Foto Verde Tours Open Signup Costa Rica Photo Tours

Led by Foto Verde Tours’ co-founder Greg Basco or Foto Verde Tours’ associate photo instructor Mónica Quesada, this new tour is designed to help you take your digital photography skills to the next level. We will focus on advanced techniques such as multiple flash, advanced metering techniques, long exposures/light painting, dynamic compositions, production of photo essays, and digital workflow techniques to optimize your images for final output. Though formal in terms of the instruction and learning objectives, we will be out in the field every day taking pictures during interactive sessions. Besides improving your skills, you will take home an amazing and diverse photographic portfolio!

Arrival to Costa Rica. Meet our representative at the Juan Santamaría International Airport and transfer to your Hotel Bougainvillea near the capital city of San José, where Foto Verde Tours’ Greg Basco or Mónica Quesada will be waiting for you. The Hotel Bougainvillea is surrounded by a beautiful tropical garden filled with great subjects for macro photography, including orchids, bromeliads, and passionflowers. There is free wireless Internet throughout the property.

After an early breakfast, we get to work. We will spend the entire day today in the classroom and out in the beautiful hotel gardens to introduce the techniques on which we will be working throughout our trip.

After an early breakfast, we travel toward the tropical dry forest on Costa Rica’s Gulf of Nicoya and our destination, Ensenada Lodge. We’ll arrive for lunch, with time to check in and relax while roaming the grounds in search of the abundant turquoise-browed motmots, white-throated magpie jays, and howler monkeys. We also will look for spectacular backlit images of the gulls and terns flying over the Gulf. At sunset, we have a tractor ride to a lookout point for panoramic photos of the sunset over the Gulf of Nicoya. A leisurely dinner is followed by a cold beverage and a review of our photography so far.

We spend the early morning at the nearby salt ponds where numerous aquatic birds, including roseate spoonbills and black-necked stilts, congregate. We’ll enjoy a late breakfast and then head to the nearby Hacienda Solimar to spend the rest of the day shooting at the wetlands, where our photographic prey includes wood storks, limpkins, bare-throated tiger-herons, boat-billed herons, and anhingas. We will make a special effort to photograph black-bellied whistling ducks and other waterfowl flying in sunset light. We head back to La Ensenada for a late dinner and then a free evening to rest after this busy day.

After an early breakfast, we have time to spend more time with the gulls and terns at the beach for dramatic in-flight images. Late morning, we pack up and travel to the Arenal Volcano area. Arenal is the country’s most active volcano, with continuous emissions of lava and incandescent pyroclastic flows since the beginning of the present active cycle in 1968. On clear nights, the views of incandescent avalanches are breathtaking! We arrive to the Arenal Observatory Lodge in late afternoon and, after check-in, photograph the sunset over Lake Arenal and the Arenal Volcano with stars and pyroclastic flows. The Arenal Observatory Lodge affords some of the area’s best photographic views of the famous Arenal volcano and offers fantastic sunset views over Lake Arenal and the surrounding hills. We will work again this evening on long exposures for photographing the active Arenal volcano at night.

We dedicate the morning to photographing Montezuma oropendolas, Passerini’s tanager, green honeycreepers, red-legged honeycreepers, and emerald tanagers at the lodge feeders, which your Foto Verde photographer will have set up with attractive perches. Just before lunch, we depart for the Snake Zoo in nearby El Castillo. The Snake Zoo is run by Greg Basco’s friend Victor Quesada, and Victor and his staff will help us to photograph numerous color forms of the amazing eyelash vipers, parrot snakes, vine snakes, and even tree frogs in Victor’s collection. Indeed, Victor has a special collection of animals that he makes available only to Foto Verde Tours clients. We will photograph all of these animals on natural stages that we will set up on site. This is a great opportunity to photograph a number of species that are very difficult to find in the wild. We will enjoy a delicious home-cooked lunch as well as refreshments and coffee throughout the day at Victor’s We return to the Arenal Observatory Lodge in late afternoon to photograph the sunset and the Arenal Volcano.

After breakfast, we travel to the cloud forests of the northern Central Volcanic Mountain Range and our lodge, Bosque de Paz. Bosque de Paz Ecolodge is located in one of the most biodiverse areas of the country, nestled in a picturesque valley at approximately 4,500 feet above sea level between the Poas Volcano and Juan Castro Blanco National Parks. With its rushing mountain streams, cool air, and orchid and moss-festooned trees, the area is akin to a tropical Colorado. En route, we stop for lunch at the Toro waterfall, which is 110 meters high and offers beautiful photographic opportunities of the waterfall itself and the surrounding cloud forest. This is also a great place to photograph some unusual hummingbird species, such as the green thorntail, coppery-headed emerald, and white-bellied mountain gem. There are also some spectacular tropical foliage shots here of palms and ferns on the cliffs surrounding the waterfall. We enjoy a delicious typical lunch at the waterfall. We arrive at Bosque de Paz in late afternoon. Afterward, we can unpack and do a bit of photography around the lodge’s fruit feeders. In late afternoon, we can usually obtain great portraits of the turkey-like black guan and the large forest rodent, the agouti. And hummingbirds, including the violet sabrewing and green-crowned brilliant, abound at the lodge feeders. We enjoy a relaxing dinner this evening at the lodge.

Arenal Observatory Lodge (B), Catarata del Toro (L), Bosque de Paz overnight (D)

After breakfast, we set in immediately to begin photographing hummingbirds at our multi-flash setups right on the lodge grounds. Target species are the violet sabrewing (Costa Rica’s largest species), the purple-throated mountain gem, and the green-crowned brilliant. We will spend all day concentrating on our hummingbird photography. After dinner, we have a drink and an informal discussion on the multiple flash techniques we’ve been using throughout the day.

After breakfast, we pack up and leave for San José and the Hotel Bougainvillea, which has excellent, free wireless Internet throughout the grounds, including in the rooms. We will stop for a typical Costa Rican lunch en route in the town of Sarchi, with options for a bit of souvenir shopping and coffee purchasing as well as photography of artisans making the region’s famed oxcarts. After arriving at the Hotel Bougainvillea, we have a bit of time to relax before dinner

After an early breakfast, we set in to work on post-processing. After an introduction to digital workflow by your Foto Verde photographer, we begin helping each participant with processing their favorite image from the trip in preparation for printing in the afternoon. After lunch, we head over to the best printmakers in the country, our friends at JBP Printing. Upon arrival we enjoy a talk from master printer Michael Ocampo on optimizing images for printing. We then work with JBP’s printmakers to produce a professional quality 10x15” print of each participant’s favorite image. This day will be a great learning experience and also will yield a beautiful image ready for framing when you return home! After arriving back at the Hotel Bougainvillea, we have a bit of time to relax and then enjoy a farewell dinner at the hotel.

Private transfer to the Juan Santamaría International Airport for your flights home.

PARTICIPANTS	PRICE IN DOUBLE OCCUPANCY	SINGLE SUPPLEMENT
5 people	$2,860.00	$385.00
6 people	$2,578.00	$385.00
7 people	$2,510.00	$385.00
8 people	$2,335.00	$385.00
9 people	$2,305.00	$385.00
10 people	$2,190.00	$385.00

Note: This open signup tour has a minimum (5) and maximum (10) number of participants, including non-photographers. We require a reserve deposit to secure your spot, for which you will receive instructions after we process your signup form. This deposit counts as a payment toward your final trip cost. In the case that a trip does not reach the minimum number of participants, your reserve deposit will be fully refunded or applied to another trip of your choice according to your preference. Spaces are alotted according to the date of signup and deposit payment. Please see our Liability, Payment, and Cancellations Policy for more details.

[ Foto Verde Liability, Payment, & Cancellation Policy ]

Click the button above to reserve your spot on one this open signup photo adventure.