Costa Rica — Page 2

Dennis July 11, 2011 2 Comments

Costa Rica 2011 The Art of Biodiversity – Part 2

Selva Verde Lodge

We spent three days at this tropical rainforest lodge located on the banks of the Sarapiqui River. The attraction here is the abundance of green and black poison dart frogs and red poison dart frogs as well as masked and red-eyed tree frogs. One back lit basilisk lizard was a challenge to photograph as we tried to move through the undergrowth off the path and not chase the lizard off. There were also lizards climbing a tree next to the dining room, and we even saw a baby fer-de-lance on the side of the path. It couldn’t have been more than three inches in diameter coiled less than a foot from the path. The lodge naturalist moved the snake into the forest for everyone’s (and the snake’s) safety.

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Dennis July 8, 2011 1 Comment

Costa Rica 2011 The Art of Biodiversity Part I

Chris and I traveled recently to Costa Rica with my friend and tour leader, Greg Basco, co-founder of Foto Verde Tours, a provider of tours designed for photographers. Last year I traveled to Costa Rica with Joe and Maryann McDonald primarily to photograph hummingbirds, and met Greg who organized and co-led the trip. This year I signed up early for the Art of Biodiversity tour which offered a wider variety of photographic subjects at the start of the rainy season. Chris decided to join me at a later date, which worked out well as there were only two other participants for a total of four plus Greg and Jose Lopez, our driver and also a very good photographer.

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Dennis May 2, 2010

Costa Rica Photography Trip IV

One of the challenges I set myself was to capture hummingbirds landing. It’s not a matter of just setting the camera to the highest frame rate and hope for the best, but an anticipation that the landing was going to occur. With the lens focused on the flower, and framed wide enough to capture the bird as it came in, I’d take my eye away from the viewfinder and look at the larger scene to spot a hummer coming in for a landing.

Since the birds are attracted to the photographic setup using a feeder, the images are predominantly side views of the hummingbird coming in to the feeding tube. I tried to be aware of the flight of the hummer and attempt to get some images with the birds in different attitudes.

Another technique that Greg Basco suggested is to use a longer flash duration to get a little blur in the fastest moving parts of the hummingbird, the tips of the wings. In one setup we set the flashes to 1/8 power which froze the image of most of the bird. These two images were taken at f25 and using multiple flashes as the main light. In another setup where full sunlight was lighting the bird and background, the camera was set for a longer exposure to let the moving parts blur quite a bit, and the light from the flashes freezing a portion of the bird that did not move much. This had a lower success rate. The last three images were take at 1/25 second and f8. You can see the amount of wing motion in that short amount of time.