Critters in Costa Rica

About 20 years ago I spent nearly 4 months together with my girlfriend in the rainforests of Costa Rica shooting macro images of insects, spiders, and reptiles. We visited many different national parks but most of the images were shot at Corcovado, Santa Rosa, and Rincón de la Vieja. Of course, 20 years ago affordable digital photography equipment was just not available. I’ve therefore used an analog Nikon SLR with slide film.

Carrying more than 100 rolls of film in a backpack through the jungle (and through the airport security) was a real hassle. After the trip, I had to frame thousands of slides and select the best images sitting for hours with a magnifier in front of a light table. On one trip the Kodak laboratory managed to destroy 20 of my film rolls during the development process. Then you had to scan the slides and deal with inevitable scratches and dust in a very time consuming and annoying post-processing after the scanning. I don’t miss shooting film at all. But I miss the great time we had in Costa Rica. Being so close to nature for such a long time was really a great experience. With my current main job being away for more than 3-4 weeks is just not possible. Recently I had a look through my Costa Rica slides, shot 20 years ago, and I think that some of these images are still worth posting, even by my nowadays much higher standards:

I would love to return to Costa Rica in the future and see what’s possible with current digital equipment, even if I’m limited to only 2-3 weeks instead of 4 months.