Romance in the Galapagos Islands

I photographed these marine iguanas in the Galapagos Islands in 1995. I assumed they were probably newlyweds. I was still using film, of course, along with a medium format camera, the Mamiya RZ 67. This is significant because depth of field with medium and large format cameras is less than with 35mm cameras and full frame digital bodies. The iguanas were resting on a sloping lava field that put them at an angle such that the only way I could have complete depth of field -- which was critical in this shot -- would be use f/32. The early morning light was bright, but not bright enough for a fast shutter speed and the smallest lens aperture. I was shooting Fujichrome Provia 100, and the 100 ISO was just too slow for what I wanted. So, I mounted the camera on a tripod and, seeing that the reptiles were perfectly motionless, took this shot with a full one second exposure. I used a cable release to trip the shutter so no movement was introduced into the camera, and I determined the exposure with a Sekonic L-358 handheld light meter. With film, we couldn't see our results until it was developed. That meant you really had to understand exposure. The light falling on black iguanas with a black lava background could only be successfully read with an incident meter.