Latest photos from Claude Schneider
Animals
I was commissioned to photograph the Cambridge University Jewish Ball, where one of the entertainers, David Crofts, created the most incredible balloon art I’ve ever seen. Some of the creations shown on his website have to be seen to be believed.
Monkey and palm tree
David Crofts, with Tigger and flower
I visited the Natural History Museum in London today, for a friend’s birthday outing, and took a few interesting photos of the exhibits and the building itself.
The famous Diplodocus in the lobby
Close-up of the Diplodocus’ head
Water patterns in sand
Oviraptor embryo in egg
Ceiling of the main hall
I bought a flashgun, the excellent Canon 430EX Speedlite, to help with my portrait and wedding photography. I’m photographing a wedding this weekend, and from past weddings I’ve photographed know that it will be very useful for formal photographs in sunlight, and for the after-dinner party.
To make sure I know how to use it on the day, I took a couple of photos of some friends.
It even helped with these back-lit ducks
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.
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)…
Today’s activity was canyoning, which is abseiling/rappeling down waterfalls in a canyon. While the 2 guides had a dry bag, I chose not to take my camera, but my brother’s camera has several shots of us abseiling, and a few photos of the stunning scenery. Imagine being in the thick of the rainforest, with steep walls either side, a flowing stream at your feet, and waterfalls every now and then, which we got to rappel down :) My very favourite was the 60m fall we dropped down, getting soaked halfway down, and abseiling the bottom half. Not quite adrenaline-fuelled, but the experience and view both up and down were amazing.
Getting to the canyon, walking through the stream and abseiling, then walking back up, driving to lunch (spoke to a guy with his cute little girl, called Emily, thankfully my Spanish kicked in :), and back to the hotel took pretty much the whole day. There was some more lava visible coming down the volcano, and some stunning stars, but clouds came and spoiled both views while I was wandering around the hotel grounds trying to get a photo. (The volcano has just rumbled, it still has indigestion even when cloudy ;) Instead, I spotted dozens of fireflies in the trees, flashing away, and heard frogs croaking near the pool. I found two of them in a small pond, and spent a long while getting some nice photos of them :)
I wasn’t planning on writing again today, but today’s events were even better than yesterday, and while I’ve got free internet at the hotel, and my family are all early-to-bed people on holiday, I thought I’d write some more :)
A couple of things I forgot to mention yesterday were that they play lots of Salsa and Merengue music everywhere, and that every time I try to speak any Spanish, I think of Italian. It’s like I have a brain elf that goes through lots of doors in my head, trying to find the right one for a word translation, and occasionally opens the wrong door and sees a word in Italian, Dutch or Hebrew. Weird analogy, but it came to me this afternoon ;) My brother has been getting by fine, having travelled around Central and Southern America a few times. Hopefully it’ll kick in. Didn’t help that we flew over here with Dutch airlines, where I found myself speaking Dutch to the staff!
Anyway, back to Costa Rica – this morning we went to Sky Trek (www.skytrek.com), which has a cable car over the tree tops (for some nice views, and to get height for the next step: a series of unbelievable zip lines hundreds of feet over the trees. There were 7 in total, and the longest was 600ft above the tree canopy, and 750m long, reaching speeds of 45mph. While the thrill was amazing, I just couldn’t get over the breathtaking views, with rainforest waaaay below, and Lake Arenal in view… I got some video footage while going along. If anyone’s seen Medicine Man, or David Attenborough documentaries, this is similar, but with a huge injection of adrenaline and speed! Alton Towers’ Air, eat your heart out ;)
On the drive back from that, we stopped on the side of the road to see a few Howler Monkeys climbing and jumping through the trees. We knew they were Howlers from the driver, and then definitely when they started howling!
We stopped in the nearest “village”, La Fortuna, which seems to have popped up due to tourism, but has kept a nice village square, church, and two high streets. Quite a few dogs wandering around, and some interesting locals, made for some good cultural photos of non-wildlife.
Saw a pair of macaws in the grounds of a neighbouring hotel, one of which flew from the trees straight onto my brother’s arm. Some pretty butterflies in their garden, and vultures swirling overhead.
Back at the hotel, the clouds cleared over the peak of the volcano, and we could see puffs of smoke appearing down the sides. The puffs progressively appeared further and further down the side of the volcano, almost like ripples appearing when you skim a stone on a pond. I then realised that the puffs were caused by lumps of rock tumbling down the side of the volcano. As it got dark, we could see these rocks glowing red, and they’d appear now and then in varying amounts. I was taking some photos of these, and suddenly saw the whole top of the volcano erupted!!!!!
An unbelievably lucky sight to see!!! I managed a lucky photo, but the sight (and delayed sound) were unforgettable! My family were all inside and missed it, but came out after the loud rumble to see lava flowing down the side of the mountain.
I’m very VERY lucky to have seen a volcano erupt :) All the while, there were howlers howling in the distance, frogs croaking, crickets, a large spider on the leaves above my shoulder, and a pretty frog in the pond just in front of our rooms. Ah, jungle bliss :)
I had the great fortune of going on holiday to Costa Rica for two and a half weeks. Here are some notes I wrote while I was out there, along with a few photos from each day.
Yesterday was travel day – 10am flight from Heathrow to Amsterdam, then Amsterdam to Orlando (for compulsary USA fingerprinting and photo, even though we got straight onto another flight), then Orlando to San Jose in Costa Rica.
After a decent night’s sleep and shower – we took a taxi to Arenal, an active volcano in the middle of the jungle. On the way, we saw a troupe of Coati (aka Pizote) by the side of the road. Very cute, and not at all afraid of cars or people.
The volcano was impressive, but the peak was shrouded in cloud. Hopefully it will clear, and the flowing lava will be visible – apparently it’s most impressive at night…. The hotel is a set of houses, dotted around in the middle of the jungle. Went for a pleasant hike through the jungle near the hotel, up and down steep hills, and saw leaf-cutter ants aplenty:
The sights were complemented by bird-calls and jungle sounds aplenty. I was in my element, and snapping away! Had a swim when we got back, the pool overlooking the volcano, with jungle birds calling nearby. We’re here for the next 4 days, doing some interesting activities like walks through the tree-top canopy, river safari, canyoning and white-water rafting.
Our priority over the next few days was to climb Table Mountain, which was very weather-dependent (the wind had become rather over-powering as of today). Also, we wanted to climb Table Mountain with the yet-to-arrive Canadian, Glen. He didn’t show up at the airport when his flight came in, and there was no record of his having checked in at London either! With some of Mark’s friends (another South African called Mark, would be too confusing to go into any more detail!) searching for the missing Canadian, we headed south to explore some of the coastal towns near Cape Town.
First stop – Muizenberg, a once-popular seaside resort nicknamed “Jewzenberg”, it had fallen into dis-repair, but was undergoing re-development (as evidenced by the construction work we witnessed). Nevertheless, the town had plenty of character, especially the brightly-coloured huts along the beach.
Next stop on our tour around the Cape Peninsula was Kalk Bay, a picturesque fishing village. We wandered along the harbour wall, spied some seals playing the choppy waters, and passed by fishermen fixing their lines. Colourful boats, fresh fish being sold, and seagulls – just what you’d expect from a fishing harbour. Our appetites whetted by the sight of freshly caught fish (and its being around noon), we had some delicious fish and chips at Kalky’s, which proudly promised to serve the best “Feeesh und Cheeeps” in Cape Town :) And it probably was.
Our hunger sorted, we headed on to the main attraction (for me at least) – Boulders Beach, and the colony of African Penguins. The car park by the beach had these amusing warning signs:
Walking from the car park to the main tourist beach (Foxy Beach), we saw several penguins lazing around in the shrubs and dirt just behind a fence, a good hundred metres or so up and along from the beach. How and why they ended up here we weren’t quite sure. At the entrance (the beach is a National Park), we purchased our Wild Cards (to be used for Cape Point National Park and the Kruger Park), which was considerably more expensive for non-nationals. Ah, don’t you love tourism? There were two boardwalks down to Foxy Beach, which brought us quite close to the masses of penguins resting on the beach, or entering/exiting the water. Needless to say, I lingered as long as possible and took as many photos as possible, until my friends dragged me away!
We then returned towards the car park and headed down to the Beach (which we later found out was the actual Boulders Beach). It was a small golden sandy beach, with far fewer people were than at the boardwalks – only a few families with children paddling in the water. Of course, there were big boulders, so the Three Musketeers proceeded to climb them, get wedged between them, and lose their shorts. (It was only on returning to the car that we discovered a spare pair of swimming trunks, AND a sign telling us not to climb on the rocks – oops x2). While the rest were taking a welcome climbing and swimming break (the East Coast waters of the Indian Ocean are a few degrees warmer than the Atlantic Ocean on the West Coast), Lauri and I were entertaining ourselves watching the penguins lazing on the nearby boulders. I became very friendly with one penguin in particular, and was even kind enough to pose for many many photos, with me, and on his own. A model in the making…
Penguined-, rocked- and swam-out, we headed back to Cape Town to enjoy our first fine sunset, from Signal Hill. Howling winds did little to dampen my spirits as I snapped away at the beautiful golden light shining on the side of Table Mountain, and got the first of many great sunset photos.
