The Galapagos offers incredible snorkeling opportunities. Our first underwater experiences were off the black lava beaches of Floreana Island. Although visibility was not the best due to our timing and a strong lunar tide, we still experienced lots of marine life. There were countless giant green sea tortoises and stingray everywhere we looked.

Here Jayme inspects a particularly large sea turtle. As I said, we had cloudy waters, but it still appeared clearer to us than it appears in the photographs.

Our next Galapagos snorkeling experience was in the aquarium-like waters at Los Tuneles off the shores of Isabela Island. This area was incredibly fun to play in, as there are countless lava arches and tunnels to swim in, around, through, and under.

The Los Tuneles area is filled with lava reef that are teeming with fish. I found fish incredibly hard to photograph with the old point and shoot underwater camera! But it was fun trying nonetheless.

The Stoplight Parrotfish is a sex-changing fish. Think about it.

We also went hunting for the seahorse in the mangroves. We didn’t find him, so I just took a picture of mangrove roots so that I didn’t feel like a complete failure.

Hey look, another pair of boobies!

Galapagos penguins. A pelican takes flight. Finally we have a cute little gray bird with a red mouth. I have no idea what he is, and our guide is no longer around to let me know In addition to the terrestrial landscape, Los Tuneles also offers excellent snorkling. Fortunately I brought my underwater camera, so we will be viewing those images in my next post coming tomorrow.

The landscape of the Galapagos is dominated by the volcanos that formed the islands. We traveled from our Red Mangrove Lodge in Puerto Villamil to the upper reaches of the Sierra Negra Volcano for a hike along the volcano’s rim. The tops of the volcanos are usually covered in clouds, so we were prepared for rain and varying visibility. Fortunately, the weather was kind, and we were able to peak out from beneath the clouds to see the coast.

Once we reached the northern edge of the rim, we were impressed by the expansive caldera. Sierra Negra is the second largest caldera in the world at 9.3km across, and quite active as well. The most recent eruption was in October 2005.

After hiking for a while, we enjoyed some lunch under this giant Jaboncillo Tree.

Another lone tree on the horizon, as we descended down into the lava field on the north side of the volcano. Unfortunately, the clouds blocked the view of the two northern volcanos on the island, so we turned around a little early to avoid the impending rain showers.

On the way back down the mountain, we stopped for a tasty lunch at an organic farm called Campo Duro Eco Lodge. I didn’t take too many photos, but I did capture this image of a Galapagos giant tortoise in dramatic lighting. I think he looks quite evil!

Isabela Island is the largest island in the Galapagos, and the third island on our Red Mangrove Galapagos Tour. We are staying the the small town of Puerto Villamil, footsteps away from a white sandy beach on the ocean. Palm trees are not indigenous to the Galapagos, but they help to create that storybook tropical feel.

Once again, the main attraction here is the abundant wildlife. We took a cruise around the bays and inlets created by the ancient lava flows, lookin’ for critters. We were not disappointed, and we soon found some Galapagos penguins.

We visited Islote Tintoreras, which is a nature hike through one of these lava fields. The black lava rock is covered in white lichen, which offers awesome contrast for landscape photos.

A curious sea lion waddled up out of the water and approached our group  as we walked on by.

I’ve already posted lots of marine iguana photos, but here we encountered large groups of juveniles all piled up on top of each other, retaining the day’s heat. It was super funny to watch them climbing all over each other in funny positions.

The Great Blue Heron is not unique to the Galapagos … but still makes for a dramatic nature photo in great light.

Back at our casa on the beach, we watched yet another fabulous sunset over the Pacific Ocean. Tomorrow we will be climbing the volcano to the second largest active caldera in the world.

After a day on Santa Cruz Island, we took the hour and forty five minute boat ride to Floreana Island. Once leaving the island you can see how the clouds linger over the highland volcanos and taper off over the sea.

At we approached Floreana Island, we could see a rain shower directly over our destination, the town of Puerto Velasco.

You usually don’t have to travel far on the Galapagos to see marine wildlife. Here you can get a feel of how concerned the sea lions are with our presence.

It is actually quite a task to keep up with the planning, photography, writing, image tagging, blogging, and publishing while in the middle of a busy trip. We are often seen working on our laptops while eating, driving, and boating. This sea lion clearly doesn’t really give a shit whether we are using a Mac or a PC.

Also within a few feet of the dock, are dozens of Marine Iguanas. This particular type of iguana is unique to this island, has bright red and green coloring, and is nicknamed the Christmas Iguana.

Since the male iguanas have no money, they must fight for the most desirable piece of real estate. The ladies seek out the male with the best piece of real estate with Pacific Ocean access, just like in LA.

Our Red Mangrove Floreana Lodge was a short walk from the pier. In a town of 120 people, everything is a short walk!

Our cabins on this remote island were located on the shores of a small bay with a black lava beach. Around the end of the peninsula was La Loberia: the sea lion beach. Look closely and you’ll see some of them napping in the sand close to the shoreline.

A baby sea lion runs to his mother … soooooooo cute!

We also took a ride to the top of a cloud-shrouded hill outside of town. From here you can see the town of Puerto Valesco, and the sea lion peninsula to the left.

Here is a quick shout out to one of our gear sponsors for this trip, Smith and Suncloud sunglasses. We’ve been rocking these glasses with polarized lenses on all of our sunny boat trips and have been loving them.

We enjoyed a brilliant sunset right from the deck of our cabin. The sun is setting on this blog post as well, next we will be traveling to our third and final island, Isabela.

On the Galapagos Islands, the weather varies dramatically from the coast to the volcanic interior. The center of the islands, known as The Highlands, are normally shrouded by misty clouds. We headed into the Highlands to check out some volcanic terrain, as well as to check out some of the famous Galapagos tortoises.

El Rancho Primicias is a privately owned ranch on the edge of the Galapagos National Park lands. Giant tortoises are migratory animals, and naturally pass through the private lands into the park. Since the tortoises became a protected species, the owners of the ranch land switched from being cattle farmers to tortoise caretakers, selling entry, supplies and gifts to tourists, and thereby supporting the tortoise population recovery. Tortoises on the property are also taught to strike cute poses for photographers, which dramatically increases visitation after the images go viral.

Why do the tortoises need to recover? Well, the early Spanish explorers and subsequent pirates were not kind to the tortoise population. Sea goers could stack the tortoises in the hulls by the thousands, exploiting the fact that tortoises can live up to a year without food or water. Word is that they taste like chicken, although these protected gentle giants are no longer found on any menus. Yeah, mankind has been quite barbaric over the years.

Also on the grounds at the ranch, we were horrified to discover the deranged Stevtoise, a half man, half tortoise monster, thought by scientists to never have ever existed.

Nearly blind, we quickly fled the land of the tortoises and sought refuge from the constant mist which made our pants damp. Luckily there is a lava tunnel nearby. It was dark and dripping wet, just the way I like my tunnels.

Way to go Steve, way to turn a perfectly functional and informative blog post into a complete mess. Check back tomorrow when we go somewhere else awesome and I write irreverently about it.

We checked into Red Mangrove Lodge, which is on Santa Cruz Island in the most populous town on the Galapagos Islands, Puerto Ayora. This is the first of three Red Mangrove lodges that we will be staying at, each of which is on a different island.

Even hotel grounds are filled with exotic animals. There are baby Marine Iguanas sunning themselves on the deck most of the day. They barely even get out of your way when you walk by.

Even more exciting than the lizards, are the pair of sea lions that wrestle and bark and wake you up early in the morning. Then once you are awake, they decide to come up on the deck and take a nap.

While shooting some pictures of the sea lions sleeping, the one young male decided to wake up and stroll on by. On his way past me, he let out an unexpected growl. Sorry for the image that isn’t sharp, but I’m not used to trying to maintain focus while crapping my pants.

Red Mangrove Lodge really is intertwined in the mangroves.

There are also some bike rentals included. I’m hoping we get a chance to do some exploring on our trip back through here on the way home.

That’s all for now, it’s time to head out snorkeling!

We arrived at our Galapagos host, Red Mangrove Adventure Tours and Lodges. Red Mangrove offers the first land based Galapagos Tours, and they are geared toward adventure types like us. We will be staying at three different Red Mangrove properties on three different islands. We scarfed down a quick lunch and were whisked away to our first afternoon tour of lava strewn El Garrapatero Beach.

OK so I don’t normally do the “animals in nature” photography thing. But, when in the Galapagos, a photographer can’t really help himself. You generally don’t need some giant 600mm lens, since most of the critters are quite fearless and you can walk right up to them. I bought the full frame Nikon 28-300 lens just for this trip, and so far it has been awesome has offered adequate reach. It is the lens that replaces the camera bag.

By far the most colorful animals we have seen have been the Sally Lightfoot Crab. These prolific critters provide brilliant colorful contrast to the dark lava rocks. The juveniles are a camouflaging darker color, but the adults don’t have any real predators, other than their buddies, who can sometimes turn carnivorous.

Frigatebirds are the pirates of the air. They don’t have the gland that secretes the oil that waterproofs their feathers like other sea birds, so they cannot dive. Thus they have to resort to other methods of acquiring food. One of their favorite methods is stealing it from other birds like Blue-Footed Boobies, but in this case they were having a battle royal amongst themselves.

We found this pair of marine iguanas lazily chillin’ on the lava rocks. They are the only sea going lizards in the world, and they can only be found on these islands.

That’s all for today, as we spent the remainder of the day eating, editing, and catching up on some much needed sleep. But be sure to check back for tomorrow’s adventure, where we visit a preserve full of giant tortoises.

The Galapagos are not the easiest place to get to, especially considering they aren’t all that far away from Denver. Our trip began with a redeye from Denver to Miami, so we knew the first leg was going to be a bit rough. We flew from Miami into the capital of Ecuador, Quito. Quito is situated at 9000 feet, making it the second highest capital in the world after La Paz. As the plane spiraled down into the mountain valley, I was impressed by the colorful buildings, modern skyscrapers, and cloud shrouded mountains.

We sat in the airport waiting for our third leg of the trip from Quito down to the coastal city of Guayaquil. The Ron Medellin Anejo rum was soothing an annoying head cold that I awoke to the day before. I had the realization that I really don’t know much of anything about Ecuador. I know that the Galapagos Islands have abundant wildlife and giant tortoises, since the advertising agencies have done well to promote that to the general American public. But what other stories are here to be told?

This is the last image from my Great American Road Trip adventure! On the road back to Boulder, I was struck by this cool cloud formation.

If this was two months ago, I may have had some thoughtful trip summary to write about. But, as it turns out, it’s 5:45 in the morning and I’m at Tuff River Stuff in Salida, packing up for our final departure to the Grand Canyon. I found my way onto a 16 person private rafting trip. We will be floating, camping, and paddling for 22 days.

As this is the 21st century, we will have some contact to the outside world. I will be updating my Twitter and Facebook status with our location daily. I’m looking forward to unplugging and removing myself from the grid. As you might expect, I have camera gear packed in Pelican cases, so I’ll be back with imagery.

See you on the flipside!

I will finish this post after my return, but I really wanted to finish up this adventure before starting my new one!

As I was driving through town, I started to get freaked out by the nasty smog cloud blowing over from Juarez! But luckily as I headed north out of the city and climbed up to the foot of the Franklin Mountains, the air cleared. I parked at the Tom Mays Unit of Franklin Mountains State Park. The winter air was in the mid 60s, a perfect temperature for mountain biking in the Chihuahuan Desert. I don’t even want to think about what it’s like to ride here in the summer! There is not a speck of shade anywhere to be found.

The trails are rocky and technical. There is only one steep long climb, but the ride is constantly up and down the whole way. There aren’t too many places to get going very fast before a corner or a gully or a pile of rocks causes you to trim your speed. Overall, it is a fun ride. I road the loop all the way out and back, and it was a solid three hours or so, not that I was really keeping track of the time.

I continued my trend of finding random treasures along the trail. Today I happened to notice two pills on the trail. I ate them, but I didn’t really feel any effects. I did get lonely on these trails after a while. Luckily my spirit animal came and kept me company for the middle portion of the ride. Who would have thought that the rare albino desert platypus was my spirit animal? I was really impressed in his technical riding abilities.

The main thing that I was struck by was the fact that every bit of plant matter (other than the grass) was covered in thorns and prepared to shred my skin to bits. It has been three weeks since the ride, and the scabs from all the scratched on my legs are finally gone. The desert seems to have the desire to take the trails back, and there is growth encroaching on the trails. Crashing is not an option. I pity the person who tries to learn how to mountain bike here, because the trails are definitely hard enough to knock down an intermediate rider! It is for sure true rugged western mountain bike riding.

I stopped in at Desert Sports for some trail info and to buy some Slime tubes. I was happy to find that they had 29er presta slime tubes for me! I didn’t have time for any flats from the innumerable thorns that I would find along the way. I was directed to the Lajitas Trail System, also called the Lajitas airport trails. It was only a couple miles from the shop, and right on the highway, so it sounded good to me.

The trails themselves were only moderately exciting. It was pretty cool to ride in new terrain, but I think I would get bored of these trails pretty quickly if I lived here. They are mostly flat, with some moderate technical bits. There are a few missing signs, which makes route finding difficult in a few places. I rode most of the singletrack of the trail system in under two hours with lots of photo breaks. It’s my understanding that you can link these trails into a nearly limitless ride … but you would likely need local knowledge for that.

I did find a couple cool discoveries along the way. The first was this cool old delivery truck. I must be the King Supreme Old Truck Manifester, because wherever I go I can always find old trucks to take pictures of. This day was no exception, apparently! I like the above shot … now you know why the truck was stranded here.

I climbed around on the inside of the truck. There were some pots and pans and some silverware, and it seems that the inside of the truck has provided shelter for some persons through the years.

I really like the thorns in this shot. I also like wide angles and f/22!

Eventually I made my way along the sandy, rocky singletrack.  I was just riding along, when I noticed the great texture of the cracked and broken mud.  As I was looking down, I caught a glimpse of my second found treasure of the afternoon.

This seashell is small, less than an inch long.  It was sitting perfectly in the middle of a cracked piece of mud.  It was perfectly clean, without any mud residue.  How did it get here? Did someone place it here? Did they hope for someone to find it to mess with their head? If they did; It worked!

Well that’s all for another mountain bike adventure in the far reaches of the country. Check back tomorrow when I check out the trails outside of El Paso.

Happy Monday on the Steve Z Blog! When we last left off I was in San Antonio at the photography convention. After that I headed west across the giant state of Texas en route back to Colorado. My next stop on the Great American Road Trip was to check out Big Bend National Park. I was checking out Google Earth the night before my drive in, and I almost decided not to go. For a guy who lives in Colorado, the landscape didn’t seem too impressive! But, I was so close, so I decided to take the southern detour anyway. There was supposed to be some good mountain biking down there anyway

Sure enough, there really isn’t much going on down there, when you compare it to the national parks of the western states. There is one clump of mountains that pretty much would be on the outside of the real national parks in Utah! Oh well. I did a super quick tour through at high noon and kept on truckin’ on through. So I was trying to get shots in the most difficult time of the day for nature photography. Most of my shots have some sort of sun flare in them to add a compositional element to the big clear blue sky.

I did realize that it was the middle of winter here as well. The plant life was looking quite dead and desolate. I’m sure that it’s a different scene when the desert is in full bloom. This century plant was looking quite stark and wicked, in contrast to what it looks like when blooming with yellow flowers.

One of the few plants that still had color were these colorful purple and orange cacti. It was pretty hard to get shots with them since they tend to grow at the base of scrubby bushes. Overall, it was a good photo challenge to come up with some interesting shots with really harsh mid-day sun.

Next up will be some desert mountain biking in Lajitas!

For most of my professional photography work, I spend a lot of time working to achieve accurate colors. My goal is normally to produce natural skin tone and “honest” photography, where the photo interest comes from composition, expression, lighting, and other factors. I’m usually not about funky or gimmicky processing.

Well, that’s fine and good, but today I’m hung over and I’m feeling like pushing the boundaries of what I normally do! Sometimes it’s good to just play and have fun and make art. Today’s photos are from my walk about day around San Antonio. I have a few still life photos, and frankly, they aren’t really all that amazing. So I decided to have some fun and do some funky processing on them to make them a little more interesting. Everything that has been done is using the color, exposure, and tone curve sliders in Adobe Lightroom.

I often use the sliders to work with colors and achieve tones and monochromatic themes within images. Usually I do it in a manner where the images look close to what we would see in real life. But not today! In these images I pretty much slammed the sliders left and right, actually trying to achieve grainy artifacts. Why not?! We shouldn’t be afraid to push the limits once and a while, and of course use adjustments in our editing software that we don’t normally use. Cheers, have a good one.

Round Top is funky little touristy Old West kinda town. This fine example of a Round Top Taxi was parked out front of the antique store next to the cafe.

Gotta love the preferred fuel!

Round Top is known for festivals in the summer. It was a cold and overcast day and it was starting to drizzle, so there weren’t any scenic photos happening for me. There was this giant cool old tree out front that was fun to shoot tilt shift photos of!

This was my first trip to Texas. When in the cities, I had this sense of how the oil industry money shapes the culture. It was reminiscent, yet different, from the way that Los Angeles has been shaped by Hollywood money. My free Thursday trip to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston was funded by Shell. Big trucks burning down the fossil fuels in a sprawling highway culture is pretty much the opposite of Boulder. Experiencing the contrasts of the culture of this great country is a memorable experience of The Great American Road Trip.

I took the southern route from Louisiana into Texas, and enjoyed mile after mile of completely desolate highway. There were some amazingly long and flat sections.  Driving the speed limit was pretty much impossible!

On the stretch of highway south of Houma, there is a long canal lined with homes where the shimp boat captains live.  There are all sorts of boats, from plush and expensive looking ones which require large crews, to run down relics that seem barely seaworthy. Here’s an image of a boat that did not weather the storm.

There is a lot of space down there at the bottom of the country.  A random minimalist composition.

More trees and moss.  This one tree was still alive in a grove of death.

I planned my route by using Google Maps on my phone. I didn’t notice that my route required me to take a ferry across a channel in Cameron.  I showed up at the loading area exactly as the ferry was pulling away.  Bummer. But the bright side, is that I had a front row parking spot when I did load. It was a busy spot, and I saw two giant tankers pass through, on their shipping route up into the interior lake system.

This is the end of Louisiana week here at Steve Z Land … join me next week for Texas and New Mexico!

The majority of the house are built on pilings. I saw a funny billboard advertising services to raise homes. It had a picture of one, and said “Bayou Hi-Rise”. Pretty funny!

Speaking of funny signs, I particularly enjoyed this one. “Ring Ring. “Hello, this is Kevin.” “Hey Kevin, sorry to call at 3am, but I’m in need of an emergency mackerel cleaning!”

I traveled south of Houma on Rte 56 and eventually made my way to the end in the town of Cocodrie. There are vacation homes with lots of signs indicating that it’s a Fisherman’s Paradise. This of course explains the need for fish cleaning services.

On the way back I headed on Rte 57 out across the open bayou at about 1 foot above sea level. It was a really cool twisty road lined with tall grasses. The destruction from Hurricane Katrina was revealed in the landscape.

The region has a great expanse of land that is prone to flooding. Other than the stilt houses, other regional evidence is revealed at the cemetery.