[Leica] A Walk in the Rainforest

[Jayanand Govindaraj]

Jim N, Philippe, Ric, Douglas B, Jim H

Thanks for looking.

Ric, you are right - this is the first time I have tried this sort of thing
in the jungles. It was born out of frustration of having nothing to
photograph that were not dots of colour on the canopy way above our heads!

Douglas, All these were taken on the opposite side of Sabah to Kota
Kinabalu, around Sandakan and south of it, at Sepilok, along the
Kinabatangan River, Tabin and Danum. We departed from KK, though, after
flying in there.

Cheers
Jayanand

On Wed, Apr 25, 2018 at 12:04 AM, Jim Hemenway <jim at hemenway.com> wrote:

> Good job overall.  I like GLOW!
>
> JimH
>
>
> On 4/23/18 11:38 PM, Jayanand Govindaraj via LUG wrote:
>
>> I have just returned from a trip to Sabah in the Malaysian part of Borneo,
>> in an organized foray into a tropical rainforest. The area I was in has
>> been decimated by a century and a half of rapacious logging for hardwood,
>> supplanted by plantations catering to the human race's insatiable appetite
>> for, initially, rubber and now, cheap palm oil. Malaysia has, thankfully,
>> put the brakes on to some extent, but the pillage goes on unchecked in
>> neighboring Indonesia, which has sovereignty over most of Borneo, where it
>> is estimated that a million acres of virgin forest are still lost every
>> year.
>>
>> The rainforest ecology is a race for the treetops, where you get the sun,
>> so most life exists 150-200 feet off the ground in the canopy, and very
>> much like the Amazon ecosystem, the forest floor consists of poor soil and
>> is relatively lifeless. The great mass of life in these areas are birds
>> and
>> insects as the lack of nourishing ground level vegetation leads to fewer
>> mammals. Even there, the two iconic apes of these forests, the Orangutan
>> and Gibbon are arboreal, and seldom descend to the ground.
>>
>> All movement through the forests are on foot through fairly undulating
>> terrain, on wet, slushy trails - after all, what would you expect in a
>> rainforest but regular rain?This being so, photography turns out to be a
>> bit of a challenge, balancing a long lens pointed at the canopy a few
>> hundred feet above you through a cluster of leaves, trying to capture a
>> fast and constantly moving hornbill,  gibbon or orangutan, while at the
>> same time, trying not to lose your footing! :-)
>>
>> This is the background for the first set of the trip, which is to try and
>> show the smaller pleasures to photograph during walks in the dark and
>> unbearably humid rainforest! All photographs taken with the Nikon D850 or
>> Nikon D500 cameras with the AF 300mm f4 or AF 70-200 f4 lens mounted. Most
>> of the photographs are at relatively high ISO because of the paucity of
>> light that filters through to the forest floor.
>>
>> This is the folder containing the set:
>>
>> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/jayanand/Sabah/Rainforest/
>>
>> Please see LARGE
>>
>> Comments and criticism, as ever, welcome.
>>
>> Cheers
>> Jayanand
>>
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>>
>>
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