The amazing thing about walking in a rainforest is how your eyes deceive you into thinking that the light levels in there are fairly comparable with a regular kind of daylight exterior location. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
As soon as you pull the camera out of its bag and check the exposure levels, you will be amazed at how little light there really is. Long exposures are the only way to work and a tripod is a must.
We are all so used to seeing rainforest shots that appear to be well lit with the light streaming through the canopy that we sub-consciously imagine this to be the reality.
My experience of this environment shows that in order to achieve a low ISO setting it is necessary to work with shutter speeds of several seconds duration. If noise or grain levels are not a problem for you, then you may be able to get away with something in the order of 1/8th of a second, but clearly a tripod is still a good idea for such long exposures.
The discipline of working with a tripod for every shot is a good one. As most of us are used to hand-holding, a tripod causes one to take a breath, slow down and consider the important matter of exactly where to place the camera for achieving the coverage of the particular subject we are after capturing. We will work much slower than we may be used to, but the rewards of taking our time can be enormous.
The Australian rainforests seem to be relatively safe places to be, though I found that one slightly distressing experience was my encounter with several little blood sucking leeches. These little guys hang around under leaves and when a possible host passes by they propel themselves in their general direction with a great deal of determination and precision. I found myself (after stalking some twisted vines in a particularly dark area just off the track) to have fallen victim just below my neck when I put my hand there and felt this soft squidgy little body attached to me. Not knowing what it was at first, I panicked in trying to persuade him to leave the vicinity immediately. Instead of this he fell down into my shirt and straightaway latched on to my tummy area and started another feed there! After successfully knocking him away I became I slightly paranoid about any other of his chums finding me irresistible too. Despite extreme care not to brush against the undergrowth, when I arrived back at my car 2 hours later, I was bleeding in 4 different places - and I hadn't even managed to exploit them in a similar way and get any shots of them. Maybe the answer would have been to take a companion to act as a model with the little blighters.
If you ever find yourself fortunate enough to be in a rainforest......in the rain, beware the blood suckers amongst the wildlife, but enjoy the experience!
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