Latest photos from Claude Schneider
My travels to Costa Rica provided me with plenty of natural photographic subject matter, which I have collected into two more prints for my Colour & Form series. This second shows a variety of colours and textures seen within Costa Rica.
My travels to Costa Rica provided me with plenty of natural photographic subject matter, which I have collected into two more prints for my Colour & Form series. The first shows a variety of foliage within the rainforest.
After the collection of frog photos in one image, I created the same style of print with flower photographs from Costa Rica.
In the style of my Colour & Form compositions, I decided to collect the best frog photos from Costa Rica, and show them in one image. This image has proven very popular, both with wildlife enthusiasts, and lovers of cute critters.
After the success (in my eyes and those of the models) of my last (first) portrait photoshoot with Steph, Ben and Lizzie, I finally got round to a 2nd photoshoot. This time, my muse was Rebecca, a beautiful student actress who has often graced the ADC stage, where I first noticed her. After a few rainchecks the gods of fate and timing were shining down on us, as the golden light of magic hour and the gardens at the back of St. John’s set the scene for a perfect photoshoot. I’ll let you be the judge…
On this beautifully sunny Saturday, athletes of all abilities and disciplines competed in the intercollegiate Cuppers Athletics competition. Last year, Jesus College won quite overwhelmingly by fielding the majority of competitors. This year, determined to keep their trophies, they repeated this tactic – not only did they have entrants in every event, but they won most of them too, resulting in a score of 200+ points, to the 2nd place college’s 48.
The following photos include GB Heptathlete Phyllis Agbo competing in the Javelin and High Jump (she also came 3rd in the men’s 200m hurdles!), and three time-lapse photos of men’s high jump winner Andy Bennett, men’s long jump, and my favourite, Bilen Ahmet competing in the men’s pole vault. The finished picture comprises 11 photos, and took 2 hours to put together.
More photos on CantabPhotos: Cambridge Cuppers Athletics 2007
For the 2nd time in my Cambridge history, I headed down to the Thames with friends to watch the boat race. The last time was in 1998, when Cambridge thrashed Oxford and set a course record. This time, Cambridge were favourites again after a recent run of losses, and started the race behind. The calm coxing of Rebecca Dowbiggin and consistent pressure from the Cambridge eight brought them into the lead soon into the race, and they came through victorious.
These photos were taken from Chiswick Bridge, just after the finish line.
I spent a few hours over Easter putting together some of the photo stitches that I took in Costa Rica. There are two stubborn ones which I’m not having much joy with (very wide angle both horizontally and vertically, so the resulting photo looks very fish-eyed). Here are five of the panoramas which came out great.
You can scroll around the panorama in the Java Applet linked below. You can drag the view around with your mouse, or use your keyboard’s arrow keys. Pressing – or + lets you zoom out or in, although the images are displayed at 1:1 resolution already.
Arenal Volcano: Panoramic view of the very-active Arenal Volcano, taken from the Lost Iguana hotel, to the east of the volcano. Lava flows can be seen on the left hand side of the volcano. 28 megapixels.
Irazu Volcano: Panoramic view of the two craters at the top of Irazu Volcano, the highest active (but dormant) volcano in Costa Rica, at 3,432m above sea level. The main crater on the left contains a green crater lake. 78 megapixels.
Poas Volcano: Panoramic view of the crater lake in Poas Volcano (2,708m). The lake normally appears bright turquoise when conditions are clear (rarely). You can see yellow puffs of sulphur to the right of the lake. 23 megapixels.
Sunset from Finca Rosa Blanca, Santa Barbara: Viewed from a coffee plantation in the hills. 72 megapixels.
Rainforest of La Paz Waterfall Gardens: Panoramic view of the rainforest around the La Paz Waterfall Gardens, near Vara Blanca. 17 megapixels.
Have been without internet for the last few days, and with good reason. Went to the Caribbean coast for 5 days, to a great area in and around Puerto Viejo, which is half Spanish (Costa Rican), and half Reggae/Jamaican. Very laid-back and rural. The reason I had not internet is that our “hotel” was a tree house. Yup, all wooden, no outer walls, and built around a tree. OK, so there were some mod-cons (quite surprising), but when it rained (torrentially) it sounded like a jet plane on the tarp covering (not great when it keeps you awake two nights running), and there were 360 degree views of the rainforest all around. Which meant it was very easy to see lots of wildlife – we had an opossum rummaging around in a cupboard (very nonchalantly), lots of crabs in holes between us and the beach, lots of weird spiders, lizards, insects and pretty flowers. And thankfully, surprisingly few mosquitoes.
I took advantage of being on the coast and did my Advanced PADI Scuba course – 5 dives, including a mandatory deep dive and navigation dive, and I then chose Peak Performance Buoyancy, Underwater Naturalist (took a few photos), and a Night Dive, which turned out to be an incredible exercise in dealing with the worst conditions you could not wish to encounter (3 feet of visibility in a pea soup, very strong currents, and 10 feet of space to get through a gap, with the reef everywhere I swam. Still, was good experience, if not entirely pleasant! And I now love green glow sticks for an entirely new reason: survival!!!
Anyway, not going to ramble on too much – the photos should show it all, but brief background to some of these pics: went on a walk through the Cahuita Reserve, saw Capuchin monkeys up close, a good view of a sloth (and more ;), and a couple of snakes.
For the last 3 days we’re staying in the centre of the country again, at the most amazing hotel – it is in a big area with a butterfly observatory, serpentarium, 5 huge waterfalls, ranarium and hummingbird garden. So I’ve been taking photos pretty much constantly ;)
This is my favourite photo of the whole trip, can’t believe I got to see this frog and get this shot!!! Will probably be the cover photo for my book :)
Lizard in Heliconia
Eyelash Pitviper
Sloth and baby
Ever tried taking a photo of a bat at night…?
…or a hummingbird?
Blue-jeans poison dart frog
Clearwing butterfly
Red-Eyed Tree Frog
The Resplendent Quetzal, a rare and magnificent sight
Flying Tree Frog
In the last few days have been on a river safari in the North, 2 miles from the Nicaraguan border, where we saw a whole host of birds and other wildlife. Back at the hotel, in the late afternoon I went walking through the jungle on my own and came across a 6ft snake on the path in front of me. Needless to say I waited patiently for it to get out of the way before continuing! Turns out it was one of the safer snakes in Costa Rica, but it sure didn’t look like it at the time! I went back on a night trail (somewhere less isolated this time) and snapped lots of insects and little frogs.
Went white-water rafting the next day, and got nicely sunburned on my thighs :S The following day went spelunking with bats and big spiders with scorpion-like pincers, and in the afternoon relaxed in geothermal springs (41 degree water on sunburned legs = OW!!)
Ringed kingfisher. The fish was far too big for it to eat, so after a few attempts at swallowing it, the kingfisher discarded it and carried on fishing.
The 6ft Mussurana snake that crossed my path in the middle of the rainforest. Best not to meddle…
A ball of spiders (well, they’re actually harvestmen, or daddy-long-legs)…
