For a travel photographer, there are generally two avenues for approaching assignments: bidding on a project and following the client’s brief or pitching a story yourself. Madrid, Spain-based photographer Cristina Candel was eager to return to Costa Rica so she reached out to travel magazine Viajar to pitch a feature that would take her back to the country’s wild rainforest and waterfalls.
I had not traveled to Costa Rica for a long time and really missed its unique environment so I proposed the idea to Viajar Magazine.
This trip was Cristina’s fifth journey to the Central American country, returning each time to capture a different aspect of Costa Rican life for an array of magazines. Costa Rica is a popular destination for travelers in Europe due to its natural beauty and she knew it would be a great fit for the magazine’s readers.
In Spain, everyone knows that Costa Rica is one of the places you want to be at least once in your life, so when I proposed the location to the magazine they were delighted.
Initially, the project was to take Cristina to Corcovado National Park, an isolated peninsula off the southwest coast of the country. However, travel restrictions made it difficult to reach the remote region, and Cristina had to find an alternative location. She discovered that Guanacaste in Northern Costa Rica is a biologically diverse region with abundant wildlife, waterfalls, and volcanos.
We discovered a part of Costa Rica so wonderful that we didn’t care about the change in plans.
The North of the country, like all of Costa Rica, is dotted with natural reserves and parks. Cristina visited El Rincon de la Vieja National Park and La Reserva de Caño Negro y Volcan Tenorio National Park, whose borders are only a mere 20 miles apart. Despite how close the parks may be to each other, the limited roads in the dense forests make traveling between them a two-hour journey.
The two parks I visited are close, but they have a variety of incredible landscapes.
For this assignment, Cristina sought to include all the exciting attractions that travelers seek when visiting Costa Rica’s national parks. She highlights individuals hiking, mountain biking, zip-lining, and swimming in the lush greenery. While many of the activities required Cristina to capture the movement of subjects and landscapes, she also needed to find perfect stillness when photographing the area’s wildlife.
For this project I had to take a variety of images, sometimes while riding a bike or jumping down a zip line — which was enriching and exhausting in equal measure!
For Cristina, one of the best parts of the trip was meeting Donald and Pip, who together run a small local business and wildlife reserve in Tenorio Volcan National Park. The two represent a new generation of eco-tourism that is developing in the area. Their entire business operates in harmony with nature and gives back to the local community.
Donald even took Cristina on a nighttime hike in the Tapi Valley, introducing her to the nocturnal dwellers, whose vibrant colors stand out among the black backdrop of the forest. While there, the rainforest delivered a sprinkling of rain that did little to deter Cristina from continuing on the midnight journey.
It was so exciting to discover so many animals at night: frogs, butterflies, and even the dreaded velvet snake who we met at a bend in the road.
Costa Rica offers photographers a brilliant spectrum of colors in its natural environment, and Cristina had no difficulty when editing the images in post-production. While she had to balance the exposure during both daytime and nighttime shots, she chose to keep the images natural to maintain the authenticity of the series and let the beauty of the region speak for itself.
When shooting in raw-mode you always have to do a little retouching, but I usually don’t retouch much in post-production.
When looking at Cristina’s images, it’s not surprising that she would want to return to Costa Rica. Her photos capture the beauty of the region offering a look at various activities and attractions that cater to all kinds of travelers. As she explores new places around the globe her own inquisitive spirit guides her from one exciting location to the next.
Photographer: Cristina Candel