To Photograph a Galápagos Tortoise, Get Out of the Race<br />In this piece, the photographer Federico Rios Escobar explains how he drew a particularly large subject out of her<br />proverbial shell at a recent (and spontaneous) shoot for a Travel section cover story on the Galápagos Islands.<br />I asked my driver to stop the car so I could get out, and I watched one of them slowly advance on the sidewalk as cars and buses passed by.<br />The last thing I wanted was to slip and find myself — or my camera — flattened under one of those monumental animals.<br />On the last day of my assignment in the Galápagos, I noticed a couple of tortoises on the road that leads from Puerto Ayora to the airport.<br />I had been lying there on the ground for almost 40 minutes without realizing the passage of time, while the tortoise barely moved a few meters.<br />By FEDERICO RIOS ESCOBARJUNE 26, 2017<br />Times Insider shares insights into how we work at The New York Times.
