Golden Orb Spider

An Active Participant – To Better Macro Photographs

Macro photography requires concentration on technique and thus makes the photographer a very active participant in the picture taking process. With the wonderful cameras of today it is all to easy to just point the lens and click away and have the image captured within five seconds or less of having conceived it. Macro is very unforgiving of this quick approach – indeed it is difficult to capture a good macro image without significant thought and planning. In this post I will talk about some of the lessons learned from our new hobby, which are applicable to general picture taking as well.

Paying attention to the background: All too often a busy background will call away attention from the subject and ruin an otherwise good composition. Sometimes a background blur can solve this problem, but sometimes it cannot. While photographing this Buho Gigante I noticed that some reeds were causing a busy background, a problem that was fixed by simply holding a leaf between the reeds and the subject.

Canon EOS 20D, Sigma 180mm, 1/1.6 f/32 iso 100	Simplify Background!	Canon EOS 20D, Sigma 180mm, 1/1.3 f/32 iso 100

Capture interesting behaviour: Catching a lion yawning, or a monkey scratching will often make for a more interesting composition that a static picture of the same animal. Macro is no different. This butterfly larva likes to disguise itself as bird poo, pretty interesting in itself. But upon perturbation, such as that supplied by my finger, it raises itself up in a menacing pose and emits nasty looking orange antennae.

Canon EOS 20D, Sigma 180mm, 1/50 f/32 iso 1600	Digital Stimulation!	Canon EOS 20D, Sigma 180mm, 1/125 f/3.5 iso 1600

Keep an eye on the Depth of Field: When working with a subject this close the depth of field reduces drastically, sometimes to a few millimeters. This can make part of the subject in focus and another part out of focus, causing an unpleasing effect. Decreasing the aperture from f/4.5 to f/11 increases the area in focus and eliminates this technical problem. This is a good time to pay attention to the ISO, as reducing the aperture may increase the exposure time too much for an active subject.

EOS 20D, Sigma 180mm, 1/100 f/4.5 iso 100	EOS 20D, Sigma 180mm, 1/250 f/11 iso 1600

All of the above tips point to one simple fact: pay attention when taking a photograph! I notice that when I am more aware I take better photographs (duh!).

For more pictures taken with the macro lens, click here.

Neena at the beach

Closure of the Pan American – Water shortage – On the road to Corcovado – Luna Lodge

“No hay paso”. The Pan American has been closed since the tropical storm “Alma” wreaked havoc in Costa Rica. After losing our water again in another lodge (although briefly) we filled up ten gallons at the friendly police station close to Alajuela, which is a suburb of San Jose. The concerned police offered us showers too. We have been dragging those ten gallons all over Costa Rica with us just in case the water does the disappearing act again.

After a few days in San Jose to visit the hospital (minor stuff), get the car window fixed (Toyota dealerships are great places to surf the web, by the way, a minor compensation for having had to visit them in the first place) and carry out several minor chores that seem to dog our days, we assumed that the Pan American would be open. Our police friends had radioed ahead and found out that the road was supposedly open. No such luck. An hour outside of San Jose, we were turned around and advised to take the coastal road to bypass the closed section of the highway.

Cañon	Roadside	Road

The road was actually pretty good, including the non paved sections. The drive was simply stunning. Costa Rica is, in my opinion, one of the most verdant and beautiful countries of Central America. Unpaved roads force you to go slowly, thus taking in the vistas unfolding beside you instead of blowing past them. The trucks, a plague of the Pan American, were no problem here as the road was wide enough to pass them easily. One lane bridges forded most of the muddy rivers. After the turnoff to rejoin the Pan American, however, the road suddenly deteriorated into a mess of potholes. We were on our way to the remote Osa peninsula.

Scarlet macaws

Corcovado National Park lies in the Osa peninsula, a remote corner of Costa Rica. There are no paved roads leading to here and even the bridges disappear after the town of Puerto Jimenez, leaving you to ford the rivers in your trusty vehicle. Luckily for us, the rivers were quite low and the FJ had no problems. The drive is beautiful, starting from Golfo Dulce on the east to the Pacific coast on the west. On the way the rainforest reveals its immense diversity and you can spot monkeys, raptors and colorful birds flitting across the road. Nestled on the hills at the end of road at Carate, lies Luna Lodge.

Luna Lodge	Grasshopper on the bed

Luna Lodge is a calm, tranquil place in harmony with its surroundings. The cabins are delightful indoor/outdoor places giving the feeling of living in luxury outdoors. For some the euphoria was a bit dampened by finding preying mantis on their bed or a jungle cockroach in their room. My personal brush with the class Insecta was a large green grasshopper settling on my shoulder. Shreesh was on a mission to actually find them. Armed with our Steripen (that uses UV light to purify water) he wanted to confirm an article that scorpions glow in UV. He returned downcast that the scorpions of Osa wouldn’t oblige.

The lodge is surrounded by rainforest and as such an amazing variety of birds and insects can be spotted right from the comforts of home. And if its too hot, you can take a shower in the waterfalls of the river Osa right on the property.

White faced monkey	Beetle	Fungus

For more pictures of Corcovado, click here.

We soon found, however, a storm waging under the serenity. A right-of-way dispute with a neighbor over the road to the lodge was just settled, although both parties seem to have a different understanding of the ruling. Apparently this acrimony has been going on for five years, showing how even a remote place as the Osa can hide the same human conflicts as a major city like San Francisco.

At the Doka Coffee Plantation

Eager helpers and delinquents – Fumigation – The rogue Lester – Howling winds – Muddy white waters

“Guide? Guide? You need?” We were being besieged with faces of every size and shape pressed on windows on both sides of the car by individuals eager to help us, for a tip, of course. Meanwhile the efficient immigration officer was bravely trying to shout above the din to give us the correct information – for no fee.

Holy Cow!

One of the most annoying aspects about taking our car on this trip has been the process of crossing international borders. Charlatans, urchins, rogues, loiterers, and delinquents from the entire country seem to collect here to try to con the harried tourist. I suspect that the fear of border crossing procedures keep a fair amount of motorists in their home country.

The procedure to enter a country is relatively straightforward; clear immigration and get a temporary import permit for the car, get it fumigated and buy the “obligatory” insurance if required even if you are already insured. Most crossings take about 45 minutes to an hour, however, we often hire a “guide” just to keep all the other would-be-guides at bay.

A Gift from Taiwan

The crossing from Nicaragua into Costa Rica is known to be one of the worst. It took Dave from Expedition Americas six and a half hours to cross, mostly waiting for officials doing nothing. The rogue of the day was “Lester”, whose modus operandi was to keep the tourist so harried that all analytical thinking would come to a screeching halt. He cheerfully maligned the Nicaraguan police, the customs and the immigration, claiming bribes or inefficiency at every turn while the poor officials were calm, courteous and efficient. Failing to extract any fake bribes from us, he then proceeded to turn up his nose at the two and a half dollar tip for doing absolutely nothing.

The News House

“Pura Vida” is how Costa Rica greets you – with smiles, a beautiful countryside and “con mucho gusto” for every service. This time however, we were greeted by a torrential downpour instead of the brief afternoon showers common to Costa Rica. At Samara in the Nicoya peninsula, we were deluged. Howling winds cut power lines and caught the locals completely unprepared. Our rather nice hotel, run with German efficiency, was without water or electricity. The owner was nowhere to be seen and no-one seemed available to solve our problems so I took the initiative and filled our jerry can with water from the pool for the flush, reminiscent of Hotel Rwanda. No restaurants were serving, except for one whose Italian owner had the foresight to install a generator. Naturally, he did rather well that night as the whole town showed up to eat there.

As we beat a hasty retreat from Nicoya with its Hotel Rwanda and no electricity we were treated to awesome displays of flooding rivers and landslides. Huge trees were scraped off the riversides and sucked into the turbulent brown waters and the air was redolent with the sour smell of churned clay. Motorists stopped to watch the spectacle and after seeing the furious water wash away soil around the bridge support we decided that the wisest course of action was to watch from a riverside restaurant instead of from the bridge…
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