Galapagos - My first time there and it was totally amazing! - Day one

For many years now I have been talking to other photographer friends and my photo tour guests about their favorite places that they have visited. Consistently the answer came back - Galapagos. It has been on my bucket list for a long time, and last month marked my first visit to these amazing islands. After spending more than a week there and seeing what we saw, I expect to be back there many times in the years to come. 

Actually, I have already added another photo tour to Galapagos for 2027, which you can see HERE. I just added it to my web site about a week ago and it is already half sold out.

What makes this area so special is that every island (or different sides of the larger islands) has something totally different from the previous stop. The terrain is different, the wildlife is different, and the photo opportunities are plentiful.

Today is the first of numerous blog posts from the Galapagos trip last month, and we start from the beginning. Well...actually we did a day tour of Quito, Ecuador before we headed to the islands, but I will save that for another time.

After landing on Santa Cruz island, we were transported from the airport to the coast, where we would get on board our boat. As we approached the dock, we stopped to see this beautiful view of the water. It was gorgeous!

We checked out our rooms on the boat, met the crew, had a nice lunch, and then headed back onto the island to go see the Giant Tortoises. 

The Galapagos islands are most known for the Giant tortoises and the Blue-footed boobies. On this first day, we got to spend hours with the tortoises and were thrilled to see so many of them. The light was perfect and I encouraged my photo tour guests to get down low (those that could) to get photos at their eye level.  I was using the Canon R5 Mark II with the RF 24-105mm lens and took most of the photos as low and wide as I could.

As I mentioned, we had overcast skies which was perfect for photographing these guys without harsh sunlight and shadows.

The Giant tortoises can grow up to 600 pounds and live as long as 150 years. I took this group shot to show the size of the animal compared to us. I also took individual images of all my guests with the animals.

After shooting many images with the RF 24-105mm lens, I switched to the Canon RF 100-500mm lens to get in nice and close. 

I encouraged everyone to shoot in burst mode to get nice photos showing their movement.  We all decided that Steven Spielberg must have used the face of the tortoise as his inspiration for "ET".

There must have been 40 of these tortoises in the area that we visited, and we had the place to ourselves, which allowed for images without any other people in the shot. We watched as they ate...

...and went for a swim. 

It was really fun to watch them move around and capture them in their environment. After hearing about these creatures for so long, it was awesome to actually be in the Galapagos photographing them.

Just before leaving the area, it was time for me to get my portrait with the tortoise. It was an amazing start to an incredible week in the Galapagos. Stay tuned for so many more photos, above and below the water!

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• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Alaska and more.

• You can purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Peru Photo Tour - Our last days in the Amazon Rain Forest

Each time that I do the Peru photo tour, we end with 3 nights in the Amazon rain forest. It is a welcome change from the high altitude and cooler weather of Cusco. On this trip, we did something a little different, taking a sunset boat ride on canoes looking for wildlife on the day we arrived.

The first thing we saw were some Muscovy ducks (thanks to Google Images for identifying this one) flying in the distance. I was using the Canon RF 100-500mm lens, but it was still way out there. Even though this was a pretty heavy crop, the high resolution of the Canon R5 Mark II meant that I still had a nice photo.

As we paddled along the water, we spotted a bunch of Parakeet around a hole in the tree. While watching them, a Woodpecker flew over and took their spot. It was funny to watch the Parakeet sitting off to the side and watching the Woodpecker from a nearby perch.

Just after taking the previous photo of the birds, the sun dropped below the horizon and we headed back to the dock. But not before taking this photo of the pretty scene. 

The next day we do a walk through the rain forest (on a raised path) to get to a nearby lake. There is always lots to see here, including this beautiful Ibis that flew by us. 

Our guides paddled us around the lake (with some assistance from me) so that we could spot some good subjects. We did get some nice close-up photos of the cayman in the water, but I like this one because it shows "the scene".

The lake is known for their Giant Otters, and we caught a glimpse of some of them playing around in the water. 

Right as we got off our boat, we looked up and there was a group of Red Howler monkeys above us. If you read the blog a lot, you know that I have seen countless Howler monkeys in my 15 trips to the rain forest of Costa Rica, but those are the Mantled (black) Howler monkeys so it was fun to capture an image of the red species. 

We also saw a small group of Capuchin monkeys, which look a little different from those in Costa Rica.

On our last day, we got up VERY early in the morning to visit the clay licks of Peru. After many hours of travel, we were treated to a half hour show of Blue-headed parrots which were covering the face of the clay. It was really fun to see for the first time, but difficult to capture in photos.

We did get a chance to photograph the birds as they flew over us.

We had hoped to see the Blue and Yellow Macaw on the clay lick, but that was not to be. We had numerous groups fly over, but none of them came down to the clay.

Regardless...it was fun to capture images of them in flight.

As we were wrapping up at the clay lick, one of our guides pointed out this owl that was perched right near us. We all had a great time getting photos of this Burrowing Owl as it kept an eye (or two) on us.

We stopped at a local place (located just off the river) for some lunch, and some of us caught a glimpse of this Brown-mantled Tamarin. This is a species of monkey but almost looks more like a bear. Another first for me!

While eating our lunch, we were surrounded by beautiful butterflies...

...and hummingbirds. It was the perfect way to wrap up the trip. We then went back to the hotel and relaxed for our last afternoon in the Amazon before packing up and heading to Lima the next morning. Another successful photo tour to Peru and I look forward to going back in 2027. Make sure to join me on that trip! 

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Alaska and more.

• You can purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Peru Photo Tour - Special images of the people from the Sacred Valley

When I take people to Peru for a photo tour, one of the favorite stops is almost always when we visit a local village high up in the Sacred Valley. Before we all go to their home for lunch, we usually stop by the school (or church) to see all the children. 

On this visit, I suggested a group photo for all the children and their teachers. It was fun for them and this way I can print some photos for them and bring them back to them on the next visit.

The kids took a little while to warm up to us, but eventually got used to us and our cameras and I encouraged them to let me take their portraits.

I was shooting with the Canon R5 Mark II and the RF 100-500mm lens since I did not have my RF 70-200mm lens with me (my favorite portrait lens). They went from reluctant to hamming it up for me. 

They also went from one child to a whole bunch. They would run out to a spot, let me take their photo...

...and then run back to me to see the photos on the back of the camera.

They were so cute! Thanks to Maureen (one of my guests) for taking these photos of me having fun with the kids.

Then it was time to head up to the house for lunch. On our way up, I saw this baby on mom's back and had to get this shot.

When we got to the house, everyone had a great time taking photos of them preparing our meal.

There is nothing more authentic than this!

Half way through lunch I remembered that I had printed images from our last visit, and brought them as gifts. I went back to our van and got them for the ladies I had photographed. They really enjoyed seeing themselves in print. 

After lunch we walked to a ceremonial area, so that they could perform a blessing over the Alpaca. I saw that one of the little boys was helping Maureen to the location and captured that sweet moment.

They rounded up the Alpaca from the fields nearby and brought them into a small area.

We all watched as they performed their blessing.

Two of the ladies performed a dance. After taking a bunch of photos at a fast shutter speed, I encouraged everyone to slow their shutter speed to show the motion of the dance. This was taken at 1/8 of a second.

They offered any of us to pick up an Alpaca for a photo. Bart hoisted this one like it was nothing. :)

We even had a chance to get a group shot with all of us.

After visiting the family, we went back into the local town to visit a market. The people at this market have amazing character and I love photographing them.

Look at that face. :)

While walking around, I saw this cat peek out amongst the eggs and loved that moment. 

While we were photographing the market, I was teaching some different techniques. In this case, I was showing people how we could focus on the flowers and make them the subject, while having the merchant be the supporting subject.

I love cheese, and this all looked so good.

This last photo still makes me laugh. I was walking through one of the meat areas and saw this dog sitting by the butcher, waiting for some scraps. This reminded me of a Norman Rockwell scene. Oh...and yes...the dog was thrown some scraps soon after this photo was taken.

The next blog post will be from the Amazon rain forest of Peru. After that, I will start sharing images from the Galapagos photo tour which followed this one. Lots of photo to share with you all! 

I also added two more photo tours (Peru and Galapagos) for 2027. You can see those HERE.

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Alaska and more.

• You can purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Peru Photo Tour - visiting Machu Picchu once again!

Going to visit Machu Picchu is a once in a lifetime trip for most people, so it was a real treat to visit there for the second time in as many years. Just like we did the year before, we made two visits to the site, once in the afternoon and one time the following morning. This gives us two chances to get a nice clear view of the ruins, and since Machu Picchu is located in the cloud forest, it might take a couple of times to get a good view.

On this trip we were fortunate to have a good clear view on the first day. Not only did we have clear views, but we also had nice clouds in the sky to make for interesting photos.

Since this was my second photo tour to Peru in the two years, I knew the best places for my guests to shoot from, and I pushed myself to get something different from last time. For this reason, I looked for different angles and perspectives of these iconic ruins.

I even created a really large panoramic image (100MB) using 5 overlapping images from the Canon R5 Mark II camera (using the RF 24-105mm lens with a Tiffen Circular Polarizing filter).

The clouds were moving in and out which gave us some really interesting light to work with. 

I saw this pretty plant growing on one of the walls and thought that it would make an interesting subject for a photo. I focused the lens on the plant and took this at f/4 so that the ruins would be out of focus, but just clear enough for the viewer to know what was in the background.

We arrived at the ruins at 2pm and took 3 hours to photograph the area. Just before they closed the area (which happens at 5pm every evening), I saw some llamas coming towards us. While other people were trying to get selfies with these animals, I was focused on getting images of them with the ruins behind them. For a split second these two kissed and I got this shot, which is my favorite from the day.

After taking that photos, we were walking through the back portion of Machu Picchu when I saw this animal perched on a rock. At first I thought it was a rabbit, but our guide told me that this is a Peruvian Chinchilla.

The best part of closing the area at 5pm, is that everyone else was gone and it gave us clean shots with no people in the frame.

It was really quiet at this time.

The next morning, some of us woke up at 5am and headed back up to Machu Picchu to see the sunrise. Unfortunately it was raining and the visibility was really poor. BUT there was an advantage to this, as many people decided not to make the climb and this provided some nice quiet time to have the place to ourselves.

We did have a quick clearing at one point, but that was the extent of the view that day.  The great part was this...one of my guests had her birthday that morning and she had some time to stay at the top of the mountain and enjoy the unspoiled scene. She said that it was the best birthday she had ever celebrated and that made my day!

Later in the morning we took the train from Machu Picchu back to the Sacred Valley. Some of my guests were enjoying time outside, at the back of the train car. I saw this and thought that it would make for a really cool motion blur photo and a great teaching moment. I went back to my luggage and grabbed my camera. I set the ISO to 50 and the aperture to 22, which gave me a shutter speed of 1/5 sec. I took numerous photos and then showed them to my photo tour guests. They were inspired by this and most of them tried some slow shutter images for themselves. I loved that! 

Oh - and by the way - I just added new photos tours to Peru and Galapagos for 2027 on my web site. Check them out HERE.

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Alaska and more.

• You can purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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