TomKal foto

We photographed in several placed on Costa Rica. In such a small country it is sometimes a matter of several dozen kilometers and one has to do with completely different species. The transportation was the biggest problem. The roads in Costa Rica do not belong to good ones, and in order to drive 80 kilometers we had to spend 3 hours in a car. We reached another photography spot. A new thing for us there was a morning photography session by a not very large white sheet, next to which a bulb was left for the night turned on. The light attracted insects all night. The birds, accustomed to this place, appeared at the dawn. Even if it had been an open space, there would have been too little light to take a good picture. Well, one had to overcome their reluctance to use the flash lamp. If one wanted to have any photos of these bird dwellers of the underbrush of rain forest, there was no other option. My reluctance to this kind of photography results from unnatural reflections of light, contrasts, and finally, capturing colors, not to mention the risk of obtaining quite a strange appearance of birds’ eyes. It can be seen most easily when you compare the galleries of the white-breasted wood-wren and the grey-breasted wood-wren. Let’s get back to the quite unusual outdoor photography session. Sitting peacefully half an hour before the dawn one was able to take photos (with a flash lamp) from a distance of 2-4 meters. The 70-200 lens was enough, although a 300 mm lens, which had been left in Poland,  would have been better. All the photos taken at that time are of a documentary character. Interestingly enough I did not have an opportunity to encounter any of those species (10) in the day light anymore and no pictures in the natural light were taken. The quantity of insects was large indeed and they attracted many birds as an easy breakfast. Once during this morning photography session a huge butterfly appeared and all birds avoided it, even a spotted woodcreeper, which can reach up to 22 cm in length, seemed smaller than that insect. This description encompasses all the galleries which were made this way.
Below you will find a list of those galleries:
Kentucky Warbler, Golden-crowned Warbler, Plain Antvireo, Tawny-crested Tanager, Spotted Woodcreeper, Slaty Antwren, Bright-rumped Attila, White-breasted Wood-Wren, Long-tailed Woodcreeper, Ruddy-tailed Flycatcher.