BoliviaNature is a private site, designed to promote the knowledge of Bolivia’s landscapes, flora and fauna. It contains images from different regions taken throughout fifteen years of conservation work. This website is more than just the opportunity to show beautiful images; it is a tribute to the magnificence of God and His work. It is also an opportunity for you to admire the perfection and infinite care that He has put in everything he makes, through constant evolution. I try to cast the beauty of nature into images that others can see, convinced that through them it will have a greater chance to be recognized, treasured, and taken care of.
My life and work have been almost always linked to nature, its care, responsible use, or promotion of its knowledge. I was one of the founding members of the Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza (FAN-Bolivia) in 1988 and then its Executive Director for ten years. Since 1999 I have been the Executive Director of the Chiquitano Forest Conservation Foundation (FCBC). The experience gathered during those years has allowed me to recognize the importance of how much more we can and must do for our planet. For more information on some of the conservation work in Bolivia, please visit the websites www.fan-bo.org and www.fcbcinfo.org.
BoliviaNature.com has been organized as a data base of images with different categories.You will find landscapes of various localities; plants and animals according to taxonomic families; and in less proportion, Bolivian people according to their origin. Although most of the images shown at this time come from the Eastern part of Bolivia, the collection is being enlarged in a permanent way, incorporating images of all the country. I have tried to give scientific and technical information for each image, making browsing easy at the same time. Suggestions to improve it will be welcome. Please contact us by e-mail: info@BoliviaNature.com
On the technical aspects, the pictures were taken with a variety of cameras and lenses in different formats. A Fuji Panorama G 6x17 Professional was used on a Slik Professional II tripod for much of the large open landscapes. Most native orchids and other wild flowers, as well as landscapes and aerial photographs, were taken with a Hasselblad 553ELX and 50mm/4.0 CFi, 80mm/2.8 CF, 150mm/4.0 CF and 350mm/5.6 C lenses. I use bellows and extension rings very often for macro work.
A camera I used for more than a decade was the Canon T90 with lenses from 28mm/2.8 to the FD 500/4.5 L. A 35mm Canon EOS 3 and more recently a digital Canon EOS 10D (6.3 mega pixel) along with 28mm, 50mm, 100mm macro and EF 300mm/4.0 L IS with a 1.4X extender were added due to the convenience of autofocus.The 300mm has been superb for birds and other moving animals. The image stabilization added to the noiseless use of ISO 400 equivalent are true advances in technology.Of course I wonder how it would be to use a 500mm/4.0 L IS lens with one of the larger pixel cameras.
Many of the bird images would have been impossible to get if not taken with a 4.0 megapixel digital Nikon Coolpix 4500 mounted on a Leica APO Televid 77 spotting scope, on a Manfrotto 3275 geared head and Slik Professional II tripod. The convenience and growing quality of digital photography has lately led me to use this media even for landscapes and macro work.
All the images shown in this web page have a copyright, and while useful as an identification guide and promotion of Bolivia, they can be sold to interested parties for commercial and other purposes. For this reason we have put a watermark to each one of them. Many of my photographs have been published in books, magazines, calendars, field guides of flora and fauna, and used in visitor centers of national parks and other protected areas. They have been presented in public or private exhibits also, with different purposes, but always related to the idea of creating awareness about the importance of conserving nature in Bolivia and the world.