RIDE INTO BIRDLAND

Our previous post was a full report of a delightful photo trip by electric boat on the waters of the Mayakoba hotel complex. If you haven’t read it, you can check it out here.

In that report I expressed hopes for a second visit. I did not anticipate the opportunity would arise so soon, so I was thrilled to learn that our enthusiastic friend and host, James Batt, had quickly made arrangements for an encore. “Bring your tripod”, he said, “we’ll be using a different boat, with a platform on the bow”.

And so it happened: minutes after 3:00 p.m. on a sunny Thursday afternoon we were back in Mayakoba. As James had announced, I was able to set my tripod on the platform and adjust it to shoot from either a seating or standing position. However, tracking birds in flight from a moving platform using the conventional three-axis head on my tripod is far from the ideal solution (a Wimberley-type head is mandatory). I soon put the tripod aside and continued shooting hand-held, at times lying on the platform face down in order to achieve shooting angles closer to the water’s surface.

: A Bicrested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) puts on a show for the camera in Mayakoba. (Photo © Iván Gabaldón).

Having learned from my previous visit, this time I used two cameras bodies, one with the 300mm/f4 (minus the TC-1.4, which has been causing me grief by failing to connect reliably with the D90 bodies), the other one with the 80-200mm/f2.8 zoom lens, granting me flexibility in composition when coming closer to the birds (as is often the case in Mayakoba).

Today I present a few images from that second visit. I have also asked James for permission to share the link to his own collection of images on Flicker, where he showcases some of the amazing shots he has achieved during his frequents outings in this privileged location.

So here it is: the magic of Mayakoba, revisited! Hope you enjoy it.