Trip Report:
Ultimate Rainforest Photography Costa Rica 2025
This trip is one of our favorites as it showcases the amazing diversity of wildlife in our tiny home country of Costa Rica and also introduces you to lots of new photo techniques. Our group of clients from the US, UK, Canada, and Switzerland was absolutely wonderful, and we had a great time helping them to take awesome photos of toucans, king vultures, hummingbirds, bats, tree frogs, poison frogs, glass frogs, snakes and more. Here's a little behind the scenes look at the time we all enjoyed together.
Leaders
Greg Basco
Gregory Basco is a professional nature photographer based in Costa Rica. After completing graduate degrees in political science and tropical ecology (his doctoral dissertation focused on the politics of ecotourism in Costa Rica), Greg worked in conservation before turning to photography full-time in 2006. His images have been awarded in the Veolia Wildlife Photographer of the Year and Nature's Best Windland Smith Rice competitions and have appeared in numerous magazines and books around the world.
His latest major project is the second edition of the large format printed book National Parks of Costa Rica in conjunction with Zona Tropical and Cornell University Press. His popular e-books include The Guide to Tropical Nature Photography, the mega e-book Flash for the Nature Photographer, and the new Complete Video Guide to Lightroom for the Nature Photographer.
You can see more of Greg's work at his website.
Follow him on Instagram @gregbascophotography
Paulo Valerio
Costa Rican born and raised, Paulo Valerio is an ecologist, tourism entrepreneur, and nature photographer. Paulo graduated as a tropical ecologist from the Biology School of the National University. During his graduate studies, he specialized in the development of sampling and research methods for high-flying bats in the rainforest canopy.
Involved with ecotourism since 1992, Paulo has worked as a naturalist guide and field instructor for several companies, has developed and directed field study programs and taught tropical ecology at various universities in Costa Rica and the US.. He is also a nature photographer and birdwatcher. Paulo recently also decided to pursue a long time interest and passion and obtained his PhD in traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture.
Itinerary
Day 1: Arrival Day
Because international air travel can mean delays, cancelled flights, or luggage issues, we always advise our clients to arrive a day before the official arrival day. We arrange your hotel reservation and private airport transfer and you arrive in-country stress free. Since everyone arrived early, we took a trip to the pedestrian boulevard, Central Market, and main shopping district of Costa Rica's capital city of San José and had a wonderful time and a nice lunch right off the city's main plaza. We think it's super important for you to learn a little about the culture and history of the country that is offering you all of the great nature photos you'll be taking throughout the trip! And later in the afternoon Paulo gave a cool presentation on Costa Rica's biodiversity; yes, we very likely have the most species on the planet per area!
Days 2-4: Lowland rainforest
After breakfast at our hotel/botanical garden outside the capital city, we checked out from the Hotel Bougainvillea and boarded our spacious air-conditioned bus and head toward our first destination, the lowland rainforest. We spent the next few days eating delicious food, including our own Foto Verde Tours hot sauce which Paulo and I had fun preparing and the group really enjoyed. Oh yeah, in addition to our culinary adventures, we also photographed toucans, hummingbird, bats, and frogs😉We also had a special treat on our very last morning at our rainforest lodge - an Ornate Hawk Eagle perched in a Cecropia tree right by the parking lot!
HIGHLIGHT PHOTO TECHNIQUE 📸- fill flash for bird photography
Days 5-7: Arenal Volcano Area
We rolled out in our private bus en route to the Arenal Volcano area with a great stop for a delicious homecooked lunch and photography of macaws and monkeys. And we were able to enjoy a stroll around the town of La Fortuna for a quick bit of shopping and to share a great coffee and delicious chocolate at our favorite coffee shop in the area.. Once we were settled at our beautiful lodge with a great view of the Arenal Volcano and Lake Arenal, we go to work over the next two days photographing all manner of frogs, insects, snakes, and lizards. We even did some wide angle macro photography work.
HIGHLIGHT PHOTO TECHNIQUES 📸- birds in flight, off-camera flash for macro photography
Days 8-10: Cloud Forest
After our productive time in the Arenal area, we again packed up the bus to head toward the cloud forest. But first we stopped at a small nature reserve to photograph butterflies, spectacled caiman, and boat-billed herons. We then made another quick stop in the town of La Fortuna for a coffee and a chance for people to buy any needed items (Paulo was excited to go shopping for knockoff Crocs 😅). After another great lunch, we arrived to our charming cloud forest lodge and spent the next two days focusing on multiple-flash hummingbird photography. We also had the chance to photograph hummingbirds in natural light and with fill-flash and also some time for landscape photography. And yes, with some hot peppers Greg was given by a friend in the Arenal area, we made some hot sauce in the lodge's kitchen. Our clients enjoyed it and so did our friends on the lodge staff.
HIGHLIGHT PHOTO TECHNIQUES 📸- multiple flash photography, hummingbird photography with slow shutter speeds and fill-flash
Days 11-12: Downtown
After a last morning of hummingbird photography, we paid bills at our lodge, loaded up the bus, and headed back toward the capital city. En route, we made of couple of stops. The first was in Greg's hometown of Zarcero where we enjoyed a stroll in the famous park along with a snack from the food stands set up for a town festival. We also went to the home of one of Greg's friend Marvin who is a local organic coffee farmer. Our clients were able to meet Marvin and then take home some excellent local coffee directly from the person who grew it, a great way to remember a trip to Costa Rica. We then proceeded to the capital city area for our farewell lunch together at one of the most typical restaurants in Costa Rica, where they really decked out our table in the colors of the Costa Rican flag! After arriving to our beautiful hotel on the outskirts of the capital city, the clients had time to relax and do some final bird photography out in the hotel gardens before we got together for cocktail hour and went over everyone's private transfers for the next day. It was a great end to a great trip!
Featured Photos from the Ultimate Rainforest Photography Workshop
We can't show your own photos of the subjects from this tour because we only took a few of our own. We were there to help our clients, which is a photo tour leader should do! Most of the photos and videos above were taken with our cell phones along with a few clients portraits that Greg took with his Canon R5 and 50 mm f/1.8 and 35 mm f/1.8 lenses.
So, thanks so much to our client and friend Marcel Felber from Switzerland for sharing his favorite photos from this year's Ultimate Rainforest Photography workshop. We absolutely love these! To see more of Marcel's beautiful photography be sure to check out his website at the link below.
https://www.marcelfelber.ch/
What Do Our Clients Have to Say?
If there is no title in Itin Title 6 or 7, it will collapse its respective block so there is no extra space. Evidently there will never be a 7 without 6, but there might be just 5 sections.