The other evening as the sun was going down, the sky was beautiful, so I really wanted to do some more tests with my SB-900. After much begging (literally) I finally got Luisa to come outside and stand in front my camera. I had interrupted her during a good book, so this had to be quick.

Took about 10 shots, and really liked this one, straight out of camera.

Shot with a Nikon D3s on a 50 mm 1.4 lens, shot at ISO 640, f/6.3 and 1/30 of a second. Flash was high camera left shot through an umbrella with no gels on it.

Boise - Idaho State Capitol

Here are some fun pictures I've taken recently of the State Capitol in downtown Boise. It was such an ugly day until the sun started to go down and light became perfect for some evening shots.

This one is a Panorama consisting of about 10 vertical shots.

...and this is from inside looking straight up toward the dome.

Below is a 25 second long exposure. You can see the cars that passed on either side of me.

Faruk and Nicole Video

Here's a video that I made for Faruk and Nicole.

Jaco Cont'd

As the night came to a close in the little town near Jaco, we spotted this tiny off-street with a few houses and some great people. This man and his wife had a very small house, but they took care of it amazingly. She swept all around the house, and he did all the harder manual labor.

There were kids that would run around on the dirt roads that were all adorable. Again, some amazing people.

Manuel

While Luisa and I were driving north to San Jose, we passed by a town called Jaco. On the outside of Jaco, there was this small village/town. It was one of my first real chances that I had taken at photographing the people of Costa Rica. This man named Manuel was one of the first, and was very kind.

At first, as I got out of the car, and asked him if I could take his photo, he was a bit concerned and really wanted to know why. I looked back and Luisa in the car, looking for help and for a translation. She helped the man understand that I was just taking photos of the people of Costa Rica. He was wonderful! He just sat there and let me take photos. And as I can get carried away when I have a subject as amazing as this man, near the end, I think he just about cracked. In the middle of photographing his hands, out of no where, this man who had been very serious previous to this, busted up laughing, almost uncontrollably. He was literally rocking in his chair just laughing. The picture below I caught while I was on the ground taking photos of his hands. Great man!

Liberia

Back to Costa Rica, Liberia is about a 4 hours drive to the North-West of San Jose. Luisa's flight was out of San Jose, and mine was out of Liberia later in the day. So when it came time to leave, I dropped Luisa off in San Jose, kissing my wife, travel buddy and translator goodbye (Luisa is fluent in Spanish. I, on the other hand, am barely fluent in English. I can understand a bit of Spanish, but speaking it is another thing).

The drive back was beautiful. It was around 6:00 am, and all the rivers had steam rising from them in the valleys. It was gorgeous. I passed through the cutest towns, and somehow didn't get lost. At every toll booth, I'd just point in the direction I was going and say, "Voy a liberia". Thankfully they'd nod, and give me directions in Spanish. I caught nothing, except the word "Directo" which means straight. So I continued going straight, and somehow ended up in Liberia.

Just outside of Liberia though, there was the cutest town, and I had some extra time and wanted take some last pictures before I left the country. I drove through the tiny and bumpy dirt roads, and eventually parked the car. I grabbed my camera, my 5omm lens, threw them over my shoulder and began to walk the dirt roads. It was amazing. Everyone seemed a bit apprehensive at first as to why this gringo was walking through the streets. I spotted this man, and said in my broken Spanish, "Puedo sacar a su foto por favor?". Can I please take your photo? Luisa had made sure I knew that phrase before I left her at the airport. It worked great until they would almost always ask, "why?". I would try to explain again, in probably awful and broken Spanglish that I was a Photographer, traveling in the country and getting pictures of the people.

Soon the news that a photographer was in this tiny town spread, and children and families were all out on their front porches watching this crazy gringo taking pictures.

I had an absolute blast. An hour and a half flew by like nothing, and I eventually had to get going to catch my flight. I tried to ask if any of them had access to a computer to receive emails. No go. So if I'm ever in Costa Rica again, I can't wait to bring them all their printed photos. The people, are what I remember most about Costa Rica. They're absolutely amazing.

Nicole and Faruk

While in Costa Rica for a corporate photo shoot, I had the opportunity to photograph one of their employees engagement shots. The was BY FAR one of my favorite shoots. They were so fun to work with, and just a beautiful couple. Despite the crazy heat, we had a ton of fun on the beach. Here are some of my favorites from the shoot.

Ice and Lucy

So a little intermission from the Costa Rican posts here. Had an incredibly fun shoot on Saturday. Ice and Lucy are great friends, and are here from China going to school. They wanted some portrait work done before they headed back to China. We had a lot of fun, and had wonderful lighting, and I explored some new places to shoot, that I REALLY loved, although we did have someone call the cops saying that we were spray painting the trains on the tracks. Hmm....riiiight.

And for those that like the tech specs, I did the entire shoot on my Nikon D3s, on the 50mm 1.4 lens. I shot almost everything wide open at f/1.4 but occasionally closed down to 2.8 to get a little deeper depth of field (when both Ice and Lucy were in the picture).

Blue

Happy Monday! I just wanted to keep up with posting more about Costa Rica through my photos. Today I decided to focus on the color blue. I had lots of cool shots with palm tree's and blue skies but I wanted to showcase some of the fun texture that Costa Rica has. There's texture and life and things to take pictures of everywhere. I loved it!

Abyssnyah

Luisa and I stopped at a little surf town called Jaco for some lunch on our way to San Jose near the end of our trip. I walked down to the beach and met this amazing man named Abyssnyah. He was from Venezuela and here in Costa Rica for the surf. I asked him if could take some pictures of him as he prepared to surf. He sat and waxed his board, and braided his dreadlocks. Here are a few from our impromptu shoot.

UPDATE!!

Wow! I'm a failure. I made it through one day of posts in Costa Rica. But there's not exactly wifi spots in the middle of the Corcovado rain forrest. Check out Luisa's post here to read more about our adventures. We had a blast to say the least. And, We're ALIVE! We made it. We had some pretty crazy and fun experiences and I want to post lots of pictures. Rather than trying to post it all in one post, I'm just going to give little snippets here and there of what it was like to be there, and who we met, and what we did. But all through photographs, and in no particular order.

So today are these shots of Palm Tree's in the Corcovado Rain Forrest. It was gorgeous there, just beautiful. But to get into the heart of the forrest one had to hike 17 km to get to the base camp. When it wasn't monsoon'ing on us, I was able to take out my camera and snag a few palm tree shots. Hope you enjoy!