The Eyes Have It
Technically, I was on a birding trip in Borneo although I was here for the primates and more. Rod set up two trips – one for birding and the other for primates – but the primate trip was canceled and I moved into the birding trip since it followed the same basic itinerary and I knew I could find other things to do when the birding became monotonous and the primates were hiding. Although I love birds and I do enjoy a day of birding, I now know full-well that I am not a birder and as far as I am concerned birding is for the birds 🙂
When I was in Madagascar we witnessed a few crazy birder scenes such as arguments over what birds were seen, which sex was seen and whether or not a bird could be ticked off the always present bird checklist. We had great laughs with it because my roommate, Peter, was going on a three-week birder trip in Madagascar as soon as the kayak trip was over. Peter is not a birder and he was only signed up on that trip because it was being led by a favorite octogenarian author of his. The author, though, was ill and he had to pull out of the trip leaving no real reason for Peter to be stuck on a birder trip for three weeks. I need to email Peter to see how he did! I know he would laugh to find out I just did two weeks in Borneo with birders.
We basically covered three major areas of Sabah – Danum Valley, Kitabatangan River and Mt Kinabalu. Each provided 1-2 days of fun birding. Fun is when every bird is new and interesting and there is plenty of them about because you are in the places where they are readily seen. Birds such as the rhinoceros hornbill (not too dissimilar to the toucan in the Americas), crested serpent eagle, bright orange minuvets, the very rare but redily seen storm’s stork and blue-beaked broadbills are absolute stunners and I am very glad to have seen them so easily. Unfortunately, once the easy ones are done the birders go into a mode where they will spend hours hunting for one particular bird. Much of this time is just spent standing while the guide makes calls for the bird to answer. While it is nice to finally see that bird come to the call this activity is one of the most boring of my life.
Luckily, I don’t get bored too easily in the rainforest and I was able to use all of this dull time to find weird stuff in the forest and work on my photography. There are a lot of positives to being in the forest with birders especially being that they are very observant people so very little bird-wise or other escapes detection. They are good people to be with for finding monkeys! I know I won’t ever do a full bird trip again, but I look forward to seeing birds with Rod in Vietnam as well as back at home in Nairobi where my apartment complex is regularly visited by outstanding birds. It’s a simple bird like an ibis that can keep me interested anytime.
So the photography became more of the last two weeks than I ever imagined. We basically had good weather so there were few instances when I had to put the camera in my dry bag and stand around getting wet. I take a lot of photos when I am on a roll. I am sure there are people around me that must think I am nuts. I can easily fire off a hundred photos of one subject. I do this for a reason when shooting wildlife. A reason I have come to learn very well. I don’t do it because I want a hundred of the same photos, I do it because getting the one great shot means you need to take a lot of good ones. Photography is a series of compromises. Aiming a camera at a building on a sunny day offers few compromises and challenges, but shooting wildlife in a rainforest offers many. The damn wildlife just doesn’t pose for you and it likes to move around as well. Plus there is rarely a clear view between the camera and the subject. And then there is the not-so-little issue about sunlight – there is almost none. Try taking a photo of a dark monkey fifty meters above you in a tree full of leaves and a bright grey sky as a background. So, I know my obstacles and I know the compromises I need to make (or at least I know a bunch and I learn more each time I do this). When I am ripping off the hundred photos of a handsome orangutan, I am regularly changing settings hoping to conquer one of the obstacles without totally compromising everything else. Too high ISO – grainy photo, too slow exposure – blurry subject, too little aperture – out of focus, etc, etc. Unfortunately, the subject does its own thing while I am doing mine. While I would like the orangutan to sit still on an open branch with a fruit in his mouth and his eyes locked on me, I have not learned that trick yet.
Every great picture of an animal is separated from the good ones due to one thing – EYES. I believe eyes are the most fascinating and beautiful biological element on this planet and it is a rare great photo of animals including humans where the eyes do not have some special quality. I think one of the most stunning things I have seen on this odyssey is the eyes of insects such as butterflies and I really only see those when I review my photos. Unfortunately, binoculars really do not help in this matter! I like it when the subject has its eyes locked on me or when it is looking astray with maybe a glimmer of light reflecting. But when it is fifty meters away I cannot see this kind of detail through my viewfinder. Hence I just keep auto-firing the camera hoping that the instant one is taken coincides with the animal behaving as I has wished. Along with the exact eye appearance, there are other details that make a nice situation. My favorite of these is position of the tongue. I find nothing funnier than a lemur appearing to stick its tongue out at me or a cape buffalo picking its nose with its long one. Another great situation and usually totally unpredictable and lightning fast is animal mating (see blurry picture of macaques in Borneo photos – even when blurry… I like it!).
Thankfully, digital photography allows me to click away with no cost and allows me to catch something I like and delete most of the others. It certainly allows me to appear to be a better photographer than I am and I really like that. My fellow visitors probably hate this! Now if I can only figure out how to talk to the animals then I can solve the whole subject-out-of-control problem 🙂 Overall, great trip to Borneo. The birders really came in handy helping me to find interesting subjects. Unfortunately, more of birders and birding war stories would drive me crazy. One aspect about birding that did help me was getting some rest. It can be very exhausting to keep up with others while taking good photos. We find something, I take my time doing the photo right and then I have to run to catch up with the group. Try running and then holding a camera still enough during the excitement of seeing a gibbon swinging in the trees! Luckily, birders park it regularly giving me time to catch my breath so its never really an extended physical challenge. By the way, we saw over 200 species of birds over the past two weeks and almost every species was new to me and almost every one of them was exceptionally beautiful!
Tags: Asia, malaysia
vagabondrick
Looking forward to seeing the pictures!