Costa Rica is a photographer’s wonderland!

On this first full day at Selva Verde we headed out at 6 am to catch the morning light on flowers and a hoped-for early appearance of howler monkeys.  I am using mostly collages again as there are so many photos I want to share with you.

I don’t think this howler monkey was impressed with his early morning admirers!  (The photo looks grainy as I had to use a very high ISO to capture this little fellow at all.)

These three plants are all versions of the same family – the heliconia flower.

After breakfast, Alejandro our fabulous photography instructor, taught us the rudiments of macro photography during a field session. Critters have acquired a new interest in my eyes.  The little white blobs on the green leaf are frogs eggs.  🙂

Now that I have a much better grip on close-up techniques I realize that taking good macro photographs is more difficult than using a longer lens.

This afternoon we spent a couple of hours on the Puerto Viejo River spotting wildlife.  Birds abounded!  A great blue heron and a cattle egret are in the photo below, while a green kingfisher and a lovely snowy egret with its fluffy feathers are in the next photo.  I was fortunate to catch the great blue heron taking off from his perch.

We even spotted an iguana, a green basilisk lizard and a spooky looking cayman.

Tomás, our walking encyclopedia of all things natural, was completely delighted when he spotted this sea otter a long way from the Caribbean Sea. It was only the second time he had seen one – how lucky were we to catch this extremely rare sight!

But our photographic day was not yet done! Alejandro gave us a brief workshop on night and flash photography and let us loose around the lodge. We used our flashes on the cricket and the basilisk, but the frogs’ eyes are too sensitive.  We lit them with flashlights instead. Notice the web-like membrane on the red-eyed tree frog’s eyes.

That’s all for today!  See you tomorrow!