Peter and I have hiked out to his secondary field site down old Gamboa Road. Unlike pipeline, this old road is barricaded, so we cannot drive our equipment down to his trees, and instead have to take his cameras, tripods, and full sized ladder through the jungle and up a creek. We set up the first of the days experiments around 8am. Howler monkeys lazily gaze down upon us. Probably resting after all the sunrise screaming. My second official day shadowing him, and he has already worked many of the kinks out of his process. All the cameras are charged, no tripod switching, timings are all down pat with additional buffers for recording ant movements.

Tested out my macro extension tubes on Peter’s 100mm canon macro lens. Makes for double mega macro that’s also super hard to use in the field. Managed to snag this pic however, resting the camera on the top of my boot.

Checking in with him about his journaling, and he reports that it is going well. In particular he liked one of my guidelines in the journal where I have him act out a portion of a performance that he had witnessed that day. “It always makes me think of new things when I actually perform. I think about specific parts about how the antennae move, or that person acted which I would not have otherwise noticed.

We packed up as the rain came down. Peter gave me my first lesson in driving stick. The jungle is a good place to learn to drive.