Life in a Balsa Tree

It is not often you get this close to life in a tree that has been the backbone of lure making since Mr Rapala began using it to churn out foil wrapped twigs.

Balsa Trees - Behind the Photo from Anand Varma on Vimeo.

In 2009, photographer Christian Ziegler asked me to help him photograph a story about balsa trees for National Geographic Magazine. Here is a video I shot over three months of fieldwork in Panama that shows a behind the scenes look at how we got the shots for the story. Narrated by Christian Ziegler.