We had another great breakfast at Crocodile Bay and then packed up for another full day of shooting. As it would turn out, much of the photography on this day would be focusing on the birds of the area. The first bird that we saw was the Black-bellied Whistling Duck. We saw a couple of these ducks flying back and forth between two fallen trees, and I keyed in on the closest one. I kept the camera trained on the duck and waited for moments like this one.
The rain was not falling too hard, so we just got out of the 4-wheel drive vehicle and shot without any rain covers on the cameras or ourselves. I was using the Canon 1D X Mark II and Canon 100-400mm II lens which are rain resistant, so no worries.
The muted light allowed us to capture photos of the birds with very even light.
After photographing the ducks for a little while, we continued driving until we came across this Bare-throated Tiger-heron.
Ugh - I forget what bird this is. I am sure that all you birders will know. But I love the colors and markings on this species.
We were driving along when Dennis (our guide) hit the brakes and stopped the vehicle by a small stream. I was looking around and trying to figure out what the heck he saw. He pointed to a leaf that was hanging over the water and had us focus in on small shiny object at the bottom of the leaf. At this point, I am thinking "what the heck is that?" Dennis explained that this is a group of tree frog eggs which has been suspended over the water. When the frogs emerge from the eggs, they drop down into the water and swim to the shore. How cool is that?
Near that same location, we spotted this Iguana hanging out on fallen tree limb.
My wife loves birds of prey, so when we saw this Yellow-headed Caracara on a fence post, I had to jump out and get a shot. We took turns photographing the bird and then moving forward to get as close as possible. Once we got our "safe shots" we waited for the bird to fly off.
As soon as the Caracara took off, I started shooting photos in burst mode. You will notice how the rain falling in the opposite direction of the bird's flight actually makes the photo more interesting.
When photographing wildlife, I almost always keep my camera in IO Servo focus mode (follow focus) to track the animals as they move. I also use back button focus 100% of the time. If you are not familiar with these settings, come join me on a photo tour to Costa Rica and I will teach you.
I saw this little Red-breasted Meadowlark sitting on a branch (on the other side of the road from the Caracaras). I did shoot some tight shots of the Meadowlark but preferred this one with the tree and rain in the background. This is one of the reasons that I love the Canon 100-400mm lens. It lets me zoom in and out and reframe my shots for very different compositions.
This is the shot I was talking about at the beginning of this blog post. I was shooting photos of this Roadside Hawk when it decided to shake off the rain water from it's features. I was looking through the Canon 1D X Mark II when this occurred and I thought "Man - I hope I have a sharp focus on this hawk at this very moment!" If we had another dry day, I would never have captured this photo! Making lemonade from lemons for sure.
I have said this before in other blog posts, but I have become a real fan of photographing birds. The unique colors and markings are truly incredible. I love the colors on the back of this Gartered Trogon.
The low clouds also presented us with some cool landscape photos. This area of Costa Rica is so beautiful and untouched!
We were driving down a road towards the beach when we saw a large group of monkeys searching for food in the trees above us. The rain had all but stopped at this point so it was easier to point the cameras up into the trees without getting water on our lenses.
Lunch time for the monkeys.
It was funny because the monkeys were eating the food inside these pods and then dropping them down on us as we photographed them.
I took this wider shot to show you all what it looks like as you look up into the canopy above.
We arrived at the beach and took advantage of the dry weather to stop for lunch.
As we made our way back to the resort, we spotted the same group of monkeys and we shot some more photos. We watched as the monkeys jumped one-by-one from one tree to another. I was teaching the others about spot metering and exposure compensation at this time. This is the only way to grab photos like this without getting a silhouette of the monkey.
We returned to the resort for a nice dinner and then a lesson on workflow using Photo Mechanic and Adobe Photoshop.
Sunday was our last full day on the Osa Peninsula and we made the most of it. We took one of the fishing boats across the bay, heading for an animal sanctuary.
It was so nice to cruise the coastline and enjoy the unspoiled scenes.
When we arrived at the animal sanctuary, we were greeted by "Sweetie", the cutest darned monkey ever. These monkeys are out and about. They are not caged, but they are used to people and will come right up to you.
I love this sanctuary because it gives everyone a chance to photograph these animals in a more controlled environment. Still in their natural habitat, but...
I look forward to taking groups of people here to capture your own photos of these beautiful and friendly animals.
I saw this one monkey looking away from the light and took the opportunity to get a backlit portrait.
As we walked around the sanctuary, the monkeys followed us.
This Ocelot was in heat and pacing the cage like crazy. It took me a long time to capture this photo. (Since this animal was in a cage, I shot the photo at f/4.5 to try and blur the foreground and background. But in the original image, the cage was still pretty visible in the background. I brought the photo into Photoshop and blurred the background a little more on a separate layer and painted that in.
The owner of the sanctuary was looking for new photos for her annual calendar, so I was taking these to donate to her as much as for myself.
As I was walking around the sanctuary, I was greeted by this Great Curassow. I got down low and shot photo at the bird's eye level.
My daughter loves pigs and was happy to see a Collared Peccary on the property.
The sanctuary has a family of White-headed monkeys and I was happy to be able to photograph this adult and baby together.
These sloths were hanging out too (literally).
As we left the sanctuary, we escorted by a couple of the monkeys who came down to the beach to send us off.
We hopped back on the boat and took a short ride down the coastline to the private gardens of an American couple who moved there 37 years ago. They have created a magnificent garden with endless pathways of local foliage. And, of course, there are lots of wildlife there as well.
I watched as this Cherrie's Tanager hopped from one branch to another. Look at the amazing colors on the breast of this bird.
I saw this Bamboo tree and loved the colors and patterns in this shot. It is simple but elegant.
This is not the best photo in the world, but I am including it in the blog because it is the first time I have ever successfully photographed a Dragon Fly in flight. These insects move so fast that I have never had the opportunity to lock focus and grab the shot before they fly off. Well..this Dragon Fly was staying relatively still, so I zoomed the Canon 100-400mm II lens out to 400mm, manually focused the lens (since the auto focus was having trouble locking in on the small subject), and fired off a couple of shots before it took off. Bam - got it!
They have an abundance of flowers in the garden meant that we had an abundance of butterflies as well.
We all had a great time keying in on these little insects and getting up close and personal with them.
We took the boat back to Crocodile Bay and were heading up to the restaurant for lunch, but had to stop and get a picture of this Green Iguana who was out sunning himself.
The last stop on our trip was a visit to a local chocolate maker. But more on that on the next and final Costa Rica blog post. Stay tuned for that...
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