Frogs at The Selva Verde Lodge

During our Bugs,Beasts, & Botanical Tour we have been staying at the The Selva Verde Lodge in the Sarapiqui region of Costa Rica. The trip has been a whorl wind of excitement. Each day we have been seeing so much and learning so much that by 9:00 it is lights out and we are all asleep.

In the tropics the sun rises at 6:00 am and sets at 6:00 pm. One of the really fun things we have been doing after dinner is taking pictures of the Red-eyed Tree Frog. Selva Verde has a frog pond and yesterday it rained. The frogs went wild. We could hear all kinds of chirping and were able to see frogs jumping from leaf to leaf in a chorus of joy!

Photographing in the dark is tough when your camera can't really "see". We have been using flash lights to locate the frogs. So as not to harm the frogs I have been using my zoom lens and standing far away from them. My camera is a Lumix Panasonic FZ40 and has 24X digital zoom. This camera lets me get close enough to get details, but far enough away to not startled the frog. Some of the pictures came out blurry at first but as I got more accustomed to shooting in the dark I was able to get some "good enough" shots to paint from.  There are other people on the tour that have much more elaborate cameras and their pictures are better than mine. I carry the Lumix because it is very light and has macro and zoom capacity. I don't want to carry the heavy lens around. I have art supplies to carry also so I try to travel light. My purpose is take reference photos, not beautiful pictures. If I get a beautiful photo that is great, but my main concern is getting the reference shot.

What kind of camera do you take photos with? Any tips or advice you want to share?
Please feel free to leave a comment. I love hearing from you!

From the rainforest,

Mindy

PS~ I have been working on Painting # 6 of my 52/52 painting challenge. I will post it when I get home. It needs to be scanned. I didn't want you to think I had forgotten!