As you may recall, we planned on our Costa Rica trip for almost a year.  My plans to exploit the photographic opportunities started around then too.  First of all, I had to decide what gear to bring and how to get it there.  In the end, I followed the advice of Arthur Morris on how he travels the world with his photographic gear.  I have a Thinktank bag into which I was able to pack all of my valuables such as my 7D, flash and lenses.  The tripod, monopod and binos ended up being packed in my checked baggage.  The big surprise was travelling on the small aircraft from San Jose to Puerto Jimenez.  I fully expected to pay the overweight penalty and then watch in horror as my camera bag would be gate-checked into the belly of the Cessna Caravan but I was allowed to hold the camera bag on my lap.

The next item of research was finding tips for nature photography in the tropics.  I found very helpful articles written by Glenn Bartley for Nature Images Online Magazine.   If you are interested in what he recommends, here are the links to Glenn’s articles: Part 1 Part 2  Part 3

NIOM is an online blog hosted and managed by my fellow wildlife photographer, Ray Barlow.

Once we arrived at El Remanso, we were amazed at the variety of and numbers of birds we initially saw which included the Toucan you see above, the Blue-capped Manakin and Crested Guans.

One thing that I learned very quickly is that just because you can see them, doesn’t mean that they will be hanging around until you get your gear together.  In fact, I think that the birds here are more skittish than the birds back home.  Once I got past the excitement of seeing these new and exotic birds I concentrated on trying to get some decent images. 

I learned that the variable lighting conditions while in and out of the rainforest caused me to vary my shooting technique.  For example, while inside the rainforest, there is plenty of shadows with dappled light.  I tried shooting in Aperture priority mode so that the shutter speed would automatically adjust to give proper exposure.  But if your target moved into the darkness, the shutter speed would often be too slow resulting in blurred images.  My best success was to manually set a minimum shutter speed, with a wide open aperture and auto ISO.  Of course, this sometimes resulted in over exposed images since the aperture was too far open. 

The other problem I found with photography in the tropics was the intensity of the sunlight.  Here in Ontario and most of the northern hemisphere, we can enjoy 6 hours of prime lighting for photography, first 3 in the morning and last 3 before sunset.

In Costa Rica it seems as though the sun wastes no time rising and getting high in the sky which causes a huge problem with shadows.  I tried to resolve the problem with my flash and better beamer attachment  and in quite a few instances it worked like a charm. 

Quite often I would wake with the howler monkeys at 5:15 and be out of the cabin by 5:45 ready for static shots of hummingbirds and whatever else happened to be in my eyepiece.

All this being said, I look forward to our next trip to Costa Rica and El Remanso!

I now have  2 Costa Rica galleries, one for birds and one for everything else.

Link to birds. Link to everything else

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