14 Months in a Tent - The Beginning

Hey everyone,

So... I guess I'm going to try to get this thing up and running again. There's going to be a bit of a slow start as my first field job gets going, but at some point I'll have a bunch of cool stories and new pictures to share with you all. I have quite a few exciting trips to come in the next year and a bit, starting in northern Alberta this week with some big stops in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia later on. But perhaps I'll start by sharing some of the pictures I've taken in the last year and then get in to my plans for the future.

Since Peru I've been lucky enough to travel to some pretty spectacular places and invested a good chunk of the money I've made into new camera gear. I think the different perspectives I've gained with new lenses has made me a better photographer than the actual lenses themselves have... but thats certainly up for debate. My favourite addition to my kit has been a macro lens, which I've really only had a chance to use during a UBC biology field course that I took in Ecuador last summer (frog and insect shots). It'll probably stay in my bag for a little while yet as I'm mostly interested in shooting insects and frogs, but I'm thrilled for the day that it comes out.

The field course in Ecuador was mostly just an excuse to get back to South America, but it also gave me the extra 4 credits I needed to graduate this year. So I guess that happened. I graduated from university. I am no longer a student.... does that make me a biologist? Homeless? I'm not quite sure, but I would imagine that living in the bush for the next 14 months should give me enough time to figure it out. I'm too lazy to actually handwrite a journal, so stick with me as this is my chosen substitute. My thoughts should become a little more linear as interesting things start happening.

Back to the camera. I've also added a fisheye lens to my repertoire, which I'm using primarily for starscapes. Its also my wide-angle substitute... but I'm finding that landscapes during the day are a lot more difficult to make look nice than at night. The picture above is of a high mountain pass in Ecuador and the one below is of the night sky over Nickel Plate lake from a camping trip just outside of Penticton. 

If Ecuador wasn't enough of the tropics, during my Christmas break I was lucky enough to spend three weeks visiting Australia. I have to be honest, a lot of Australia that I saw didn't blow me away, but the three days I spent on Tasmania were spectacular. The shot below is of the land bridge connecting the north and south sides of Bruny Island, a small island on the southern tip of Tasmania. The southern half has some incredible birding, with the chance to see 13 of the 14 species of bird endemic to Tasmania (fourty-spotted pardalote, black-headed honeycreaper) and breeding populations of short-tailed shearwater and fairy penguin. 

While in Australia I figured out how to get my 500mm lens to work a little better, but the weight makes it impossible for me to ever really take travelling. I've replaced it with a 300mm lens, which has a little bit less range but also weighs much less and is incredibly sharp. The flame robin below is the last bird I shot with the 500mm so it looks like I'll have my work cut out for me on improving my bird photography. Though, now that I don't have to worry about writing papers and tests I suppose I should have a lot of time on my hands.

Other than a short (and free!) trip to Mexico that I didn't bring a camera for, that about sums up my last year in photography. I'm not sure how I've managed to see so many amazing places so early in my life, but I'm thrilled that work and family has given me the chance to travel so extensively. Now that I've graduated, I have had the chance to line up some pretty incredible field positions to keep my streak going. This friday (the 16th) I will be heading to Hilliard's bay campground on the Lesser Slave lake in south-central Alberta to work with a small species of songbird, the Canada Warbler. I'm working for a masters student at the University of Alberta on a project studying the effects of different logging strategies on the productivity of this endangered species of bird.

(Bunyip State Park, Australia - Great place to see Southern Emu Wren)

I'll be camping the whole time I'm there and that tent below will be my home in Alberta for the next 3 months. Patching up the holes is going to be priority number one to keep me alive and sane through bug season before I finish work at the beginning of August. After a week or two of rest in Vancouver I'll be heading to South America, where I will continue to live in a tent for another eleven months. I'll be working on the same project as I did last time in Peru, but this time based out of the low elevation research camp called Pantiacolla. Again, I will be studying birds from mid-August until late December and as before this is funded by a UBC undergraduate research grant as well as the Jankowski lab. As to what I'll be doing... its a little too far ahead to be sure but it should be either nest searching, bird banding or audio recording, if not a combination of each.

(Mount Granya State Park, Australia)

If all goes well following Peru I'll be heading to Colombia to work in Tatama National Park, again with the Jankowski lab. This field season is a little longer, projected to run from January until the end of June. It will leave me about a month between field seasons in South America, where I'm still trying to decide if I should come back home and see my friends and family or stay down there for an epic one-month trip birding my way through Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. Any thoughts on this are welcome. Regardless, there's a bunch of wild stuff in this blog's future. I've been promised some northern lights and incredible wildlife in northern Alberta and South America has never been anything but amazing.

(Mount Granya State Park, Australia)

I know my last attempt at blogging was a little lacklustre. It turns out that keeping a blog up to date while working six days a week in the rainforest is harder than I thought. I still have a bunch of half written posts and the accompanying pictures that I should really have put up here. Hell, I never even posted the story of that time I got hit by lightning. But, unfortunately, we're just going to have to move past all of that and you'll have to trust that my second attempt at blogging will be a bit more regular. So, I guess just check back here every so often and hopefully I'll actually have an update or two as I find out more about my work and where I'm going to be living. To everyone I've left behind, I miss you all!

- Torin

(Nickel Plate Lake)

* I'll do my best to make the writing a little more interesting in the future... just not much to say so far.