I open this extended essay with a moody landscape evoking the mythical nature of the place itself. The first Spanish explorers to map the Galapagos were convinced they could see these islands move. They called them "Las Encantadas" -- the "Enchanted Isles." I feel just such a ghostly presence in this image -- the huge rock echoes the jagged shape of the cloud moving behind it, skeletal trees bow to the wind, and a small robed figure seems to lurk within its rocky hollows.

Using an inflated raft known as a "Zodiac " I spent many hours photographing amidst the hollows and dens of the great cliffs that line the islands of the Galapagos. Brown Pelicans often use these dens as rocky observation platforms, lurking in the shadows and waiting for the passing schools of the small fish that eventually will end their days within the great pouches swinging from their lower mandibles. I took advantage here of the reflected light bouncing off the sea and into this den. I exposed on the silvery body of the Pelican in spot-metering mode, allowing the rocky den to fade into the shadows and creating a almost surreal mode to the image. Pelicans are ungainly birds, designed my nature as expert fishermen. This one appears here as a visitor from another planet.

I photographed this Swallow-tailed gull flying only inches above the head of a resting Galapagos Sea Lion at the very edge of South Plaza Island's towering cliff. I deliberately placed the bird at the very top of the frame, to increase the tension present in the tight spacing between the gull and sea lion. I fill the bulk of the frame with the rocky surface of the cliff-top, which leads the eye directly to the pair at the precipice. Both the gull and the sea lion look towards the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean -- we can only see them from behind, and are left to wonder what each may be thinking at this moment in time.

This closeup of a Land Iguana speaks of the prehistoric past. This one is molting - I could see its skin peeling away from its back. I noticed many photographers making picture of these iguanas from a standing position, which diminishes them in scale and de-emphasizes expression. I moved my camera as low to the ground as possible, and framed the image in my fold-out LCD viewfinder, stressing the impassive expression and the effect of the peeling skin.

These rocks were about a half mile off shore of Santa Fe Island. I framed the image so the foreground was rich in waves and spray which bathe the rocks behind them.The rocks are covered with red Sally Lightfoot crabs. Two Galapagos Sea Lions seem to own these rocks -- one sleeps while the other stands guard. Life in and around the Galapagos resides on both land and sea, and places such as this represent a blend of both. I was shooting from a raft that was being tossed about by the waves. In order to stabilize this 200mm focal length shot, I had to use a shutter speed of 1/2000th of a second, ten times faster than normal in order to avoid blur due to camera shake.

Espanola Island hosts one of the largest Sea Lion colonies in the Galapagos. On its beach in Gardner Bay, I found dozens of them dozing in the sun, and more than a few pups nursing at the sides of their mothers. I moved in on this pup just as it turned away from its dinner to check me out. The sun was coming from behind, abstracting the mother and much of the head of the pup, yet still defining the whiskers that give the animal much of its identity.

Visiting tourists always marvel at how the vast herd of Galapagos Sea Lions at Gardner Bay ignore them. The young pups are far more curious than the slumbering adults. In this shot, three visitors stand before a sea lion family, as the pups satisfy their own curiosity. I stood in this spot for ten minutes, focusing on this particular family consisting a five adults and two pups. I waited for three people to stand before them, a curtain of sparking ocean water rising behind them. The pups punctuate the two empty spaces between the visitors, integrating the two groups into one.

Marine Iguanas are often found in large numbers clinging to the rocks and lava along Galapagos shorelines.They are the world's only sea-going lizards. There are seven kinds of them, spread around the various islands. The most colorful are found here on Espanola. In this image, I move in on a single hand, resting comfortably on the back of a red Marine Iguana at Punta Saurez. Since these iguanas gather close to each other in huge colonies, such gestures are common. Whether it is a touch of affection or simply a convenient resting posture remains a mystery. I leave such answers to the imagination of the viewer.

The sole nesting ground for Waved Albatrosses is here on Espanola Island. It is vast, accommodating over 12,000 pairs at a time. The scene is chaotic, and demands photographic simplification. I chose to concentrate on just one pair, and made this family portrait as one member of a pair sits on the nest in the foreground while the other looms over it in the background. The male and female split the next sitting duties, so I was unable to identify the gender roles here. But that is not important -- instead, I try to express the bond between the two as defined by their deliberate positioning and the matching placid expressions that tell the story of nesting albatrosses. I also stress the subtle yellow feather coloring that matches the colors of their beaks.

The behavior of the Blue Footed Booby is most clown-like during courtship. It appeared to me that this pair was engaged in a courtship dance, as they shuffled their huge blue feet from side to side, virtually mimicking each other's moves. I photographed them above, something I rarely do with birds, since a high vantage point often tends to diminish them in scale. But in this case, an overhead viewpoint was warranted -- I am able to stress the color and position of the feet, which tell the story here.

An incongruously large statue of a Land Iguana dominates the town square of Puerto Ayora, the largest town in the Galapagos. Santa Cruz Island covers a large area, and only a portion of the island belongs to the Galapagos National Park. The town lies outside the boundaries of the park -- it offers anchorage for the many ships that pick up and drop off visitors to the park itself. It makes a living off what the park itself has to offer, which primarily is a chance to see exotic birds and animals in the wild. Since there are no wild animals in the town, it has built its own out of concrete. It glares at us here quite realistically. I include a figure in the background, conveying the fact that large "super-iguanas" such as this one are now very much taken for granted by the locals.

About 3,000 Galapagos Giant Tortoises live in the wild on the vast coffee and banana plantations in the highlands of Santa Cruise Islands. We had to hike a for a half hour to find this one having lunch in the high grasses of Cerro Mesa Plantation. I am not interested in describing the appearance of an entire tortoise. Instead I zoom in on the point of the image -- the taste of grass. It is believed that these reptiles can live up to 150 years in the wild. The most famous tortoise in the Galapagos, known as Lonesome George, died in captivity at Santa Cruz's Charles Darwin Research Center the day after we visited the center. (I did not photograph him because he was virtually obscured by the bushes in his pen.)

The Devils Crown is group of rocks off Floreana Island that is part of a undersea volcanic crater. A great spot for snorkelers, I found it very photogenic when floating below an apocalyptic cloudscape such as this one.

Post Office Bay has become a tourist attraction over the years. Whaling ships originally left messages in a barrel here for other ships to pick up and deliver. This 200 year old tradition continues, but it is now only tourists that leave postcards here for delivery, as well as carve their names on the planks and boards that wash up on shore after storms. Instead of describing the barrel itself, and the massive jumble of autographed junk that now surrounds it, I saw a Lava Lizard exploring the area, and waited until it crossed a board full of graffiti and then made this simple image. This is a male, as evidenced by the vividly colored crest running down his spine.

I was photographing a Giant Galapagos Tortoise rummaging for food when a Yellow Warbler suddenly floated into my frame to check out the scene. The tiny bird contrasts in scale, color, and movement to the huge tortoise. I deliberately spot metered on the bright yellow bird, deepening the shadows around the head of the tortoise to emphasize the contrasting bird. I was able to capture considerable blur in its wings, which adds incongruous energy to an otherwise placid image. This photograph speaks of the interdependence of various creatures -- the bird is also looking for food, and may well remove bothersome insects from the body of the tortoise.

A portrait must take the measure of its subject. For two weeks, Galapagos Naturalist and Guide Bitinia Espinoza not only gave our group of travelers an amazing insight into what we were seeing, but also putting that knowledge into a context that helped us to see more than just plants and creatures, but also an entire ecosystem at work. In addition, she had to provide leadership as a guide, as well as keep us on schedule and safe from harm on both land, and for those snorkeled, under the water as well. A daunting task -- yet with more than 20 years of experience guiding groups, Bitinia seemed to handle it effortlessly. I wanted very much to make a portrait of her somewhere along the way that would speak of her character, personality, and capabilities. I had my chance while having lunch at the El Chato plantation in the highlands of Santa Cruz Island. She was sitting at the next table, and conversing with one of our trip members. The soft light was playing across the front of her face, bringing both a warm glow and strength to her features. Her naturalists hat defines her role, her blurred hand speaks of the energy that lies within, and her relaxed expression tells us that she seems comfortable in her own skin. I converted the image from color to black and white because I did not want the vivid colors in the background to compete with character I was trying to define. Bitinia works as a naturalist/guide in the Galapagos for some of the most respected travel organizations in the world, and this image offers a glimpse of the qualities she brings to her profession.

These large herons are seen on the beaches and lagoons of most islands in the Galapagos. I returned with numerous photographs of them in flight, stalking through the surf, and perched on the ledges of their rocky dens. I made this image, however, under strikingly different circumstances, and it proved to be my most expressive Great Blue Heron image of the entire visit. I never expected to find this magnificent bird standing on the rocks adjacent to the busiest location in the largest town in the entire Galapagos. Yet there it was -- perched next to a boldly contrasting Sally Lightfoot crab at the main entrance to the most important pier in the Galapagos, the pier where all of the tourists visiting Puerto Ayora by sea arrive and leave from their ships and boats. I was spending a few hours on my own in the town, and devoted a full half hour to watching this bird move around these rocks. When it leaned forward, almost as if it were about the converse with the crab, I made this image. It speaks of coexistence between various species --both the crab and the heron feed off these same rocks and the sea around them, and share the space in mutual respect. This image shows us that expressive images can be made under all conditions, even those where we might least expect to find them.

I made this image from a Zodiac raft moving in three directions at once, primarily interested in the massing of the Marine Iguana colony which made their home on the rocks just off shore from Punta Moreno. I had no idea that a small bird, known as a Ruddy Turnstone, riding on the back of an iguana in the very first row, would steal the show here. None of the iguanas seem to take any notice of it. It is there to scour the sandy backs of the iguanas for food, most likely insects. Meanwhile the details within this image add still more meaning. Three immature black Sally Lightfoot crabs are climbing the wall towards the iguanas. The surface of the rock itself is covered with a yellow carpet of guano, and the iguanas themselves are staring at us as if we are from another planet. Actually, I thought the tables were turned -- it is the iguanas that seem to harken from another world, the world of the distant past, when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Marine iguanas are the world's only sea-going lizards. They are cold-blooded and live largely on algae, but spend much of their time seeking the warmth of the sun on just such rocks as this one.

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.

This Blue Footed Booby was whistling as he ducked his head, raised his bill, and thrust his wings overhead as an exclamation point. It was probably engaging in a mating ritual. I liked the way the thrusting wings, tail, head, bill, and the bizarre pair of blue feet work together here to create an incongruous portrait of one of the world's most unique sea birds.

There are 13 species of finches in the Galapagos, collectively called "Darwin's Finches." No other group of creatures is as important to learning how we have come to understand our place in our world. And all because of Charles Darwin's voyage to the Galapagos on the HMS Beagle in 1835. While all of those species are different from each other, Darwin concluded that all of these little brown and black birds were also similar, and had descended from a common ancestor as a result of isolation and lack of predation. Darwin's conclusion has been confirmed by modern DNA testing, and makes it possible for us to see how life itself has developed and evolved. These finches are at the very essence of the Galapagos story, and we saw different species on the various islands we visited. Finches are very difficult to photograph, since they are small birds that are constantly on the move, and often screened from view by tree and bush branches. However I was fortunate to make at least one expressive image of a "Darwin Finch," which I've identified as a female Vegetarian Finch. Its chest and head markings are unmistakeable, and I caught it with one of its wings fluttering and its translucent beak illuminated by backlight.

This image is a study in primary color and texture, comparing appearances of adult crabs to their young. Within this one crevice, I found 12 crabs. Three of them are mature, while the other nine are immature. The adult crabs are a brilliant scarlet, orange and yellow. The juvenile crabs start out black, with small orange spots, and become more red as they grow and then discard their shells. The adults are predators, feeding on other crabs. They are called Sally Lightfoot Crabs because they appear to be walking on water as they glide from one rock to the another.

I caught this pair of Sally Lightfoot Crabs clashing head to head. Perhaps they were tussling over food, or simply because of their aggressive nature. The crab on the top is pushing the bottom crab backwards, and within thirty seconds after I made this picture both of them tumbled out of sight into a deep crevice on this lava field battleground. I saw hundreds of these crabs during my two week visit to the Galapagos, and this was the only time I observed such aggressive behavior.

This pair of female Galapagos Sea Lions seemed to be posing for the cameras as they basked in the evening sun at water's edge. They are massive -- sea lions are the largest animal on land in the Galapagos. There are somewhere around 50,000 sea lions in the Galapagos, mostly found on its sandy beaches. They are well adapted to humans, and often are the first creatures to welcome tourists as they clamber ashore. This particular pair, which I photographed side by side in profile, one with its nose to the sky, the other with its nose to the beach, symbolize the hold sea lions have on the human imagination. We study this image and wonder what they must be thinking at this moment.

The Flightless Cormorant is noted for its elaborate mating rituals. There is much dancing and considerable bickering. The male presents the female with seaweed to build their nest. We did not catch the seaweed presentation, but we spent considerable time watching them negotiating various nuptial arrangements. In this image, I move in on a mating pair, revealing the turquoise eye of one of them, and abstracting its partner. The beaks are crossing, linking the pair in potential matrimony. The late afternoon brings both a bluish sheen and a golden crown to the head of the cormorant in the foreground, while the other fades to into the shadows.

Marine Iguanas turn vivid colors when breeding, and this particular rock seemed to be a good place for many such iguanas to congregate at one time. I moved my camera low, and photographed them moving very slowly towards me with a short telephoto lens. There is a surrealistic strangeness to this scene -- it reminded me a crude 1950s monster movie, yet the moment was real and unforgettable. There we thousands of similar iguanas warming on these rocks. Young marine iguanas are vulnerable to predation -- frigatebirds, hawks, herons and snakes can take them at will, as well as feral cats and dogs. In the water, the young iguanas fall prey to Moray eels. Once mature, however, the only real predators of Marine Iguanas are hawks, cats, and dogs.

The Nazca Booby is the largest of the three kinds of boobies found in the Galapagos. Some feel that it is also the most handsome.( It was formerly known here as the Masked Booby, because of the distinctive black mask at the base of its bill.)

I found this one seated on a towering craggy rock looming over the Pacific Ocean. The massive deposits of bird droppings tell us that it is a well used perch for these sea birds. While its white body is small in the frame, the contrasting dark rocks make it the focal point of the image.

Espumilla Beach, an important nesting site for sea turtles, is also one those magical places where Galapaogos sea birds regularly feed. One of my pre-trip goals was to photograph a diving Blue Footed Booby about to strike the water, and this beach proved to be the best place in the Galapagos to do it. These birds soar high into the air, spot a fish, and plunge straight down to the ocean, entering the water like a knife. It is very difficult photograph to get -- to frame, expose, and focus on a plunging bird takes great skill and a good deal of luck. I also wanted a well-composed image, one without a lot of blank sky or empty water as context. I spent a half hour here, shooting several hundred pictures of diving boobies in order to make this particular image. (Thankfully, I was granted the luxury of time here -- our tour group was hiking on the island, and our guide made it possible for me to stay behind on the beach, accompanied by one of our boatmen, in order to concentrate solely on photographing diving boobies.)

I used my smaller camera, zoomed to its maximum focal length of 90mm, to get this shot. It allowed me to place our tour group's ship, the Barkentine "Mary Anne," in the background, as well as add a layer of clouds between the ship and the ocean. The birds were plunging through my frame regularly, and I used a fast shutter speed of 1/800th of a second to freeze this one just as it began to furl its wings and retract its feet so it could enter the water with the least resistance. Its body was already stretched out to its limit. I was able to place the bird in the upper left hand corner of the frame to counterbalance the sailing ship in the lower right hand corner, creating a diagonal composition. It took both time and a lot of "misses" to make this photograph, but the result was well worth the effort.

Puerto Egas is the best spot in the Galapagos to photograph Fur Seals. They live in the caves and grottos here that were formed when molten lava flowed into the sea. I waited to make this photograph until one of them expressed itself with a giant yawn. Another fur seal rests on the low hanging shelf to the left. The Galapagos Fur Seal was hunted to nearly extinction for its valuable fur in the 19th century, but its population has now expanded to nearly 25,000. It is smaller than the Galapagos Sea Lion, has a heavier coat, larger eyes, and a shorter snout.

The lava fields of Puerto Egas remind one of the beginnings of the earth itself -- bare, hostile, and colored black with a dirty yellow tint. The prehistoric looking Marine Iguanas living here seem a perfect fit for this place. I photograph a pair of them as they crawl slowly along a predictable trail worn smooth by their bodies over the centuries. I use a 24mm wide-angle focal length to stress their laborious passage.

As I roamed Seymour's huge nesting colony of Blue Footed Boobies, I found one cradling a tiny chick between her large blue feet. Because of the size difference, the eye goes first to the large adult bird as it casts an eye over its sharp blue bill pointed downwards towards the chick. The bill acts as a pointer, and following its flow, we come to the tiny chick, resting comfortably under the great brown feathers of its mother's wing. This image is all about scale incongruity. It was also a difficult shot to make. I had to play with about twenty images until I was able to get one with both the mother's bill pointing downwards and the chick's body visible.

Three Brown Noddy Terns vie with a pelican for a mouthful of small fish. The Noddy, named for its incessant nodding and bowling during courtship, is a surface feeding bird, and finds scavenging morsels of a pelican's meal a convenient course of action. I used a very fast shutter speed -- 1/200th of a second -- to make this image. In order to catch the "decisive moment," I had to make dozens of images of feeding frenzies such as this one. This particular moment places four birds into a perfect spatial relationship. The pelican's rear end is up and head is down. The two diagonal rectangles of negative space captured between the birds lead directly to the pelican's head. Wings, feet, and heads are aligned so that the spaces left between them are crackling with tension and energy.

A Brown Noddy Tern patiently waits on the head of a Galapagos Brown Pelican for a meal. As soon as the pelican lifts its bill from the water, tiny fish will leak from the pouch under its bill, and the Noddy will pounce on them. I noticed another pelican coming in for a landing in the background, and was able to rhythmically repeat the beak of the Noddy and the beak of the other pelican, linking the softly-focused background to the sharp foreground and providing additional context as well. Meanwhile, the feeding pelican keeps a watchful eye on the proceedings.

The skies over Darwin Bay are usually crowded with sea birds coming and going from the various nesting colonies on Genovesa, which is sometimes referred to as "the Galapagos Bird Island." The largest colony of Red-Footed Boobies in the world nest in the trees here, and a large mixed colony of Great and Magnificent Frigatebirds is here as well. Birds such as the Swallow-tailed Gull and the Red-billed Tropicbird also abound. A melange of these birds converge in this image. I focused on four of them, perfectly spaced, with great tension moving through the negative spaces running between them. Just as I was making this photograph, the two birds on the bottom engaged in what seems to be a heated discussion. Bills open, and heads only inches apart, they flew at each other and made this picture one of the most memorable images of my visit to the Galapagos. The graceful forms and alignment of the four birds, with a pale light blue sky behind them, suggest a water color painting.

I thought this Great Frigatebird looked dashing in his black, brown, red, and green plumage. The deflated scarlet throat pouch draws the eye first. The greenish plumage on its back differentiates the Great Frigatebird from the slightly smaller Magnificent Frigatebird, which has purple feathers on its back. This bird was preening, and I caught it with its long hooked beak hidden behind its shoulder feathers -- it reminded me of a bullfighter with face buried in his cape.

Birds can often seem to express their feelings by facial expression. In this case, my head-on vantage point stresses the half-open bill of a Red-Footed Booby harboring a young chick in its nest, which is set into a low tree. It appears to be asserting its right to privacy at the moment. Meanwhile, the chick seems to have created its own right to privacy by burying its head beneath its mother's chest.

The long hard climb up a cliff known as Prince Philip's Steps, named in honor of a visit by the Duke of Edinburgh's visit in the 1960s, was worth it, if just for this image of a nesting Great Frigatebird family. I was able to work at eye level and at close range without bothering them. I made numerous images of the mother, father, and chick, waiting for something to happen that would bring the image to life and give it meaning. I wanted more than a picture of specimen birds in a nest. I wanted instead to stress a familial bond. It is hard to get three different birds to symbolically bond together as a family, but when the chick lifted its head towards its mother, as the father lowered its head and brought its beak closer to the mother at the same time, it all came together for me. Two primary colors work on behalf of the image as well -- the turquoise blue throat of the chick and the red eye of the mother, as well as the red throat of the father, draw the eye of the viewer and hold on to it here.

This relatively new lava field was created when Santiago's volcano erupted in 1897. The once molten magma cooled into coils of lava known as "Panoehoe," (Hawaiian for "rope.") The patterns created by these rope-like lava coils were fascinating -- I made well over 100 images as I walked across this vast lava field. This photograph, which plays a horizontal set of coils at the bottom of the frame against a vertical pair of coils in the top half of the frame, best expresses the geological forces that created the Galapagos Islands. I converted the image to black and white to remove any trace of color, greatly simplifying the thrusts and flows of lava that carry the eye through the frame.

The most famous promotory in the Galapagos is bathed in the golden light of a reflected sunset, which makes a beautiful subject for a photograph in itself. But I usually avoid making pictures of famous places, because they often resemble post cards. What makes this scene so special is the set of three cloud streams that seem to explode from not only Pinnacle Rock itself, but also from the two huge hills that flank it on either side. I place the waterline near the bottom of the frame to increase the length of those cloud streams, all of which reflect traces of the setting sun as well.

The tiny droplets flowing from this flamingo's bill after a long drink, offer a faint echo of its long spindly legs while the color of its neck and head repeats the color of its tail. The result is an image that offers an expressive look at what otherwise would be just a profile shot of a flamingo. I also liked the "s" curve of its neck as it drinks -- the negative space within the curves rhythmically repeat as well.

These female Galapagos Sea Lions are engaged in in a vigorous debate. They were lunging at each other with fangs barred, and accompanying those lunges with furious barking. They were well off-shore, and it took a cropped version of a 400mm shot to size the argument large enough to work. Shooting fast moving subjects just after dawn at such long range will usually produce a blurred image. I conceded that fact, and was able to make a blurred image that fully expresses the fury of the moment. It is the blur itself that brings to this image a visceral effect. The fight ended almost as soon as it started, and the sea lions went their separate ways as if nothing had happened. Only this image remains to commemorate this struggle in the surf.