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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Eighty-three: Impressions of the Galapagos – an extended photo-essay > Spotted Eagle Ray, Moreno Bay Mangrove, Isabela Island, The Galapagos, Ecuador, 2012
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26-JUN-2012

Spotted Eagle Ray, Moreno Bay Mangrove, Isabela Island, The Galapagos, Ecuador, 2012

I am not a snorkeler, nor do I make photographs in or under the water. However this ray glided past my Zodiac raft, just below the surface of a clear water mangrove lagoon, enabling me to photograph it from my high and dry vantage point. I noticed that a golden leaf was floating on the surface of the water, shaped very much like the ray itself. I waited until the leaf drifted over the ray and made this photograph, which contrasts green and blue colors to the gilded leaf, and echoes the life cycle of nature as well.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5
1/400s f/3.3 at 19.2mm iso80 full exif

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Phil Douglis26-Jul-2012 20:52
The vision of a huge ray below the surface of the lagoon was astonishing, and to have it pass directly underneath a tiny golden leaf of similar triangular shape was quite a gift. And yes, I made sure to isolate that leaf from all the others in the area by focusing on just one of them (i.e. a "Timesque" lonely leaf) and waited for one of the many rays in the area to pass below it. This image is, as you note, simply a matter of isolating and relating a common object -- a dead leaf -- with an uncommon subject, a triangular, under water, ray, to create what you have called a "zenlike" comparison.
Tim May26-Jul-2012 17:50
What a wonderful play of colors and a great example of what has come to be called "Irisesque" or "Timesque" The isolation of a common object in an almost zenlike relationship to its surroundings.
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