NikonGear'23
Images => Nature, Flora, Fauna & Landscapes => Topic started by: Ann on June 21, 2024, 00:46:38
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The book itself is a bit expensive but people here might enjoy looking through the free Preview of my new book: "Jewels of Costa Rica".
https://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/10301885/e9df86268fcfaa6253636f1c29b29b80d0ae9066
This is the cover:
(https://nikongear.net/revival/gallery/0/1358-210624004558.jpeg)
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Ann, whilst one should not judge a book by its cover, I am confident that your book is an exception to this rule in that its wonderful cover is just a glimpse of what lies await inside.
Congratulations on your achievement in getting this project completed.
Note to readers: open up Ann's book link and hit the preview button - the several dozen images of Ann's from within the book are then revealed. I am a bit worried about those Pit Vipers though...
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I've seen quite a bit of your work before Anne,
but some of the images are jaw dropping.
I bet you have some fascinating tales of what was involved in obtaining some of these too :P
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Very nice ;) Keep on going strong!
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congrats to this book, going through the previews, I see, there are many extraordinary pictures in
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Congratulations on the book, Ann. The photographs in the preview are stunning!
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Thank you all for your most generous and kind comments on my book.
I had only a couple of weeks in Costa Rica: the first one was with four other photographers (two of whom I already knew from adventures in Florida and at Sabi Sabi).
During the following week our brilliant professional photographer, naturalist and guide took his own 4-wheel-drive car off-road and on private land for me to explore the hinterland of his country. That was when we found the owls and the very rare, but truly delightful, Squirrel Monkeys.
Juan Carlos' expertise got me to exactly the right locations to take these photographs.
I had rented the amazing 500mm f/4 Nikkor (the retail price is some $10,000 which is why I don't own one!) for the trip and that rental certainly paid off.
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Amazing book filled with stunning images! I couldn't imagine how much perseverance one would need to accumulate such amount of images of such quality. I'm floored.
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Akira:
Thank you!
I had greatest fun putting the book together because I did take an enormous number of photographs while I was in Costa Rica so had plenty to choose from for the book.
Getting to Costa Rica was a very different matter though:
Costa Rica lies on the isthmus between North and South
America. It has tropical lowlands (on both the Atlantic and the
Pacific coasts) and ranges of central mountains which rise 12,500
feet through a rain forest to the cloud forest above it. As a result
of this diversity, Costa Rica is home to an enormous variety of
wild plant and animal life. The country is consequently a dream
destination for photographers who hope to capture images of
these wonderful, and sometimes quite rare, creatures.
Getting to Costa Rica proved to be rather more difficult than I
had imagined.
First, my flight from New York was canceled by the airline just
hours before take-off. This was apparently due to a snowstorm the
previous day which had left them with crews and aircraft scattered
across the country in the wrong places.
Frantic phone calls to every airport within 100 miles finally
located a single seat on a flight to neighbouring Panama from
which I could take a flight back to San José in Costa Rica. It was
an expensive Business Class seat but it was a seat on a flight going
in roughly the right direction so I grabbed it.
We had only been airborne for about an hour when a passenger
just a few rows in front of me experienced a heart attack. Doctors
on board were summoned and oxygen cylinders were brought
forward but to little avail so we made an emergency descent to
Raleigh, North Carolina where an ambulance met us and took the
afflicted passenger to a hospital which hopefully could help him.
So now we could be on our way again? And have dinner which
had not yet been served? Unfortunately not! All of the oxygen
cylinders had been used and airline rules insist on there always
being spare oxygen cylinders so everyone (and all of their luggage)
had to leave the plane.
The airport was in total darkness but the crew was able to find a
trolley laden only with water and candy. So dinner-less and hungry,
there we all sat … and sat… and sat.
Then we heard that oxygen had been located but it was in a locked
warehouse. Someone was looking for a key.
Great! So soon we can be off ?
Unfortunately not quite yet because we still needed to wait for
someone to come from his bed to man the control tower.
That was eventually accomplished so now we could go?
Well not yet because now one of the crew has exceeded her permitted
hours on the job and she has to be replaced.
Finally at dawn we were allowed to board a different plane but the
very long delay meant that we had arrived in Panama too late for
me to make my connection back to Costa Rica.
Several more hours passed before I could resume my journey to
Costa Rica. So where were my two suitcases? Not in Costa Rica
it seemed. Never mind: the airline would find them and would
deliver them to me.
Meanwhile the taxi (which my host had kindly arranged to take
me to join four other photographers) was waiting to drive me six
hours north (near the border with Nicaragua) to the lodge where
we would all be staying.
We set off and drove towards the Mount Poàs volcano. We had
almost reached the pass when we found that the road had been
closed due to an accident. Back down the mountain we drove
again and took the other less scenic and more congested road to
the north. The journey was interesting but a bit silent because my
driver spoke Spanish and I unfortunately don’t.
Eventually we left the paved highway and continued along a dirt
road. “Have we arrived?” Not yet — there is still another hour’s
journey ahead of us. Finally, at dusk, we do reach the Lodge where
the taxi driver leaves me before starting his six-hour-long return
drive through the night to San José.
With no suitcases I am attired for the tropics in a high-necked
woollen sweater that is more suitable for the snows of New York.
I have no tripod but fortunately I do have my cameras and lenses
because those always travel with me as “Carry-Ons”.
(My missing suitcases did eventually arrive but not until two days
later although, thankfully, a very kind and thoughtful fellow photographer
lent me a cotton shirt to replace my woollen sweater.)
So now, finally, to start photographing. The Laguna del Lagarto
Lodge and its surrounding grounds are home to exotic toucans,
curassows, parrots and song birds in all the colours of the rainbow.
There were also beautiful but exceedingly venomous snakes, strawberry
poison-dart frogs, coatis, nectar-feeding leaf-nosed bats and
iridescently-feathered humming birds of different species.
Paradise indeed — but I had reached it only after the proverbial
“Journey through Hell”.
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and then people say, digital makes photography simple :)
I don't envy you this experience
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I thought that people might enjoy that story?!
While we may own our cameras, unfortunately we don't own the airlines.
On one of my trips a fellow photographer failed to receive his checked-in suitcase for six months — and we were in a fairly remote area of South Africa which had no stores where he could buy much in the way of replacement clothing.
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Quite an adventure, and lovely images. Appreciate you sharing, as always.
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Thank you Ann for such a generous chance to see your work. I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience -travel adventures and all :)
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Beautiful work Ann. I would love to go back there some day!
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Ann, that is a beautiful book.
My journey to Costa Rica was much simpler, but my photos are nowhere near as good as yours.
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I am thrilled that so many people have enjoyed my book.
I really was extremely fortunate that I was able to explore Costa Rica with such a guide as Juan Carlos Vindas. He is a brilliant photographer in his own right but is also an extremely knowledgable naturalist who knows exactly where to take people who want to photograph wild life. Being a native Costa Rican, he also knows many of the major landowners and was able to get me access to shoot on private land.
I spent the first week with him and four other photographers then, after the others had gone home, Juan Carlos showed me the back unpaved roads in the hills of his country. We actually found a remote place in a rain forest, completely by chance, which he had always heard about but never knew where it was!
The rented Nikkor lens did the rest.
Unfortunately Printing-on-Demand makes each book very expensive so I really need to find a literary agent who works regularly with the likes of Thames & Hudson and Rizzoli.
I also have a book about the national treasures (both Historic and modern) of China. I shot the pictures all over China during a private trip there.
The China book is massive with 240 large-format pages and over 500 photographs plus text so printed privately via P.O.D. each copy costs nearly $300 which is exorbitant.
(I have printed just a few for private distribution but have not offered it publicly.
Printed in quantity by Offset, it would retail for about a tenth of the price.
So if anyone knows a literary agent who deals with one of the major publishers, do ask them to contact me.
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More fascinating insights Ann
Many years ago, my daughter produced a book on Indian Vegetarian Cookery.
We did a little research and the best options were unclear.
Some companies offered promotional add-ons which meant certain booksellers would give it prominent display for a while. For better or worse, we ended up with a print-on-demand company called Authorhouse.
We ended up paying (for us) a substantial amount up front and when it was finalised in 2009, they told us it would carry a cover price of around £27. We were already committed then, but this price was way above what most people would have chosen to pay for a cookery book (even though it was large format & well illustrated).
Barely a month or so later, a friend got married and got copies of his wedding photos bound and printed by a local company for a fraction of the cost and with far more flexibility of re-prints, print volumes etc
Meanwhile our sales were modest (and mainly achieved by us promoting it ourselves).
After a year or two so, we started seeing it being sold on Amazon at much higher prices (these were new copies so I guess speculators buy to re-sell at a profit).
I've just checked an Authorhouse will still sell a copy - now priced at just under £46.
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Colin, that is quite a Cautionary Tale!
>:(
Ona advantage with Blurb is that they make no up-front charges: you simply upload your files.
I create my books in InDesign but Blurb also offer their own template-based free software. Once you have ordered a single copy, they keep the files for many years and simply generate copies by POD when people order a book.
I usually order one copy as a Proof. Then I go over the Proof carefully, make any edits that I find necessary and upload new files for final printing
I realise that I could have economised on my choice of paper and on the Cover — but I didn't!
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Ann,
Congratulations, absolutely wonderful book, really enjoyed browsing through it.
And all the trouble to get to CR put you at an Indiana jones level of adventurer!
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Armando, thank you so much for your very kind comments.
It was indeed qute an adventure: both the getting there and having the chance to photograph so many beautiful creatures.