423 - Buenos Aires
You know those cliché photos you always see on Facebook of someone saving the baby sea turtles? Yeah... That's what we did today in Buenos Aires, Mexico.
Not to be confused with Buenos Aires in Argentina, which is much, much larger than this small beach town on the east coast of Baha California.
I also want to make it clear that I didn't save any turtles. I just took photos of other people saving them.
But let me tell you- for how many photos you see online of these operations, it was ridiculously difficult to find one. There wasn't any information online, so we had to ask a bunch of locals to figure things out. I'll give you the abridged version, because we talked to a lot of people.
Our quest started in Todos Santos, which had a sea turtle sanctuary on Google Maps, but they weren't open. So we asked a local on the beach next to it, who directed us to Los Barriles for baby sea turtles releases this time of year. We arrived in Los Barriles and asked the tourism office for information, because there was nothing online. Which led us to East Cape RV Resort, which told us to meet them on the beach at 8am the next day.
Fuck.
That was a lot of research for something I didn't care to photograph. Haley was the real pull for this adventure.
Needless to say, we showed up at 8AM sharp to watch the newborns crawl into the ocean. And it was actually fairly heartwarming.
There were about 20 of them, all no bigger than your middle finger. They'd crawl towards the sun, get knocked over a few times by the initial waves, then eventually get carried off into the ocean, hopefully to live a long, fruitful life. In order to shoot them, I used my Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 GM, so I could get them in full frame.
I learned extremely quickly that depth of focus is extremely narrow when shooting something so small so close to the ground at 200mm. Oddly enough, I've never had a reason to shoot like that until now. Almost none of my f/2.8 shots had the entire turtle in focus, only the shell or a certain leg. I had to switch to f/4 to get the whole thing.
From there it was easily sailing. I got three shots that I really enjoyed:
“Meet Sandy”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 GM
[ISO 320 ~ 200mm ~ f/4.5 ~ 1/3200s]
(Want to get a Print? Get one here.)
“Marshmallow Blanket”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 GM
[ISO 320 ~ 200mm ~ f/4.5 ~ 1/3200s]
(Want to get a Print? Get one here.)
“Into the Abyss”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 GM
[ISO 320 ~ 200mm ~ f/4.5 ~ 1/3200s]
(Want to get a Print? Get one here.)
Since there wasn't much variety in this adventure (there was only one subject, the turtles...) I figured I'd make a three shots sequence. One before water, one during water, and one after water, to tell a mini story.
The second shot was my favorite, because it looked like ridiculous. Almost like it was sticking it's head in a bag of marshmallows. But at the same time, it was a perfect representation of how the baby sea turtles acted. They were literally born a few hours before this, so they still were extremely awkward.
Well, that's today shoot guys. Definitely more fun than I was expecting, and a nice one to close the week out on. BYE.
PS: This is my last shoot in Baja California. We're heading over to mainland Mexico on the ferry next week!
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
Want to see my progress? Check out the Adventure Map.
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