Morro Bay Kangaroo Rat
captured by F4e / 35-70f2.8 w/6T
It was a long time ago, 1989, when I dragged the family up the California coast to a lighthouse. We’d not been there before, it had taken a bit of leg work to even gain access and as we drove up in the station wagon, I had no clue what I was photographically getting into. The biologist walked up, opened the door to the base of the lighthouse and inside were the last remaining Morro Bay Kangaroo Rats in the world. Just eight at the time, just eight. They were living in manmade plywood box arenas in the hope they would breed and make more. At the time, there were none known in the wild. Today, there are none and the search for a small pocket in the wild that might have survived is underway.
I so regret my lack of skills then and the quality of this photograph today. It was taken in the crudest of ways. It was my first, very first small critter shoot and I couldn’t have been more ill prepared. This photo was taken with an aquarium that was there on the shelf. It was in horrible shape. For a macro lens, all I had was a 35-70f2.8 with a 6T filter. The sharpness is barely useable, barely. This photo today, nearly thirty years later, is the photo still in use as the record for the existence of this critter existence and is being used again as they look for survivors. This is our only record of their existence on the planet!
What brought this up was the timing of three emails that just came in. First was from biologist working on a SKR & DKR in Southern California I photographed twenty years ago. The second was the biologist heading the research for the MBKR asking permission to use the photo, again, in a press release about the project. The last was from someone asking why I’m such a hard ass about not cropping in post, not relying on post to fix a photograph, why getting it right, right from the start is so important? I hope this expresses why this is so important to me, the history in our files.