Pouring

Ecuador: Birds of the High Andes 8

 ... continued from yesterday....

The rain hadn't stopped when we woke for breakfast, if anything it had become much heavier.  Our guide took pity on us, and rather than head out on the Lodge trails, we stayed dry by spending a couple of hours watching birds from the covered hides. I was grateful for this decision for two reasons: f irstly, I didn't want to have a suitcase full of wet gear for the long flight back home and secondly, it gave me chance to play with longer exposure shots with the humming birds.  

Today's blip is probably the my best example of what might be possible with this sort of approach.  It's about trying to have enough blur in the subjects to give a sense of the motion, while retaining sufficient clarity where it matters. 

By mid morning the rain had eased up enough for us to wander of on one of the trails, although the conditions weren't great for spotting birds, although we did see a couple of new species.  I've included a shot that one of the other members of the group took of me on that last morning, so that you get a little bit of an idea of what it looked like.  What you can't see (because they are covered in cloud), is the high wall of the Andes that would otherwise form the backdrop - no sky would actually be visible.

The transfer to Quito went smoothly as did the flight from Quito to Guayaquil from where I would fly back to Amsterdam overnight.