Black Guan

Well, sadly, it is our last full day at Bosque De Paz. We spent the day photographing various flora and fauna and the landscape. We also had a great time with macro photography, both during the day and at night. Another thing that makes Bousquet De Paz so great, is the employees. Not only do they do their job, but are always telling us about new birds that they have found so we could see them, and they would also bring subjects for us to photograph.

Yellow Ladyslipper

The River and Falls at Bosque de Paz

Aloe Flowers from Below

Coatimundi

Black Phoebe

Now how we learnt how to do it. Because Costa Rica is filled with jungles. In these areas the light can be dim, partly dark and partly dark to to the sun filtering through the leaves of the trees, which makes the use of flash very helpful. We used our flash on the camera or on a flash bracket attached to the camera plus a Better Beamer and varied the intensity of the light to give us fill flash and not overpower the natural light.

Normally at home for macro work. I use dual flashes attached to the lens and they are controlled by a controller on the hot shoe. Greg taught us how to use off-camera flash, so we could vary the direction the light illuminated the subject. To accomplish this, methodology included a flash cord, remote flash controllers or if you have a Nikon with a built-in flash, it can be used as a controller for your handheld flash. Also, a flash the fusion is helpful. During the day you want to use the flash only as a fill flash where at night the flash power should be on full power as it will be the only illumination. Also at night, a headlight or LED torch is very useful along with an assistant. The assistant is used to position the flash. We used our torches to locate subjects for us to photograph and light up the subject, so we could focus on the subject. Depending on the subject and which lenses we had, people either utilized a macro lens, a zoom lens or a zoom lens with a Canon 500 dual lens macro filter. Not only did we use our torches to find subjects, but it also helped us walking on the dark paths.

Now on to pictures!