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I’m slowly going through the thousands of photos I took at the Galapagos Islands, so instead of uploading all of them at once to Flickr and Picasa, I thought I would share some of my favorites as I continue to post-process. This is the first time I’ve invested time in significant post-processing – I’m using Adobe Lightroom 3 (beta!) and even learning all the features of the program is taking time. It’s definitely a departure from my spray and pray photo mentality (thanks to large memory cards), but I think the payoff from editing is paying off.

My first substantial photo I’ll share was taken on the island of Floreana, one of the southern-most islands of the Galapagos. Our group landed at sunrise on Punta Cormorant and saw a few sea turtles heading back to the ocean have a night of nesting on the beach. The short walk inland brought us to a brackish lagoon which is home to one of the largest populations of Galapagos flamingos in the archipelago. Many were nesting far from our viewing location, but as we moved to a spot next to the lagoon, one slowly walked by, dipping its head in the water to feed.

I really loved the vibrant colors of the flamingos. Their graceful movements in the water are hard to capture and they are constantly using their beak to preen their feathers.

Many more photos to come!