds and mammals to shoot, like the Giant Anteater. At the bottom of the hole though, because of the increased humidity, there’s a micro-habitat with different tree species and even a small lake with a few caymans inside. They feed on the occasional baby macaw or other animals that fall in the hole, as well as their own baby caymans. No one knows for sure how they got there in the first place.
This one made it to National Geographic's book Bird Coloration
To photograph here we set our tripods and long lenses at the edge of the sinkhole, on well placed wooden terraces, and wait. Usually there’s quite a bit of activity, especially in the morning and late afternoon. At times you can see 50 or more macaws flying at once, screaming and all. Quite a show. Most often though we shoot pairs flying around the sinkhole at eye level or even below you, for a very different “aerial” point of view. The photography is not the most easy around. The birds are very fast and the proper focusing and panning technique is fundamental to get sharp shots, and I teach this during the workshop. After photographing there for so many times, I know a few secrets and tips. In the end, we all go back home with some great shots in our hard drives.
A flock of big colorful parrots
I can’t wait to return! We still have a couple spots for the extension tour in August. Check it out here!
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I wasn’t like every other kid in the neighbourhood. My dream wasn’t to play soccer for Brazil and score a goal at the World Cup. My heroes were guys like Jacques Costeau, not Michael Jordan. I was always expecting anxiously the next fishing trip to some remote part of the country with my uncle and I dreamed of seeying and/or photographing a wild jaguar. The years passed and I started to work with fishing trips, guiding clients from all over to fly fish for giant peacock bass in some of the most remote rivers in the Amazon. I worked 9 years with it and even made it to the cover of an important fly fishing magazine in the US. But in all those years I have only seen 2 jaguars, and mere glimpses of them. One was swimming at the distance, crossing the river, the other was seen at 03:00 AM on the other side of the river we were camping in. The river was quite narrow and so no one really could sleep well for the rest of the night. This was quite a thrill, but still, we only really saw their eyes shining on our flashlight beams and a bit of its spotted fur.
A few years ago though things changed and due to succesful conservation measures jaguars are now common in North Pantanal, a place where, ironically, I also used to fish when I was a kid – and where I have never seen a jaguar before. Jaguars used to be hunted there because of conflicts with cattle ranchers (the usual story when it comes to big cat killings), but now this killing is almost zero and jaguars are not only more numerous today, but also more confident. They are not very scared anymore when a boat comes by. So this is where I now guide my jaguar photography tours. There are days where we see 6 or 7 jaguars, and amazing, long views at that! This was simply impossible a few years ago. And the future looks good, at least for those cats.
On the last year’s tour we found a confinding female jaguar hanging around a small side creek. We were able to keep track of her the whole day long, but it was at the end of the day, with the cooling temperature of an approaching tropical storm, that the big cat turned hunting mode on. She started to wade in shallow water, looking for caimans (a croc), a major food for those jaguars. She actually struggled with one for a short while among the floating vegetation and almost caught it. Then she just walked down the shore, where there was a big fallen tree jutting into the water. I remember thinking “please climb into that dead tree”, while all the 3 boats from my group were silently following the jaguar.
Then she did it! She climbed it and started to make some fierce expressions first, then she opened up those deadly sharp claws and started to scratch the big tree, literally riping off pieces of it in the process. Just amazing! All I could hear was the sounds of birds around and cameras clicking like mad. She then just laid there a while, as if we weren’t even there, shooting just some 30 meters away. When it was over we all had several hundred pics in our memory cards. A perfect evening finished off with a great sunset inder a light, refeshing rain as we returned to our comfortable hotel.
Clients were happy, dinner was great, all was perfect. Except when I tried to download the pics to my computer, eager to see them. The memory card was just not being recognized! I tried all different card readers, none seemed to work. My compact flash memory card failed on me. I was very anxious and nearly desperate, I just wanted those pics back. I turned on the internet and tried to find a solution online. I downloaded a total of 3 card recovery softwares and none found the pics! I was going crazy, it was 02:00 AM already whn I decided to download one last software and this time, thankfully, it worked! My pics were safe! I imediately made a backup to my external travel hard drive as a safety measure. Just in case you want to know, the software I use is called CardRecovery. The photos on this post are the recovered ones.
Although this was a high quality memory card, it failed. Every piece of equipment can fail, so on a trip like this always consider a backup of everything, especially a backup for your photos and a backup camera. And then just enjoy the adventure!
When we think of landscape photography, we immediatly think of wide-angle lens, that are able to capture the entire landscape. But what if only part of the landscape is interesting? That’s where the tele lenses come. By tele-lens I mean anything above around 100mm. Many people think of tele-lenses as lenses to shoot only wildlife, but that’s not quite the case. With these lenses we have the ability to “extract” from the scene only the interesting part. I consider the tele-lenses particularly useful with landscape photography in forested areas, since many times such a place photographed with a wide-angle lens will look very “chaotic”, a mess.
But there are some aspects of photographing with long lenses that should be mentioned:
Perspective:
Like Ansel Adams said: “perspective is a function of camera-to-subject distance“. So if perspective is solely determined by where you place your camera, you will sometimes note that the most interesting perspective may be from a bigger distance from your subject. So in order to fill the frame with that perspective you will need a tele-lens.
The original scene seen from a 50mm lens includes many elements that dont help much, besides, I want to focus more attention on the huge red jatobá tree.
Compression:
Tele-lenses have the characteristic of compressing objects at different distances from one another, positioned in front of the lens. So if with a normal range lens a tree down a road may look to be far from the second tree in the background, with a long lens they will look to be stacked together, very close to one another. A drizzle may look like a torrential rain. This compression may not represent the absolute truth, but it may be used in your favour in the artistic vision.
Knowing how to use this compression is fundamental for getting good results in landscape photography with tele-lenses. When you compress a scene you can usually identify layers stacked together, like in those kids books where you have one layer for the bushes in the foreground, a second layer for the horses, another one for the barn, for the clouds, and so on. You must use these layers to form your composition, usually in the same way you would do with a wide-angle lens, with foreground, background, etc.
This compression caused by the lens also enhances the density of particules in the atmosphere (like fog) and that too can be used in your favour depending on what mood you are trying to reach. But as a general rule, you usually have to increase contrast a little in post-processing.
In this photo the compression gives the impression that the sea is very rough when in reality it wasn't THAT rough.
Depth of field:
The depth of field of a tele-lens is much smaller than a wide angle, that is, it’s easier to get out-of-focus planes with this kind of lens. The longer the focal range of the lens the smaller the depth of field. Like with the compression, the limited depth of field can also be used for your artistic interpretations or to bring focus to one part of the photo by rendering the others out-of-focus.
Only with a tele-lens I was able to capture the beauty of these wild epythitic begonia flowers high up on a tree. The limited depth of field helped by rendering the messy background out of focus.
Sharpness:
Reaching perfect sharpness with a tele-lens is more complicated than with a wide-angle, because the long focal range not only multiplies the size of the image, but also any camera shake, be it caused by you moving the camera directly (duh, don’t do it) or by the opening of the mirror inside the camera. The rule is: always use a very good tripod and suitable for the weight of your kit. I often see people using very light tripods and then wondering why their brand new 5,000 dollar camera doesn’t produce sharp results! The tripod must be solid as a rock, believe me, it makes a big difference.
What also makes a big difference in this kind of photography is using the mirror lock up function of your camera, also known as MUP. And of course a triggering cable or remote control to press the shutter. With MUP you can open the mirror and then wait a few seconds before shooting the pic, enough time to eliminate any small camera shake caused by the mirror movement. Depending on the shutter speed you use, this tiny camera shake can be very noticiable and makes a big different in final image sharpness. This makes so much difference that sometimes I even use it to shoot birds that sit still.
In photography there are few fixed rules, the only rule is to use the equipment to create the image you want. There are great shots of birds with wide angle lenses, and there are great shots of landscapes with tele-lens. The important is to reach your goal and produce the image you want.
A great part of the evolution of the colors and morphology of birds, and other animals as well, revolves around vision – or more specifically to this post – around the eye. For a camouflaged bird, the eye is the weakest part of its disguise. The eyes show us that something is alive, and, for a predator, that that is a potential prey. I remember when I used to tie baitfish-imitating flies (for fly fishing), one of the most important items for a good fly was big conspicuous eyes. Big predatory fish had a clear preference for flies with such eyes.
The eye of this Greenish Schiffornis (Schiffornis virescens) give away the presence of the bird inside the forest.
The potoos (Nyctibiidae) are masters of hiding the eye. During the day these birds remain motionless, perfectly camouflaged imitating a broken tree branch. However, their big yellow eyes would be an easy target, they would easily give away the disguise. Simply closing the eye is not a very safe solution, because, even though they are very well camouflaged, they still sit more or less in the open and thus it’s wise to keep an eye open for predators and, if needed, fly away as a last resource. Evolution then created a fantastic solution for these neotropical birds – eyelashes with tiny openings that allow a bird to see with “eyes closed”.
Note the small openings on the eyelashes of this Great Potoo (Nyctibius grandis).
Another solution used by many bird species, although less elaborate, is trying to hide the eyes with plumage patterns. That’s why we see many birds with facial stripes and other patterns that try to hide an eye, make it less conspicuous. It’s the case for example of the Masked Yellowthroat (Geothlypis aequinoctialis) and the Masked Gnatcatcher (Polioptila dumicola).
The black mask on the face of a Masked Gnatcatcher (Polioptila dumicola) helps to conceal its eyes.
This solution serves two functions. At the same time that is hides the eyes, it also creates a dark mask that avoids glare and thus improves vision. Studies made with the Common Yellowthroat (Geothlypis trichas) in the US have shown a third function to the dark masks: they can show dominance. Birds with darkes or larger patches of black were more dominant and thus more attractive to females. This possibly happens with a lot of other species too.
The dark mask of a Masked Yellowthroat (Geothlypis aequinoctialis) may serve 3 functions.
Another very interesting side of the theme are the false eyes. They appear for example on the wings of some butterflies and moths, behind the ears of jaguars and tigers, on the wings of the sunbittern (Eurypyga helias) and on the back of the head of pygmy-owls of the genus Glaucidium. The function of these false eyes varies a lot though. In the cases of the moths and the sunbittern, it works as a threatening surprise to predators, as the big eyes who suddenly show appear to say “watch out, I’m much bigger than you think!”. In the case of the jaguars and tigers the false eyes behind the ears seem to show, to others of the same species, that “I can see you, don’t come any closer”.
Note the false eyes on the backside of the ears of this Jaguar from the Pantanal.
The case of the pygmy-owls is very interesting. These tiny diurnal owls are terrible small bird predators and the large false eyes at the back of their heads seems to serve two functions. The first one is that these predators are frequently mobbed by small birds of various species, who gather in groups to attack it and try to chase it off. Some birds even get to the point of actually pecking on it! It’s esy to imagine that its advantageous to lead these attacks to your back instead of the real eyes. A second function actually helps these owls to hunt. Imagine a little bird mobbing an owl and, trying to scape a possible attack by the owl, leading the mobbing at the back of the owl. So what happens is that it sees the big eyes at the back and moves to the front of the owl, imagining that it is actually the back! This confusion may be its last one. I have actually seen this happens, as a hummingbird mobbing a Least Pygmy-Owl (Glaucidium minutissimum) moved to the front and the owl quickly grabbed the hummingbird in one move.
Note the large false eyes on the back of this Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl (Glaucidium brasilianum).
The eyes are the most important organs for many predators and they create a major evolutionary force in search of solutions.
Jaguars originally occupied a vast area from southern USA to mid-Argentina, including everything in-between. The killing of this great cat, for its pelt or conflicts with humans, has drastically reduced its numbers. But, as usual, nothing was so bad for them as loss of habitat through deforestation. Jaguars need forests, you won’t find them in open habitats. Among the large cats, they are the ones that inhabit the densest forests.
So it’s without surprise that the number of Jaguars in today’s highly fragmented Atlantic Rainforest, along the coast of Brazil, has been greatly reduced. In NE Brazil the Jaguar is probably extinct from this biome, as the forest fragments there are tiny. It’s estimated that Jaguars have been eradicated from around 40% of its original habitat, with main populations in the Amazon and the Pantanal. However in the SE there is one very large forest block that is able to maintain a population of this top predator. The main worry though is that this population may become isolated from other large forest blocks inland, like from the Missiones region in northern Argentina/Brazil border.
This is a cause of worry for environmentalists working with the Jaguars, and the guys at Panthera – one of the leading big cat conservation and study organizations in the world – are developing a plan. It’s called Jaguar Corridor Initiative and it plans to create protected corridors that have been identified to allow the passage of Jaguars and other fauna, connecting suitable habitats and providing the interchange that may preserve their genetic integrity and general well being. Click on the map below to see it in full size.
During the past year I personally encountered several different signs of Jaguars at a very well preserved place in the Atlantic Rainforest. First we found a tree with their characteristic claw territory marks (far too big for a puma, much more common), then tracks, strong urine scents and a different log with more claw marks (photo further down). Lastly we had a very close encounter.
I was walking a trail with two biologists in primary rainforest habitat, at the bottom of a deep ravine. Thick, centenary woody lianas fell from the canopy of big trees 35 meters or more above our heads. The misty and drizzly weather made every single inch of forest dripping wet, silencing our steps. There was a small slow moving creek that we had to cross. On the other side we continued walking, slowly, trying to locate some birds, but there was a strange silence in the air. We suddenly stopped walking when we heard a deep, loud, threatening grunt. Immediately we recognized it as a big cat. We tried one more step and the cat protested again, this time even louder. The cat was very very close, maybe less than 10 meters from us. We could not see it though, as it was well concealed by vegetation and probably at the bottom a steep bank on our right side. I ain’t gonna lie, I was very afraid at that moment. It’s a type of fear that I have never felt before, one where you really feel as potential prey… not a condition we humans are used to. We decided to step back, calmly walking away while not giving our backs to whatever was mad at us.
Jaguar photographed in the Pantanal of Brazil
Later on, after the adrenaline rush, we discussed if that really was a Jaguar or perhaps a Puma, but we came to the conclusion that those deep, powerful grunts must have been made by a Jaguar, as all Puma sound recordings we have are a more cat-like hiss. Later on we talked to a cat specialist and, by our description of the sound heard, he confirmed that it was surely a Jaguar. We think that cat was with a newly born baby and, thus, was unable to run away before we got there so close. That was clearly a threatening call meaning “don’t you dare getting any closer!”
Jaguar claw marks on a log. Notice that it's on both sides, made with both claws.
This may be a sign of what I have been noticing recently. Despite all the hystorical deforestation of the Atlantic Rainforest, much of it is coming to a halt, especially in the SE. The remaining forest blocks, some of them truly huge, are now generally well preserved and the hunting pressure is much weaker today. This, in turn, is making a positive impact on important Jaguar prey populations here, like wild pigs, tapirs, armadillos, tinamous and guans. The protection of Jaguars in this habitat, as an umbrella species that it is, also means the protection of all other species in the forest, and the forest itself.
This is a documentary produced by PBS in 1993. I like it very much, especially the sounds (listen with a good speaker) and the always great narration of the late George Page. Very well produced. But this was made with a captive jaguar in Belize, not a wild one, showing how difficult it really is to film wild jaguars. Still, this remains one of the best documentaries on the largest cat of the Americas. Be sure to watch it in 720p. Oh, and if you are interested in photographing wild jaguars in Brazil, check out my photo tours.
Achieving the correct exposure for what you are trying to convey with the picture is the first and probably the most important aspect of photography. It’s basic. Yet in the digital era it seems that people are giving less importance to the basic and fundamental things and more importance to mundane stuff like “is the D4 better than the 1Dx” or technical talk about sensor technologies… like if that would make any practical real-world difference. It won’t make you a better photographer. All pro cameras today are great, you can not go wrong with any. Unless you don’t know the basics…..
So, to really learn light metering and the fine details of exposure I suggest you use your camera in manual mode and spot metering. Do it now, really. While I don’t photograph all the time in manual (I sometimes use aperture priority), knowing exactly how the metering works makes me more confident in every situation.
First off, all in-camera light meters are stupid, for they are clueless about what they are photographing (guess what, this is where you come in!). They measure the reflective light of any given object and they assume everything must have the same average tonal value – the infamous middle gray, or 18% gray. This is what someone somewhere once decided was the average reflectivity of any given scene. If you don’t do anything, that’s how your camera will render every scene. The best way to achieve the correct exposure is to spot-meter your subject and decide whether it is lighter or darker than mid-gray, or, more important, what you want it to be.
To understand how this works get your camera now and shoot a blank white wall or paper sheet with plenty of light. If you’re in manual mode and spot metering, make sure you have no fixed exposure compensation dialed in as that can give you a wrong meter reading. So, point the spot meter to the white wall and bring the exposure (either speed or aperture, or both) to a point where you have 0 compensation. When you apply 0 compensation it means that you agree with that average the camera considers right for any scene. It means you agree that the white wall is actually mid-gray (what?). Shoot a pic. Guess what… your white wall is shown as a gray wall. Underexposed.
Just to remember, you can get the meter reading in your viewfinder. It's that little ruler thing.
So what do you do? If you are trying to shoot a white wall you have to tell the camera that this is white, not mid-gray! So you put in some positive compensation. Either slow down the shutter speed or open up the aperture to bring the meter to a positive value – you are trying to get more light. Try +2 stops and shoot a frame. Bingo, the white wall is now white and correctly exposed.
Different tonalities will demand different compensation values. Very dark blacks demand -2 compensation, while very light whites need +2. The in-between is harder to determine at first, but with practice you will get the point. There’s no other way to explain this, you have to go out there yourself and start testing different tonalities and what compensation values they require.
An Atlantic Rainforest scene. Metering in rainforests is a bit harder than on your average scenery, because there are so many different tonalities. Where should I point my spot meter?
Where you point the spot meter on a scene to determine the exposure makes all the difference. With digital cameras I reccomend you always meter at the lightest relevant point in the scene that you want to maintain detail. Remember, you don’t want large areas overexposed and burned out, so as long you meter in that lightest area all the other tonalities in the scene will fall in their place. If they don’t it means that the scene has too much contrast, more than what the camera can capture. What you can do then is use fill flash to make the darker areas lighter; look for a better angle where you can avoid that very light area; or come back with a better light. There’s no magic.
Here you see more or less how the camera meter would see the rainforest scene above. It's desaturated and blurred so we can focus clearly on the tonalities instead of on the colors or little details. The yellow dot shows where I did the metering. Read more below.
For that rainforest scene I metered on the gravel bar on the other side of the creek, where light was slightly stronger. There is a small area of sky on top of the frame where light is much stronger, but I did not metered from that area because it’s irrelevant to the scene if that little sky is blown out or not. It is blown out, but in this case it doesn’t make any difference. So my most relevant lightest area of the scene was that gravel bar. By desaturating the pic I measured that gray value in Photoshop and saw that it was a bit darker than 18% gray (which is a rather loose definition, by the way). And that coincides with the exposure compensation I used there, something around -0.3 or -0.7 if I remember correctly. This also happens to be a good example that a light area doesn’t necessarily need to be one that needs a positive compensation – but simply one that is lighter in relation to the other tonalities in the scene.
This is the very basic of the Zone System made famous by Ansel Adams. Understanding it, at least the basics of the idea, is understanding how your camera works. Believe me, it makes much more difference in your photography than understanding how a sensor is made or any other useless tech stuff.
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