Laurie Santos: Pictures of Feet

(logo whooshing) (upbeat music) - It all happened very innocently enough.

At our field sites, we spend lots of time hanging around with monkeys in this beautiful place.

All of us are rolling around with cameras.

(shutter clicking) And I think either out of boredom or we just had some time or something, I started taking pictures of the monkey's hands and feet.

But it kind of just stuck as something I found really visually interesting, and just kind of a nice way to frame the fact that we are special but different, and sort of just a kind of different way to look at these creatures.

What started with kind of pictures of monkey hands and feet turned out to be pictures of lots of other animals' hands and feet.

(shutter clicking) I have pictures of blue-footed booby feet from the Galapagos, which are gorgeous because it's one of the only very, very blue creatures out there, and some of them have really wonderfully blue feet.

I have pictures of rhinoceros feet from a visit to a reserve in Africa.

(shutter clicking) Tortoise feet from the giant Galapagos tortoises.

My favorite print is one of a monkey's hands wrapped around a tree and it's a great shot because you can see the monkey's hands and the fur and their fingernails, and it really looks like human hands would look as wrapped around a tree.

I think my pictures of the feet are a little bit of a secret, actually.

I was visiting my best friend this weekend and I mentioned the feet thing and she said, ":I never knew you took pictures of feet.

Why do you take pictures of feet?"

I think people might be worried about this.

They might kind of hide their feet away now that they know I do this.

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