Photographing the Osa

Between July 21 and 28, 2016, Sybil, Brenda, Adam, and I convened for a collaborative / cooperative photography workshop on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula. For a week, we lived in a treehouse at Finca Bellavista, near the town of La Florida, spending our days with our cameras in the field and our evenings post-processing. The weather mostly cooperated, although we had some fabulously torrential rainstorms. Fogged lenses and damp cell phones were cleared and dried in rice-filled Tupperware tubs. Our intent was to use defined assignments to refine our existing skills and learn new ones from each other. In the field, we focused on form (e.g., leaf morphology), the simultaneous challenges of low and high light (e.g., sunflecks in the understory; backlighting in canopies; shadows), motion (e.g., rapidly moving animals), and landscapes. With post-processing, we paid particular attention to crops (for emphasis and composition), contrast, and color (or monochrome) balance.

Here are my best 5%

Form and function
Sunflecks
Shadows
Backlighting
Animals
Landscapes

All photographs are © 2016 by Aaron M. Ellison, all rights reserved. For permission to use or reproduce any of these images, or to purchase a print, please contact me.