To Photograph a Galápagos Tortoise, Get Out of the Race
  • 7 years ago
To Photograph a Galápagos Tortoise, Get Out of the Race
In this piece, the photographer Federico Rios Escobar explains how he drew a particularly large subject out of her
proverbial shell at a recent (and spontaneous) shoot for a Travel section cover story on the Galápagos Islands.
I asked my driver to stop the car so I could get out, and I watched one of them slowly advance on the sidewalk as cars and buses passed by.
The last thing I wanted was to slip and find myself — or my camera — flattened under one of those monumental animals.
On the last day of my assignment in the Galápagos, I noticed a couple of tortoises on the road that leads from Puerto Ayora to the airport.
I had been lying there on the ground for almost 40 minutes without realizing the passage of time, while the tortoise barely moved a few meters.
By FEDERICO RIOS ESCOBARJUNE 26, 2017
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