madmanchan

a photo per day keeps the doctor away

Red, White, and Blue

Galápagos Islands

Boobies are one of the most recognizable and distinctive birds of the Galápagos. On this trip I saw red-footed, blue-footed, and Nazca boobies, and had numerous opportunities to photograph them.

I snapped this “classic” portrait of a red-footed booby late one afternoon. Most of the red-footed boobies in these islands are brown, but this bird had strikingly white plumage with dark flight feathers (known as a “white morph”). This tree was entirely in shade which resulted in uniform lighting. The blue bill, red feet, and high-contrast body naturally stood out from the monochromatic branches. To minimize the visual clutter of the branches, I used the widest aperture on my telephoto lens (f/5.6).

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