Costa Rica Travelog | The Show

This posts marks the beginning and the end.

The Beginning

As you no doubt can see I have finally activated my personal website.  Note:  This is why people hire professionals for this sort of thing.  The mechanics of setting up a self-hosted WordPress site aren’t actually that hard unless you start getting picky with the setup.  There will likely be some growing pains here as I transition from the Blogspot service (which really is excellent but also limiting).  MIA on the site are my intended portfolios of favorite photographs.  My challenge here is threefold…

1. I have yet to conclude the different categories to use.  Too much… Too little… Too specific… Too loose…  There are probably rules/recommendations for this sort of thing which I’ll need to investigate.
2. I have yet to choose my photos.  This I find supremely difficult as it’s difficult to be objective with your own stuff, and there definitely are rules/recommendations when it comes to how heavy your portfolio should be.
3. I have yet to figure out the best presentation method for said portfolios.  While I did say WordPress is pretty easy to use at a basic level, it was never designed to be a photography portfolio engine so there are workarounds to investigate.

Stay tuned for that.  There are, however, links to the right of these posts that will take you to my Flickr and/or 500px pages (the latter also needs some love).

The End

This post represents the last of my Costa Rica Travelog series.  Having gone through some of the scenery in and around Guanacaste province, the colorful people and places, the monkeys and the trees it’s time to bring out the Big Guns.  So to that end…

On With the Show

Prior to this trip I thought I had seen sunsets and color.

I was wrong.

 I of course was equipped for this sort of thing but had been quite lazy for the first couple of days.  The black and white image below was taken following the region’s first rain since November.  Those puddles in the sand were quickly drying up as I approached.  I waited for the sun to dip behind the cloud for the rays, hoping those pools would remain.  Fortunately they did.

Then it was a race against the light to start capturing the color.  Took a few seconds to shake myself out of a chroma-reverie.

The rocky shore off the beach provided ample foreground interest to shoot from.  Something I took full advantage of the following morning.

The morning blues were in stark contrast to the rich reds and oranges of the previous night, and the prevailing temperature despite the early hour.  Costa Rica apparently has two temps: hot and hotter.  And the sand mites!  My gosh, the sand mites.

Another view of the shores of Playa Tamarindo, with the town in the background.

From dusk to dawn these were a great start to the landscape effort for the trip.  Playa Conchal was next.

Playa Conchal

Our transition to the Westin Playa Conchal brought with it obscene frivolity as well as another promising shoreline location.  The difference in access was noticeable.  At the Hotel Capitan Suizo in Tamarindo I just walked out our back door onto the beach. Simple.  Not so the Westin.  Such a huge place.  I had again been lagging in my efforts and so one night hauled arse to the beach – courtesy of a handy golf cart escort – and headed down to the beach area.  Some beautiful rocky shores to frame up, and another light show was my reward for missing cocktail hour (or at least the early part of it).

So glad I was equipped with my neutral density grad filters.  These shots would of course still be possible without them but only via HDR bracketing.  I could have used the 3-stop rather than the 2-stop.  Next time.

Our last morning had me head down one final time.  To the tune of howler monkeys which amidst the morning quiet was very eery.  I headed back to the same area and took frame left and right.

I wanted a nice shoreline image but the sky wasn’t playing nice this morning.  Fairly bland.  But lots of color (although, in the interest of full disclosure, this image is obviously highly processed).  I did like the moonset-in-progress and the play of magenta against blue.  Very moody – photographs like this shouldn’t be expected to act as a record of the scene.  They should be how the photographer saw/felt it.  And this pretty much does, pixel pushing be damned.

Swinging right towards the fast-rising sun I managed this shot which I like for the calm it provides.  Just serene colors (not as much as the misty rocks above, though).  Not long after the sun burst over the ridge and the furnace turned on with extreme prejudice.

 And so there you have it.  Ten days, over two-thousand shots, and many hours of travel compressed down into this handful of posts.  During this time we also finished and received our photo books from the trip.  The “family” version via Apple with copious amounts of evening wear shots.  And my pompous-artsy version which is more for me and courtesy of Blurb.

Tick tock until Europe and then right back at it.