Poison Frogs at Selva Verde Lodge

The other day I went to Selva Verde Lodge for a photoshoot. Andrea Holbrook, president of Holbrook Travel, which runs the lodge, had hired me to do some updated shots of the renovated rooms, new staff, and the buildings and grounds. I started out with sun and a nice breeze at home but as I crossed the Continental Divide and began to drop into the Atlantic lowlands it just kept getting cloudier and cloudier. This is not uncommon so I kept going. The clouds gave way to rain as I got closer to the lodge. And when signal finally came in on my cell phone I saw three missed calls from Graziano, the lodge manager. By the time I got to the lodge it was pouring so it was obvious Graziano was telling me not to come. Yes, in the middle of the dry season, it was raining hard at Selva Verde thanks to a big cold front that had moved down from the US. Still, some showers are not atypical so I held out a little hope that the weather might break but after an hour it became clear that wouldn’t happen. In fact, it rained steadily for the next 24 hours, when I departed.

So, what does a photographer do when at Selva Verde and faced with nonstop rain? Photograph frogs of course! For the frogs, the rain was a blessing, and the two species of poison frog on the lodge grounds were out in full force. Luckily Graziano invited me to stay the night at the hotel and spend the day photographing the frogs. The big challenge was the very low light but as you’ll see from the gallery a mix of creative flash and some higher than normal ISOs made for some nice images with natural yet interesting lighting. We’ll reschedule the photoshoot for next month but for now a big thanks to Selva Verde for having me over for some frog photography and special thanks to Aaron of the Selva Verde staff for helping out with the photos.

To see more images, plus tech info, of the green and black poison frog (Dendrobates auratus) and the strawberry poison frog (Oophaga pumilio) click the gallery link below. I also got one nice shot of a summer tanager by the restaurant. The light was low (f4, 1/30 of a second, and ISO 1000) but it turned out pretty well. As always these images are full-frame, never cropped, and have only a minimum of post-processing tweaks (basically a bit of noise reduction and some dust spot cloning). The summer tanager is full-frame but I did do some cloning of a really distracting leaf at the bottom of the frame. All of this was done quickly in Lightroom. The images here have never even seen Photoshop!

Visit the poison frog gallery to see the images.

Cheers,

Greg