Photo of the Week (and I Reorganized My Photography Galleries on Photoshelter)

Crocodile With Orange Butterfly, Tarcoles River, Costa Rica. (Nikon D5000, Nikkor 70-300mm VR lens)

I have a story that I find interesting about this photo. I was keeping a relatively safe distance from the 14ft crocodiles lining the banks of the Tarcoles River in Costa Rica by using my 300 mm zoom with the Nikon D5000. Taking into account the 1.5x crop factor for the DX sensor, this gives me a 450mm equivalent focal with a manageable size and weight. There was one other guy nearby. He was carrying a huge Canon with a lens so big, he was actually using the camera to rest on it. The lens hood was so tough, he would put the camera lens down vertically on the grass and lean on the back of it comfortably (he wasn’t very tall, but the back of the camera was well above his knees). I noticed this butterfly hovering over the croc, so I started tracking it through the viewfinder. Sure enough, it landed on the reptile’s eyelid for the shot above. While I was firing away I heard a grunt from the other guy and saw him lifting the monster to catch the shot. Needles to say, the butterfly was long gone by the time he managed to lift the gazillion pounds of his three foot long rig. I think the punchline of the story must be clear by now: the number one prerequisite to a great shot is actually getting the shot. Everything else is secondary.
For more images from Costa Rica and around the world, visit my website .

I finally got around to reorganize my galleries on Photoshelter .
Nothing changed on the home page and the portfolio presentation. In the Galleries section you will find a few new collections: Wildlife, Landscapes, Underwater, Civilization and Travel. The Fine Art Prints gallery collection has not changed. I added the Underwater Photography gallery to the Underwater collection and I will add more as soon as I find the time to publish one or two more galleries with underwater images.

On a side note, I was surprised by how many responses I got after publishing the Underwater Photography gallery. As I mentioned in the gallery intro, I held off publishing these images for a long time. The reason for that was that we do not use high end photo gear for our underwater photography, but rather Olympus point-and-shoot cameras. Pixel peepers are at risk of fainting if they blow the photos up to 100% on their screens. This proves one more time that composition and subject are the main ingredients for a good photo, while technical performance is a distant third, at best.

Back to the new collections page, I can now better structure galleries according to the new major themes, so I expect to be able to publish some more images that didn’t really fit properly in the old gallery structure.

As always, I welcome your feedback and suggestions.