Photographs of Rainforest

Rainforest has been considered as one of the most important elements in earth's ecosystem. Today, environmentalists give special attention to tropical rainforest due to its vital functions in absorbing CO2 gases and releasing Oxygen during photosynthesis. They consider rainforest as the protector of the earth in fighting global warming. Without rainforests, the temperature of the earth will rise several degrees Celcius causing severe draughts, the melting of ice in polar regions and the rise of sea level. These are some of the devastated effects of global warming. Also because of these functions, tropical rainforest become the part of our daily watch on television programs. From flora and fauna series to eco-tourism shows, rainforest has been portrait as the source of wildlife, the savior of the earth from global warming, and an alternative destination for tourists. The high biodiversity of tropical rainforest makes it as a complex environment where animals, plants and human depend on it for their survivability. Rainforest is a fragile biome. It is being destroyed by human being through its conversion to human settlement and monoculture plantation and wood extraction. Therefore, it has to be preserved before it will become too late to save it.

More people now study about this precious environment and information about tropical rainforest can now be accessed from the internet, free of charge. Students who have never been to a rainforest need photographs to have an idea of how this complex environment looks like. Unfortunately, one thousand pictures are not enough in completely explaining even a general characteristics of a tropical rainforest. For example, a photograph of a ficus tree. We may think that it is only tree that standing from the ground but if we look closer on very leaf, and hanging root, we will see more things. There are thousands of insects live in a big ficus tree. From grasshopper to butterfly and from ants to beetles. In the canopy of the tree we will often see hornbills land on the branches to eat the fruits or just to take a rest after flying for several miles. Snakes will climb the tree if they know that there are some cuscus live in it. So, a tall tree of ficus tree alone is the habitat of a lot of animals such as insects, reptiles, mammals and birds.

Rainforest is also seen as the source of food and wood by people who live in or nearby it. All of the rainforest areas are located in tropical region such as Brazil, Kongo and Indonesia. People in these countries need forest as their natural resources in developing their countries. The size of rainforests is shrinking rapidly because more trees are being cut for housing, paper and for mono-culture palm oil and cacao plantations. Developed countries try to curb the deforestation by introducing REDD+ program. REDD stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). The program is backed by the United Nations. Countries that have vast areas of rainforest will receive billions of US dollars of funds to support communities living around and inside the rainforest with the promise that they will stop logging operations in their forests. As someone who frequently travels around the forest, I see some positive advantages from this program and I also see a lot of drawbacks. As a matter of fact, REDD should focus on reforestation of deforested areas by employing people living in the areas. In other words, REDD should create jobs that are related to the expansion or preservation of rainforests so that the communities who live in or near the tropical rainforests will give more appreciations to the REED+ program. People will not easily cut trees if they are the ones who work hard in planting them.

As a tour guide, I have accompanied tourists on hiking and bird watching trips inside the jungle of West Papua. During those hiking trips, I got a lot of opportunities in photographing rainforest. Using my pocket camera Sony Cybershot and Nikon Coolpix P500, I took various sceneries of the forest and the sea as well as the mountains to present them on this website so that everybody who sees them will appreciate this rich environment.

I like traveling and taking pictures of nature and people that I see and meet. I have used a number of photographic devices. Most of them are not professional cameras because I am not a professional photographer yet. I consider photography as a hobby. After spending much of my time using Sony and Panasonic digital cameras, now I use Nikon Coolpix P500 - a superzoom camera that is able to optically magnify distant subjects to 36 x. With its digital zoom feature, the Nikon P500 can magnify the subject to 4x. So, a bird that is sitting on the branch of a tall tree, can be magnified to 40 times. When the magnification is in its maximum level, a photographer really needs a tripod to stabilize the camera. Any slight movement of the hands of the photographer can cause the subject to be out of the view of the lens.

Pictures Taken By Nikon P500

Photos from Nikon P500

Photographs of Nature from the North Coast of Manokwari

Photography and Photos

Photographs of corals

My digital camera Sony Cybershot DSC-W30

Photographs of Dogs Pouncing on a Deer

Nature Photographs of Manokwari

Photograph of a crashed airplane in Manokwari

Photographs of Moving Objects

Photographs of Rainforest