COSTA RICA PHOTO SAFARI DAY 2!

 These are from the grounds of The Hotel Villa Blanca in the San Ramon Cloud Forest. This is an amazing morning each year. The hotel has a "hummingbird garden" where they set out feeders for the humming birds each morning just for a short while. For us "serious" photographers the guides put nectar in some of the local flowers to create a more natural photo op. Villa Blanca is very conscious of the fact that the birds need to stick to their natural diet and not become dependent on the nectar so they remove the feeders for the rest of the day.
 It's truly a delightful experience to have 50 or 60 of these wonders darting about at incredible speeds. It's a great opportunity for the group to practice their stop action techniques. We were shooting with shutter speeds of 1/1000 to 1/4000. The best technique seemed to be to pre-focus on a point in manual focus and shoot as much as possible once the birds approached. Even then we still ended up with more pieces of birds in the frame than "keepers"!

This is Andrey Villabous. He works for Villa Blanca and I have taken his photo for the past three years. It's always a pleasure to see his smiling face. This year we got a little fancy with two speedlights, one in front and one from the back/ side. 

The sun was setting and I saw this beautiful light hitting this attractive couple. I ran out and asked if I could take a few photos and in less than 3 minutes the light was gone!

 We spent part of the day exploring two near by towns. Sarchi has a unique workshop powered by a water mill. This is the official site of manufacture for Costa Rica's trademark symbol the Oxcart. The country credits the oxcart for bringing them into the modern era. With it they were able to transport coffee in large quantities to the various ports thus giving Costa Rica a much desired and profitable export. And boy is it good.

 In Grecia we  convinced on of the local "Ticos" to suffer a photo session as we all took turns with this characteristic gentleman. The red gothic church behind him has a metal exterior and was a gift from Belgium in the 1890's. It is the Cathedral de la Mercedes.