Shooting by the Waterfall

Violet Sabrewing - Catarata del Toro

Beautiful as the setting of Bosque de Paz is, I didn’t feel it had enough to offer for the whole duration of our stay there. The itinerary detailed landscape chances close to the lodge, but on both occasions we checked them out, the cloud was so low there was nothing to see, let alone photograph. It was therefore fortunate that we had a day planned at the Catarata Del Toro waterfall, which was only a short drive away.

Essentially this was another day of set ups, but between sessions there was the opportunity to shoot in the grounds. Additionally, for those feeling energetic, there was the hike down to the base of the waterfall for further photo opportunities. It’s actually dropping into what was a volcano crater and has a 90m vertical fall.

The entrance to the site is through the café adjacent to the car park and is on the same level as the head of the fall. Exiting the café brings you to the start of the garden trails and the 1km descent to the base of the fall. This involves negotiating more than 350 steps, with various stop-off points to take in different views of the fall.

Being another wet day it was no surprise that none of the group made the descent, save for our bus driver. Enrique had been running regularly before breakfast each morning during the trip, but the terrain limited his chances at Bosque. He’d previously told us that in the past he had run up from the bottom of the path and posted a respectable time, but hadn’t seemed inclined to repeat it on this trip. However, while I was in the garden between my set-up sessions, he came running past me. No records this time, but big respect for doing it at all.

The set-ups were done under cover in a cordoned off area of the café and followed the familiar pattern. My first session consisted mainly of Violet Sabrewings, probably the second most common hummingbird we saw on the whole trip, after the White-necked Jacobin. Looking for something different, about halfway through my 30-minute session I had the set-up changed so that I could shoot silhouettes.

I employed this tactic on three of my four sessions, but now I’m back and looking through the images, I’m finding there are far less keepers than in the normal part of the sessions. Position of the bird relative to the flower is absolutely vital in silhouettes and in one of the sessions I’m left with 4 keepers from just shy of a hundred shots.

Naturally I realise this could be a reflection on my photographic skills, but compare that to 32 keepers from a similar number of normal shots and I feel it’s purely down to the subject matter.

Walking in the gardens I didn’t find much to photograph. The Bananaquits were as prevalent as ever and I spent some time with them, but the constant heavy showers weren’t helping. It was a relatively relaxed day as a result and some more beautiful images were added to the portfolio. However, the set-ups were beginning to get a bit repetitive and I was starting to yearn for the type of wild shooting we’re used to on safaris.

The site closes at 5pm and by that time we were on our way back to Bosque. Being only a short drive we were soon back at the lodge and breaking out the macro kit for a final night walk before dinner. The site is very productive for this genre and in a relatively small area too. We found much to photograph on each of the three nights, but on this last night, nothing new was found.

That was Bosque de Paz done and dusted. Next morning there was no time to do anything other than get packed up, have a final breakfast and board the bus for the journey to Paraiso Quetzal, via San Pedro, a trip of around four hours.