Final Photos from Costa Rica

I managed to get a few more shots on the last trip we made to Manuel Antonio and the Tarcoles River. The Tarcoles River is teeming with crocodiles (I think the densest population in the world).

In Manuel Antonio I focused on trying to capture the behavior of the White Faced Capuchin monkeys and we also saw a slot on a telephone pole from about 2 feet away.

Not too much to say this time, but I hope you like the photos.


For the slideshow - click on the photo below.

FOR BEST VIEWING - HIT F11 (fullscreen) BEFORE YOU CLICK

Sunset at Mal Pais

A first taste of Costa Rica

Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio is about a 3.5 hour drive over the mountains and down the coast from San Jose. This was our first foray outside the city and quickly showed us the "real" Costa Rica.

The park is really small, but densely populated with a massive diversity of wildlife, including the endangered Mono Titi (Squirrel Monkey). We took 2 short hikes through the edge of the park and saw close to 20 species in the first hour.

I'm a bit rusty with the old camera after 12 weeks without using it, but I managed to get close enough to a few of the local critters for some shots.


For the slideshow - click on the photo below.

FOR BEST VIEWING - HIT F11 (fullscreen) BEFORE YOU CLICK

Yellowstone & Grand Teton 2008

A week down in Yellowstone is always an adventure. This was to be no exception.

For the trip, I'd sold all of my Canon gear and made the switch to Nikon for the first time. Carefully carrying my new setup with cautious attention, I set up at the rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. This was 5am on Day 3 and I was excited to try for a sunrise shot once more at this location, never being completely happy with what I'd shot in the past.

I set my tripod up at the edge of the railing at Artist Point, attaching my brand new Singh Ray filter setup and preparing for the sun to awaken. Missing my cable release, I bent down momentarily to rifle through my pack, only to hear a quiet scraping noise.

What happened next probably took all of half a second, but felt like time stood still as the my groaning voice belched out the ever-cliched noooooooooooooo sound. The scraping sound was from the tripod feet lifting up from the gravel floor as the weight of my Nikon D3 swung the whole ensemble over the railing towards the precipice below.

With Ninja like speed - not unlike Cato surprising Inspector Clouseau - Michelle flew across the viewpoint area and grabbed the very last 2 inches of the tripod in her gloved hands, barely hanging on to save my equipment from the 700ft drop to the canyon floor.

There was some impact, and I lost my best filter and smashed the filter holder into 2 pieces (which we fixed with some clever Macgyvering with an axe). Needless to say, this elongated second scared the shit out me and with the lost filter, hampered my landscape opportunities for the remainder of the trip.

So I left the Canyon sans photo, but luckily (thanks to Michelle) I still had my new camera...


For the slideshow - click on the photo below.

FOR BEST VIEWING - HIT F11 (fullscreen) BEFORE YOU CLICK

I hope you enjoy the shots.
Oli

Desert Driving

Ok, I have a problem. I freely admit it. I'm a serial drive-a-holic.

You see, I love road trips, as does everyone else, but I seem to have this awesome inability to see the obvious over-confidence in my planning.

For this trip I went back to the deserts of southern Utah and northern Arizona, a land of red slickrock spires and the deepest blue skies you can ever imagine. I only decided to go on the trip at 2pm on a Thursday afternoon. By 4pm my flight was booked and I was ready to depart Friday night leaving me precious little preparation time which isn't all that smart when you consider that successful photography is pretty heavily based on being uber prepared and researched.

For the slideshow - click on the photo below.

Like a kid at a rock festival, I didn't want to hear the whole of the latest album by my favourite band. Rather, I wanted a greatest hits collection. In road trip planning talk, that meant not staying in one place for more than 1 day. And so I got on Google maps and plotted a ridiculous spiders web of exploration across the high desert.

Each day roughly consisted of being up at 6am, forgoing breakfast to get in place for sunrise, followed by 12 hours of driving and hiking to scout sunset locations and get my rental car as beat up and stained by orange sand as possible. After the sun disappeared each night, I'd skip yet another meal to drive for 5 hours in the darkness to get to my next spot where I'd randomly select a cheap motel, work on the days images on my laptop, then retreat to a shitty and uncomfortable bed where I'd shiver/overheat in cycles before waking again at 6am totally unrested and start all over again...

I averaged a ridiculous 600km per day for the duration of the week, often taking an 8 hour detour in the wrong direction just to get a single shot (see Horseshoe Bend photo in the slideshow).

And so, I return, tired, beat up and weighing about 10lbs less than when I left. But fuck me it's fun to be that free and just go wherever I want, whenever I want...

I hope you enjoy the shots.
Oli