Up close and personal in Costa Rica

I will be heading back to the rain forest of Costa Rica late next month. That photo tour is sold out, but I have new tours scheduled for 2024 if you would like to sign up. In today's blog post, I am sharing with you some of the close up photos from the last trip.  Some were taken with the Canon RF100mm macro lens and others were taken using the Canon RF100-500mm lens, which does an amazing job of focusing up close. On this trip, I decided to leave the Canon R3 at home, and took the Canon R5 and Canon R6II bodies.

I love these close up shots, because it shows you detail that one might miss otherwise.

On our "macro day" we had a chance to photograph this helmet lizard. I have photographed this type of lizard before but never seen one with a dark blue eye. To capture this, I zoomed the Canon RF100-500mm lens to 370mm to just get the upper part of the body. When capturing the whole body (head to tail), the blue eye was not as noticeable. 

If you have followed my blog for a long time, and seen other images from Costa Rica, you know that I love photographing the red eye tree frogs. Since I have captured thousands of images of these little guys, I now look for interesting positions that they might be in. I really liked the way that this frog was positioned on the plant. Mainly it's foot placement and the way that it is looking out towards me. This photo was taken with the long lens.

This is the same frog photographed with the Canon RF100mm macro lens. When getting this close, you can see much more detail and more vibrant colors.

This frog was just hanging out and not moving much. This allowed all of us to easily capture images from all different directions. Straight on...

...and profile. Which lens do you think I was using to get these photos? If you guessed the macro lens, you would be wrong. 😀

I was testing pre-production units of the new Crucial x9 and Crucial x10 solid state drives (which are my new go-to drives). I wanted to take some "lifestyle photos" of these drives in the rain forest, and decided to have a little fun with one of our little models. I put the drive in front of this dart frog and waited for it to hop on for a ride. 

Whenever we take photos of the snakes, we always use the longer zoom lenses. Our handler placed this Eyelash Viper on this mossy log and I encouraged everyone to wait for the tongue to come out and shoot at that moment. 

In between photographing the reptiles, I always encourage my guests to look around capture the beautiful foliage. I was photographing this plant when I saw this insect flying into the frame. I quickly changed my focus to my new subject and took this shot.

On one of our free mornings, I decided to walk through the grounds of the resort to see what fun wildlife I could capture. Yeah, I know...some people might wonder why I would keep shooting after almost a week of teaching photography, but the passion runs deep and I love what I do! This young Iguana was hanging out on a branch down by the pier. I leaned over a railing, zoomed the Canon RF100-500mm lens all the way to 500mm to get as close as I could, and grabbed this shot. Because I was so close (maybe 6 feet away) and shooting at 500mm, I was able to get really narrow depth of field, with the focus mainly being on the face of the animal. 

Almost anywhere you go in the rain forest, you will be treated to butterflies, and they come in all shapes and colors.

Whenever I take groups to the rain forest, I always include a visit to a local "farm" where they grow and make chocolate. Although this stop is more about the culture and a little less about the photography, there is still plenty to shoot there.  Many times we are joined by White face monkeys in this location (which did happen on this trip, but those images will come in another blog post), and we always see cool insects. I saw this fly on top of this flower and loved the shiny green body against the yellow flower pedals. It is a simple photo, but one of my favorites from that day.

We saw this Dragon fly taking a break, and I wanted to zoom in to show the amazing patterns in it's wings. Again, this is something we don't usually see when they are flying around in the distance.

The majority of people who go with me on a photo tour to Costa Rica are excited to capture great images of the monkeys, sloths and birds. This just shows you how much more there is to photograph in this beautiful region.  Come join me in 2024!

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. _________________________________________________________________   

Having Fun with Photoshop!

A couple of months ago, I had just finished photographing an event here in the Bay area and had some extra time to visit a friend in the area. When I walked into their house I immediately noticed that something was wrong. It turns out that Mike had been stung by a bee right on his right eyelid. Ouch! 

His family suggested that, since I had all my camera gear with me, I should take his portrait. I grabbed my Canon R3 with the Canon RF 70-200mm lens and took some photos of Mike against his kitchen wall. After taking the photo, I told him that he looked like he had been in a boxing match. We all had a good laugh and that was that. Well...until I had an idea.

When I got home and downloaded all the images, I saw the images of Mike and thought that it would be fun to put him into a boxing scenario. What better than a "Rocky" poster! I searched the Internet and came across this Rocky III poster at a pretty high resolution. Now it was time to have fun.

I removed Mike's face from the background and resized it to fit over Sylvester Stallone's face. At home I have a Wacom Intuos Tablet which makes it way easier to manipulate the process.

Since this was on a separate layer, I could paint in his face without leaving any obvious lines between his jaw and the original neckline. I got really lucky that the light on Mike's face (coming from a nearby window) matched the direction of the light on Stallone.  

After looking at the photo a little longer, I decided that I needed to enhance the redness of Mike's right eye. I created an adjustment brush, increased the saturation of red and painted that in. After having a good laugh to myself, it was time to share the image with Mike and his family. I texted them the image and they thought it was hysterical.

Since I have the Canon Pro-4100 printer in my office, I had to take the image and print it poster size!

I have a bunch of 24x36 inch frames and saw this as the perfect gift for them. A couple of weeks later I framed it and brought it over to them. Now the big question is, where do they put it in the house? Mike wants it front and center in the house and his wife wants none of that! That makes me laugh even more.

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. _________________________________________________________________   

You can finally purchase Jeff Cable Photography images on my new website!

I have been a professional photographer for almost 20 years, and I have amassed quite a collection of images from all over the world. For so long, people have asked me how they can purchase my photos. and I never had a good answer for them. Honestly, I just did not have the bandwidth to make them available for print. All of that is changing now. I have been working with Art Storefronts to make my photos available to purchase. You can purchase inexpensive novelty items, paper prints ranging from 8x12 to 60x40, metal prints, gallery wraps, acrylics and more.

To launch the new website https://fineart.jeffcable.com/. I am offering 20% off everything. 

I have gone through 20 years of photos and added my favorite images from Africa, Costa Rica, Europe, San Francisco and more. You will find everything from wildlife to cityscape photos. I am really excited about the new site since it is really clean and easy to navigate. 

Currently you will see three categories of images, Wildlife, Nights Around the World, and Travel. 

Within each of these categories is a large collection of my favorite photos.

You can even use the color pallet to the top left to choose images within a certain color range to suit the environment of your choice. 

As you can see, there a lot of options for you. Everything from gift items to museum quality large prints.

I encourage you to enter your email for the fine art site, as I will not be automatically adding you from this blog mailing list to the other. The fine art mailing list will remind you of special offers that you may otherwise miss, even though they will be posted on my social media channels. 

I have tried to keep the prices reasonable to make these affordable gifts for yourself and your friends. 

I hope that you enjoy the new site and find something to compliment your home or business!

- Jeff

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Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!
_________________________________________________________________

You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

_________________________________________________________________

If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. 

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QNAP NAS update: Moving 1.5 MILLION images from the old Drobo!

I am interrupting my Costa Rica blog posts to bring to you a long awaited post about my data storage transition. Way back in February of this year I wrote a blog post telling you all that I was making a huge transition from the Drobo NAS system (now out of business) to the newer and far superior QNAP system. Back then I had just installed the two new NAS systems, but had not moved any data. 

I had many people (most of whom were using Drobo) write to me and ask how the QNAP transition was going. I told them that it was too early to tell, and that I had a lot of work to do before I could give them a fair and honest answer. 

Here I am about 6 months later and I have been using the system non-stop. I apologize for taking so long to write this follow-up review, but there was a lot to do in between then and now. Some had to do with the data transition and some was just the back-to-back photo tours. No more excuses! Let me tell you what I have found, both the good and the bad.  

Initial Setup

Let me start with the install of the boxes. I had two NAS systems to set up, one of which would be my main storage and one which would be my offsite destination. I had a whole bunch of the Seagate IronWolf 20TB hard drives to install, and I also purchased a couple of M2 SSD drives to increase the overall speed of the drive access.  Installing the drives was simple enough, and powering up the QNAP boxes was a piece of cake. I did have to make some phone calls to the support team when I got stuck, and they were very helpful getting me up and running. 

My goal was to transition all 1.5 million photos (and other data) from the Drobo NAS to the new QNAP TVS-h874 NAS. This process took a REALLY long time. I would transfer one year of data at a time and I think it took me the better part of two weeks to complete the process. 

An Issue

Once I got everything moved over, everything appeared to be perfect, with one hiccup. When I attempted to search for a folder on the drive (using my Mac Studio), the folders could not be found. It turns out that the NAS was not indexed. The crazy thing is...there is no easy way to re-index a drive from a Mac, so I had to research a way to make that happen. Once I figured out how to make that happen, it took another 5 days! And this problem has not been completely resolved. There are still times when the indexing goes haywire (where I search for a folder, it shows the folder, I click on it, and it opens a completely different folder) and I have to force a re-index. This process generally takes a couple of days (in the background), which is a real nuisance since it slows the drive to a crawl. I have searched the Internet for answers and this seems to be an issue with the Mac and many NAS drives. I am hoping that someone at Apple can help me resolve this.

How I Work On My Files

Originally I had thought that I would use the QNAP NAS as my main working drive, but I have decided to use the new 4TB Crucial x10 SSD drive as my main drive. I chose to make this change for two reasons:

* The Crucial SSD is incredibly fast, much faster than accessing the QNAP drive over Ethernet.

* In case the indexing problem happens again, I can still work with the SSD without any delays while I re-index the NAS.

Setting Up Remote Synchronization

In the previous blog post, I showed the two QNAP units side by side. My next step was to copy all of the data from the QNAP TVS-h874 NAS (primary drive) to the QNAP TS-832PX NAS drive (which would be my offsite drive). The QNAP support people helped me connect the two boxes together and start the synchronization. I knew that the synchronization had to first be done locally (on the same network), because trying to sync up 1.5 million images to a remote location over the Internet would take forever. 

That process took another 3 or 4 days, but I did not have to do anything. We started the sync and I let it run.

At that point I needed to drive the second box to my remote location, which is a couple of hundred miles away at my brother's home. Once I got the second box powered up at my brothers, I once again leaned on the QNAP support people to help me with the remote sync settings. This process was so simple and painless. I was amazed! With the old Drobo unit (using their Drobo DR software), the user interface was terrible, the process was painstaking and it failed all the time. I have been dying for a reliable system for keeping my data safe in more than one location. Now I have it.  

The User Interface and Features

The user interface for the QNAP is all browser based and is very straight-forward. I have not used most of the icons you see above, mostly using the HBS 3 Hybrid Backup Sync app for the remote synchronization. I do use the File Station application at times, but mainly use the Mac Finder to find what I am looking for.

This is what the File Station interface looks like. A simple interface for viewing the files and folders stored on the NAS drive.

There are numerous applications which can be installed on the QNAP NAS drive. I have installed a couple of apps (for the backup and remote access). I have been tempted to install the media streaming app (just for fun), but have not done so at this time.

The Control Panel is where I set all my settings for the NAS unit, with me generally using the "General Settings" more than anything else. 

Within the General Settings, I can check the status of all the drives. In this screen shot, you can see the status of the two internal SSDs and all the Seagate IronWolf 20TB hard drives. 

As I mentioned earlier, I am using the the HBS 3 Hybrid Backup Sync app (no additional charge for this) for my remote synchronization. I have this application running on both boxes and performing a synchronization every morning at 1am. It has been running for the last 6 months without any issues or failures. This means that I have all 1.5 million images in both places for extra security, and it stays up-to-date constantly. This is a huge peace of mind for me (and my clients).

When I was using the Drobo DR software, I would constantly bug the development team at Drobo to give me some sort of interface to show the progress of the synchronization. With the Drobo, there was almost no way to see if the synchronization was successful or how much data was transferred. They never fixed that issue, creating times when the sync process was broken for months without my knowledge. With the QNAP Sync log, I have an easy way to check the status of my sync to make sure they are happening.

If I click on one of the items in the Sync log, I can see more details of that particular process. In the example above, I can see that on Aug 28th, 54GB of data was sent from my TVS-h874 NAS drive to the TS-832PX NAS drive hundreds of miles away. It took about an hour to synchronize the 4914 files.

 

Since we are on the subject of remote data, I have to talk about one of my favorite things about the QNAP NAS drives, and one of the biggest differences between the old Drobo system and these new units. I am talking about the ability to easily access ANY of my files from ANYWHERE in the world. Drobo did have the ability to access their NAS drive from a remote location using a web browser, but it was painfully slow. There are many times when I am traveling and need to access images for a client. When searching for a file on the old Drobo NAS, it would literally take me 15 to 20 minutes to locate a file since the interface was brutally slow. With the QNAP drives, I can now find that same file in less than a minute and I LOVE that! Not only can I check files on my local drive, but I can access the remote drive as well. 

Oh, one more thing. There is another feature of the QNAP NAS that is not critical but which I really love.  That is the auto backup of my camera roll from my phone any time I get in range of my WiFi network. This means that I do not have to do this manually, and I don't have to rely on iCloud or other services to backup my photos and videos from my iPhone. 

Conclusion

When Drobo started showing signs of their pending demise, I was in a panic. I had ALL my data on their boxes and both the company and the units were failing. I literally lost sleep worrying about this problem. I pride myself on having every digital image I have ever taken (the keepers), and having them in two locations. I even tell my clients about this setup so that they know I will have their images safe for years to come. 

I can tell you now that the panic is gone and I am really happy with the new QNAP solution. I have not only replicated what I was doing with the Drobo units, I have surpassed the functionality and usability by far! It is not an inexpensive solution, but it is something that is vital to my business. As a professional photographer, our data is everything, and keeping those images safe is critical. I am now sleeping better at night.

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Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!
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If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. 

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The first time doing a dolphin excursion in Costa Rica!

I have been leading photo tours to the same area of Costa Rica for many years now, and the itinerary has stayed very much the same with a couple of small changes. Some of the changes were conscious changes made by me (based on my guests feedback) and others were made out of necessity.  One of the excursions that my guests enjoyed was a visit to an animal rehab area. Unfortunately that sanctuary has been shut down and so I needed to come up with a different excursion for my photo tour. One of the best parts of the sanctuary visit was the boat ride across the bay. I really wanted to keep that as part of my tour, to share this awesome experience with my guests. Working along with my contacts at the resort, we decided to replace the sanctuary trip with a whale and dolphin watching trip. And it turned out to be awesome!

Let me share the images and story of our amazing morning on the water.

The first question I always get from my guests when I tell them that we are going to be on the water is "How rough will the water be?" Because we stay within the bay and don't venture out into the open ocean waters, it is almost always very calm.  We boarded a boat around 8am and headed out looking for whales. I saw this guy fishing from a kayak and loved the calm scene and all the blue colors working together. As you can see, we had nice overcast skies which really helped to avoid harsh sunlight and shadows.

After 20 minutes or so, our captain and guide spotted a mother whale and her young calf. We cruised along with them for while, capturing photos of their backs, but never got a good shot of their heads or tails.

Getting a nice shot of their dorsal fins is fine, but gets old fast. It was time to move on to see if we could find some dolphins.

We headed back into the smoother waters of the bay and same across this sea turtle who made an appearance for a quick photo.

We also tracked a couple of white-footed booby, but were determined to find dolphins!

After 30 minutes of searching, we saw spotted dolphins out in the distance. I was VERY excited to see the dolphins for 4 reasons:

1. They have been my favorite animal since I was a young child.

2. It was a large pod with a lot of activity.

3. They were not just swimming, but jumping high into the air.

4. I wanted my guests to have great photo opportunities.

I was shooting with the Canon R5 camera and Canon RF 100-500mm lens. Because the high resolution of the Canon R5, I could crop in on the previous shot to get this image. It is less than 1MB in size, but still decent. I liked the "S curve" of the body but really wanted to see more of the face.

As we got closer to the pod, we were able to grab images like this without having to do heavy crops. 

This one dolphin jumped so high, facing us and leaving a trail of water off of it's body! This is one of my favorite photos from the trip. I was excited to see that numerous of my guests captured the same jump. It was just AWESOME!  

Here is a tighter crop of the same image. This one is going on the wall at my home (and I will be offering this and many other images for sale soon).

They just kept performing for us. 

We estimated that there were more than 100 spotted dolphins in this pod.

The more mature spotted dolphins show spots on their under belly. you can see that in this image.

Here is another favorite image from that morning and the photo tour. Actually, there are numerous images from this excursion that are in my all-time favorite image collection.

After spending over an hour with the spotted dolphins, we started to make our way back to the resort, when we came across a small pod of bottlenose dolphins. They came over and rode the bow wave of the boat. At this point, many of my guests had stopped taking photos and were just sitting on the bow, enjoying the show. As soon as I saw them right in front of us, I switched to my Canon R6II which had the Canon RF 24-105mm lens on it. I also happened to have my Tiffen Circular Polarizing filter on the lens, which helped to cut the glare and get better images of the dolphins in the water. I stood up and shot images over the heads of my guests. 

Then I decided to put the camera down and enjoy this for myself. I did take my iPhone out and grabbed a short video to remember the moment. You can see that HERE.

As you can imagine, this excursion is staying on my Costa Rica photo tours from now on! I hope you can join me on an upcoming trip to see this for yourself.

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Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!
_________________________________________________________________
If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
_________________________________________________________________
Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. 

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