Mother and Child

f 3.2, 1/160 sec, ISO 800, 86 mm

My wife and I traveled to Borneo to photograph the orangutans being rehabilitated back into the wild, as well as wild ones in the Tanjung Putting National Park, Kalimantan, Indonesia. I had a vision of trying to capture the essence of the “orang-u-tan” which translates “man-of-forest.” My vision and reality came together as we were travelling along the river when we spotted this orangutan mother and baby in a tree. As I was photographing the pair, they came down the tree to our boat-level, allowing me to get this up-close and personal picture of mother and child. It was a good thing that we were highly motivated to capture these images, since we had to endure extremely hot and humid jungles, a plane crash that left us stranded, and spending 5 days hop-scotching down the river from village to village trying to find a place to sleep and eat without speaking a word of the local language. In the end, it all worked out and we had an epic adventure.