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 annual Las Vegas cyclocross race is unusual in that the pro races take place after dark. This makes photographing the event an interesting challenge. I traveled out to the Interbike trade show with a very minimal gear kit, but I wanted to make sure to get some shots at the cross race that were unique. Of course I wanted to use off camera lighting to capture some dramatic images that differ from the throngs of on camera flash shots being captured by the hundreds of other photographers.

The above image has a similar lighting style to the photos from the US Pro Cycling Challenge in Colorado this summer. But instead of a high powered Alien Bee and HSS Hack, I was able to use Nikon SB900s and regular sync speeds since there wasn’t much power needed at all.

I also used a lower shutter speed to add a little motion blur to impart the sense of speed. In fact, as the evening progressed, I played with using a longer and longer shutter to add some motion blur to the images. I love the color and the motion the blur, as well as the water spray frozen in mid air.

I didn’t feel like taking part in the scrum of all the photographers looking for that quintessential finish line shot, so I camped out around the corner. Lars van der Haar takes the win.

Third loser Rob Peeters shows the agony of defeat … but I’m sure he’s not losing any sleep about this loss after his silver medal at the World Championships yesterday.

I previously posted blog entries on the class. You can view them here:

Class 1: Nude body form images using natural light
Class 2: Nude body form images using hot lights
Class 3: Nude body form images using studio strobes

Originally I posted all of these images in black and white. This go around, I decided to bring in another element, the depth of color. I chose a series of images that focused on motion. Recently I’ve been discussing the state of photography in popular media, the culture of grossly exaggerated retouching of females, and how it affects the psyche of our culture. Without spinning off into that conversation, I will say that this selection of images reflects a desire to show the naked female form, without judgement of the form of the model. These images have a vagueness to them, which I feel leaves the actual form open to interpretation, so the view can imply their own dreamlike vision of beauty.

It is true, that the fashion in this issue is decidedly “Boulder”, and not on the scale of big budget New York fashion magazine. We were challenged to shoot in un-scouted pre-determined locations at local restaurants, use clothing from local clothing stores that may or may not be “fashion”, and to bring out the best in a mixture of local models and some who have never modeled before. Overall, we are happy with the results. There were some lessons learned that will be invaluable when we begin planning for the 2012 issue, which will undoubtedly be the best issue Boulder has ever seen.

The background scene in this image is the north Denver Skyline, Golden, and North Table Mountain as seen from the deck at Mt. Vernon Country Club. This self portrait was created in one frame, by putting the camera on a tripod and firing off multiple strobe pops. The trick is visualizing the image frame in your head, and trying to position yourself within the frame within the time allotted. There is no time to think, only time to act, and you never know what the results are going to be. In my case, my inner weirdness is unleashed.

The fall colors were at their peak last week, and I was determined to capture some magazine portfolio images before the snow started to fly. In the coming months I will be transforming this blog into a portfolio website for my travel, lifestyle and adventure sports photography. I will be specifically shooting images with a magazine cover format, like this image of Deanna Ardrey trail running with a view of Boulder Red Rocks in the background.

You might be saying, “Who is Deanna Ardrey?” Well, let me tell you. She could very well be the next big thing in US women’s running. She recently qualified for US Olympic Trials with a 2:43.12 at the Chicago marathon. This performance was 12th overall and 2nd American, which is impressive since Chicago is considered one of the five World Majors of marathon. The really exciting part is that she just started running two years ago, and was never truly serious about training until last year! So I was excited to do a running photo shoot with a genuine top athlete, and not just a model pretending to be a runner. So let’s all root for Deanna in January, when she makes the US Olympic Team with the run of her life at the Marathon Olympic Trials in Houston.

You may not know it, but we are entering a new era of photography and journalism. The beginnings are humble. But watch out. World Domination is nigh.

Jayme interviewed US Olympic triathlete Matty Reed in his home to discuss his eating habits for Boulder-based Edible Front Range magazine. I was there to capture an editorial portrait to accompany the article. The magazine editor requested that the image feature Matty in his kitchen along with his two children. I was a little nervous about how I was going to make this shot interesting, and not just a smile-and-say-cheese family portrait.

Honestly, I didn’t have a single idea of what I was going to do when I arrived on location. But I knew that something would pop into my curly head sooner or later. Eventually I got the idea to put Matty on his trainer, and have him cooking dinner for his kids while training. Whimsical? Maybe. But I’d bet that somewhere in the world there is some hard core triathlete that has actually done this.

You can download the PDF and read the full story HERE.

From a technical standpoint, I was using a Nikon D700, Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 VR2, AlienBee 1600 with a Vagabond Mini, and PocketWizard FlexTT5 MiniTT1, AC3 and AC9 components. I was able to pack all of this gear into a backpack and ride out to the course, which was essential since there was not close car access. There are two great things about these new PocketWizards. The first feature is that I’m able to capture very high shutter speeds while still using flash. Most of these shots are in the neighborhood of 1/1250 of a second, providing sharp, action stopping clarity. The second essential part of this setup, is that I have the ability to adjust the strobe power from the camera. The race was held under partly cloudy skies, and the sunlight was constantly changing from bright sun to shadow. It was extremely difficult to keep the exposures consistent, since every time the sun would change, I would have to make an adjustment. Fortunately, I was able to do it from the camera. I would have been able to take more consistent shots with constant ambient lighting conditions, but I’m certain that I will improve in my setting adjustments with practice. An unusual side effect of shooting over the sync speed, is that adjusting the shutter speed also affects your flash power. This made manual camera and flash power adjustments a bit more complicated than I’m used to.

As a final note, all this technology comes with another hefty price. I’ve been unable to get consistent firing with these units. It’s a real bummer when you’ve got one chance for the shot and the flash doesn’t go off. Insert unhappy face here. Nonetheless, the performance advantages and high power of this system keep me banging my head against the wall and keep trying to work out the bugs.

I’ve picked my top photos, based on lighting as well as importance of riders. This first photo is probably my top favorite, featuring this animal of a man called Jens Voigt. Simply a stunning photo and stunning expression. The sun was mostly behind the clouds which is giving him a soft rim light on his right arm and shoulder.

Next we have Colorado prodigy Danny Summerhill gritting his teeth and looking like he’s actually enjoying the pain.

I’ve never heard of Carlos Rodriguez, but I do like the feeling of this photo. Here the sun came out in full strength, so I cranked up the strobe to balance the sunlight, thereby giving the photo a bright commercial look.

I had to include this shot of Anders Lund since he’s being chased by some nutjob in a wig. Interesting blur on the left side from a spectator’s arm. I call that Art.

If this next shot was capture using merely natural light, we probably wouldn’t have been able to see the steely gaze of über-star Fränk Schleck from behind the visor of his time trial helmet.

I gotta give a shout out to Jeff Louder from Utah. The light in his eyes and the drool on his chin show that he’s deep in the pain cave on this ride. As the sun dipped behind the clouds but the flash power stayed high, the subject is illuminated strongly in front of an underexposed background.

Here’s the big shot of the big man Cadel Evans who was fresh off his first Tour de France win. Unfortunately Cadel rode on the far side of the road on the outside of the bend, which was farther away from the strobe than everyone else was riding. I guess when you are a superhero you don’t even have to take the shortest line.

In the above shot, do you see the yellow and green blob hovering about the team car? Yeah, well that is an Aussie cycling fan cheering on The Man!

Here we have the stage winner and eventual overall race winner Levi Leipheimer. This is where I have to shed a small tear, since I experienced a painful PocketWizard misfire. Decent shot, but to me it lacks the punch of some of the other shots without the auxiliary boost of light. I did very minimal retouching on these photos, but I did brighten Levi’s face in this shot since it was underexposed.

Things were getting crazy by the time Stage 2 winner, fan favorite, and penultimate rider George Hincapie hit the final stretch. I switched to a horizontal position to show more of the crowd jumping in front of me.

The final rider of the day was race leader and young American Tejay Van Garderen. Tejay put up a valiant fight but was denied the victory by the deep experience of veteran Levi Leipheimer. You’ll be hearing much more from Tejay in the decade to come. On a technical note, it’s pretty obvious where my strobe was placed!

Well I hope the photographers out there have enjoyed my technical details, and everyone else probably isn’t reading this and just looked at the pictures anyway. Another option with the PocketWizard Flex units, is that I could have shot using TTL flash metering. This may have made keeping up with the changing light a bit easier. But frankly, auto shooting scares me. Under normal portrait conditions I like to have complete control of my camera and flash so that I get exactly the results I’m looking for. However, if I get another chance to shoot in conditions like this, I just might see how these units are able to auto expose the riders.

Here’s a shot of the overall scene at the park.

After the comp, I grabbed a couple riders for some shots at the last jump on the course.

Here is a front flip from the winner, AJ Anaya. This guy is a real pro, and threw down mad trick on every feature on the course. His double tail whips require video to really be appreciated!