New Photos: Macaques of Sulawesi

Greetings! I’m headed off to Hawaii today to lead a photography retreat of EPIC proportions – but before I go I wanted to share some photos from my recent trip to the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia – part of the world’s largest archipelago – where we found, after a couple of days of searching, a social group of macaque monkeys.

As you can tell from these photos these animals are friendly, outgoing and most of all, grabby! Many of you know of the controversy surrounding the macaques of Sulawesi and photographer David Slater. I post these photos so we can all appreciate the often joyful personalities of these outgoing creatures. These are curious animals whom have no fear of the camera, mug for it, and often reach for it out of curiosity – hence the appearance of ‘selfie’ type shots. Rest assured, I was not about to trust them with my expensive equipment!

Though this trip started out with such wonderful subjects (pygmy tarsier’s included!), it was unfortunately cut short due to medical concerns. You see, back in the spring I took a trip to Chad and came away great photos of elephants and some not so great sand fly bites. If you are unfortunate enough to experience such a thing, get them treated immediately! To make a long (and not particularly pretty) story short, CDC was eventually involved despite my best efforts to treat them as recommended by my doctors back in Seattle. Given that the remainder of the trip was structured around diving opportunities, we felt it best not to tempt fate with the damp and irritation of repeatedly changing in and out of a wet suit. I’m on the mend – but I can’t stress enough how important it is to address such things immediately!

That’s all for now – enjoy the photos!