Red-eyed Tree Frogs!

It's the iconic rainforest critter, on every cereal box, every kids' book, every poster on every schoolroom wall. The red-eyed tree frog Agalychnis callidryas has it all--color, pizazz. Thanks to all this exposure, it's possibly the most charismatic and recognizable of all frogs. But I'd never seen one. Never even hoped to see one. Imagine my delight when our guide Mario Cordoba told me that a little cement pond at Selva Verde, Holbrook Travel's lodge in Sarapiqui in the Caribbean lowlands, was full of them. Calling, mating. Oh my gosh. This has to be the jazziest frog of all.

Darkness fell and Mario fixed his flashlight on a frog for me. I almost swallered my tongue, as we say here in Appalachia. Oh my gosh!! I couldn't believe I was seeing this.

But how to photograph them in the black night without a flash? Well, you prefocus, crank the ISO up, and twiddle your dials until you get something nice. You try not to keep the light on the frog for more than a few seconds. You don't want to disrupt their business. These photos are all hand-held--given the low light I probably should have run a few blocks to my room to get my monopod to steady the camera, but ehh. The frogs were there and so was Mario and so was I. Carpe diem.

This little guy's calling, his throat pooched out. He may also vibrate the stem or leaf he's perched on to attract a female. What's shakin', baby?

He has a friend.

Such intensely decorated creatures, with that electric blue on thighs and neon orange on their feet...but their colors show only at night!

I was really happy with this pose. Right off a poster.

Ready for a surprise? Here's a red-eyed tree frog, sleeping during the day. Mario had to tell me it was the same species when I found it. Frogs are so darn cool. How do you switch those colors off like that?

Chromatophores, that's how--special skin cells that can show or hide brilliant color in an instant. Last night: dressed for the gala. Now he looks like a dead leaf. 

Also calling: Rain frogs. Sweet little things in their own right. What a treat to see such creatures calling, doing their froggy things. What a privilege.

This second night's try at photographing them worked out even better. Mario coached me on exposure, and through trial and error we found that shutting the F-stop down a click or two and boosting the ISO a bit allowed the frogs' colors to glow. The trick is not to wash them out with too much light. That's better for the frogs, too. 

We want them to keep doing things like this. If you click on this photo, you may see the really cool Venetian blind pattern on the male's nictitating eye membrane. The female will eventually lay a cluster of eggs on a leaf overhanging water. These will hatch about a week later, the tadpoles falling into the pool, where they complete their metamorphosis. Tiny juveniles often hang out in the water wells of aerial bromeliads, preying on small insects. 

I think this is my favorite of the shots. I maneuvered around to get it all in the same frame.  What looks like the full moon rising is actually a light fixture in the open-air bar behind the little pool. No, I'm not crouched in the rainforest risking a bite by a fer-de-lance. I'm hanging out with Mario, talking light and frogs, by a little water garden at a jungle lodge, loving every minute of it. Holbrook Travel built it, and the tree frogs came.

Costa Rica well deserves its reputation as an ultimate ecotourism destination. Everywhere we went, we felt at home with our binoculars, cameras and spotting scope. Tiny home-cooking restaurants in the mountains are festooned with hummingbird feeders and buzzed by incredibly arrayed birds (just you wait!!) Tanagers flit to bananas and rice laid out for them. It's so different from the vast majority of American restaurants, where the whole focus seems to be to get you inside and wall you off from nature. (When you go to a Bob Evans, I'm the one who raised the blinds and opened the shutters and left them that way). The Alajuelo airport itself is given over to images of toucans and quetzals. Costa Rica knows where its riches lie. 

all photos taken with my Canon 7D with 70-300 IS L telephoto lens

and the expert tutelage of guide Mario Cordoba

Crazy Fair Images

There is a zone Shila and I go into when we're shooting photos. I absolutely love being there. Shila wanted to capture the smoke coming from the twin stacks of monster trucks that, for whatever reason, were being asked to haul an enormous sledge across the drag strip. 

Their engines wailed and whined and sounded like they were about to blow up. Musta been a heavy sledge.

Repelled as I was by the deafening noise and diesel stench, I found it visually fascinating. 

Especially when a tremendous Michelin Man of smoke came rising up behind the truck. HOLY COW.

A monster, issuing from a monster.

And then Shila said, "Look at the lights."

Bug tracers!

Moths describing serrated arcs! Velvet backdrop! ZOW!

Then there were bunnies. We've bred them to look so sweet. But I can tell you they bite, even the Droopy Dog lookin' ones. Maybe it's just because they're miserable in these little display cages.

That's OK. They're not being bred to nuzzle you. People eat them, I guess, use them for fur. I don't. I like to look at their lovely colors and their lazy poses. Even if I wanted to wear fur, I couldn't wear rabbit. Makes my nose tickle. The Small Animal Barn is a limited-time-only thing for me. I have to exit stage right like Bugs Bunny when it starts getting to me. 

There's something so doglike about the lops, the way they arrange their legs when they sleep. Love them.

Speaking of things in cages...

more cool images of kids running through an obstacle course/maze of iron bars. 

I kept going to Dante's Inferno. The colors so acid, the faces so freaky on the stuffed animal prizes that almost nobody ever wins. And then when you do, it takes up a quarter of your bedroom. 

And it isn't well-made at all. Hard and not cuddly, either. But oh, the visuals, the spiders waiting by their webs.

The Spider and His Web

The fair is a place of wild and varied images, contrasts, drama. Even a tiny county fair like ours. It's getting smaller every year. The merry-go-round is shrinking, too. 

It used to have wooden horses. These are plastic, molded. I miss the wooden ones.

I also miss the days when we plopped the kids on them and took their pictures every year. This time, despite entreaties, my kids passed on going to the fair with me. At least I'm still in touch with my inner child, my kids having outgrown me.

The rides are, by any measure, sort of pitiful, and getting moreso year by year. Gone are the days of the huge honkin' rock'n'roll rides with their own music (snarly electric guitar solos) and flashing lights and truly dangerous moves. But these little rides still produce some powerful images. The carnival workers who man each of them remind me of lonely spiders sitting in their webs, hoping to snare people. 

Then they take the people in their clutches and shake them up and spin them around.

Have you ever seen a spider who, upon having an insect fall into its web, does a wild tarantella, bouncing up and down, shaking the net, hoping to throw it off balance and ensnare it more deeply?

There was one ride which, for whatever reason, was popular. It was the only one with a line.

As far as I could see, it was a human salad spinner, with three baskets that whirled perhaps eight people at high rates of speed in tight circles. Meanwhile, the whole thing was whirling in a circle. Which is enough to make my gorge rise, just thinking about it. My elderly inner ears are not made for such punishment, if they ever were.

However. Many, many people apparently wanted to put in the salad spinner, to be spun in tight circles within a larger circle. To be fair, this was the only remotely challenging ride in the dinky midway, so perhaps they selected it by default.

I had other reasons to select it.

Purely visual reasons. I loved the colors. I loved how the operator was still but the cars spun wildly, blurrily. 

But mostly I loved his face, his presence. Zow! The spiked wristlet only added to his dangerous mien. 

For me, he was out of a Renaissance painting. I always go there when I'm shooting the Fair.

That star-spun velvet blue behind him.

He seemed to like his job, cheerily checking on the people who sat, silent and perhaps a little stunned, after the ride quit spinning.

The spider and his web.