3 January 2020 at 3:25 pm ET |

The problem with Galapagos adventuring is photography. How do you frame an original image, in the most photographed place on Earth?

Don’t believe me? Visit #galapagos on Instagram and count the number of times bikini girl and sea lion strike the same Upward-facing Dog. Then again, Instagram is the death of creativity. Maybe this issue is unique to Instagram.

Chantal and I, along with our constant globetrotting companions Chris and Filiep, visited Isla Santa Cruz and Isla de San Cristóbal in November. I shot close to a thousand pictures with my Series I Sony RX100, a camera I had clearly forgotten how to use.

So compound the lapsed semi-professional’s misery: no obviously insightful framing that isn’t also hackneyed garbage; no recent memory of this camera’s landscape or depth of field settings; ambient lighting that seems perfect at the time but isn’t; a very disturbing two-hour sea taxi ride; and is that turtle dead or pining for the fjords? (It’s dead.)

I’ll have to return with my full Nikon kit and try again. In the meantime, here are the best of my worst.

3 January 2020 at 3:25 pm ET

The problem with Galapagos adventuring is photography. How do you frame an original image, in the most photographed place on Earth?

Don’t believe me? Visit #galapagos on Instagram and count the number of times bikini girl and sea lion strike the same Upward-facing Dog. Then again, Instagram is the death of creativity. Maybe this issue is unique to Instagram.

Chantal and I, along with our constant globetrotting companions Chris and Filiep, visited Isla Santa Cruz and Isla de San Cristóbal in November. I shot close to a thousand pictures with my Series I Sony RX100, a camera I had clearly forgotten how to use.

So compound the lapsed semi-professional’s misery: no obviously insightful framing that isn’t also hackneyed garbage; no recent memory of this camera’s landscape or depth of field settings; ambient lighting that seems perfect at the time but isn’t; a very disturbing two-hour sea taxi ride; and is that turtle dead or pining for the fjords? (It’s dead.)

I’ll have to return with my full Nikon kit and try again. In the meantime, here are the best of my worst.