Category: Sunrise

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A Brilliant New Photo Book

I just completed my latest photo book, the second one on Blurb’s “Lay Flat Pages” (no gutter) with 100# Premium Lustre Photo Paper containing 16 sunrise photos in my favorite sunrise place, 14 are two-page spreads! I made it for both the fun of creating and as a gift to the Hotel Banana Azul where all photos were made! There are now several hotels like this across Costa Rica that feature my photo books about them in their lobbies.  🙂  And by the way, this is one I think is worth taking advantage of my bookstore’s “Free Preview” electronically by clicking the cover image below or going to this address and just click the pages to turn them!  🙂

https://www.blurb.com/b/11529264-sunrise-banana-azul

CLICK cover image to go to a free electronic preview!

¡Pura Vida!

And by the way, that other “Lay Flat Book” was done way back in 2018 and titled Costa Rica Sunrises and Sunsets. It too is worth taking time for the “Free Preview” with mostly sunsets in that book! Just click that title to go there!

Costa Rica Weekly Video Recap

Brief bits of this last week’s news including 2 totally different rich and famous from the United States now living in Costa Rica!  🙂

Or maybe just read these written articles:

Preserve Planet Fights Against Costa Rica’s Plans to Build New Airport

Illegal Logging: The Critical Situation Threatening Costa Rica’s Environment

Costa Rica Expat Living: My Story of Being a Dependent (With an Unexpected Twist)  Story of a “dependent” (wife) of a legally working husband and how new law opened up legal work for her (which wasn’t allowed before). CR welcomes us retirees who bring our retirement income with us, but younger working adults who might compete with locals for jobs have many more hoops to jump through!  🙂  But from this story it seems to be getting easier!  And I am seeing a lot more working young adult expats, even in little Atenas now, though still most of them work on the internet which is non-competitive to local workers.

Everyone wants to live in Costa Rica now!  🙂

¡Pura Vida!

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Calle Nueva won’t be “Country” Much Longer

And as a nature lover, I do not always embrace “progress” that henders nature, but as always, I learn to live with it!  🙂 This old dirt country road called “Calle Nueva” winds over three or four hills through the woods and farms on the western edge of Pueblo Atenas running from the western side of town to the nearby village of Rio Grande at the entrance to Ruta 27, our controlled access highway between San Jose and Jaco Beach. This narrow country dirt road has been considered an emergency exit road in case of a disaster requiring evacuation. Now it is about to become a major street or road to enter or exit Atenas. They first graded and widened it to 9 meters taking a few trees and lots of wild flower with their backhoes, graders and chainsaws. Now they have started at the Rio Grande end widening it to 14 meters and paving it! Working this way! And more than half finished! Already traffic has increased and when all is paved it will stay busy!

Where I enter Calle Nueva, just past Colegio Técnico on Avenida 10, with new black gravel up to the little one lane bridge where it is back to the plain red dirt again.

Of course I am disappointed that I am about to lose my little “shady lane” country road for birding and butterflies along with other nature photography, but even with pavement and more cars it will for a while have more birds and other nature than city streets, just gradually the farms along this road will be turned into housing developments as more foreigners move here in both retirement like me AND now so many younger adults who work on the internet and can live anywhere are choosing to live here! 🙂  It’s all part of our big changing world! At least I’m already living in one of those more desirable places in the world to live! 🙂

Recently graded and widened to 9 meters and soon to 14 meters and paved!

I will continue to walk this road for its nature until there is no more nature. The additional people, traffic and greater speed of vehicles will discourage the birds and other animals in time, but for now it is still a nature path, even when the pavement goes down. And I will continue to document here the birds and butterflies I find through these woods and farms, but for you who live here, be aware than “progress” is coming!  🙂

More photos of the road below from my March 10 sunrise walk . . .

Continue reading “Calle Nueva won’t be “Country” Much Longer”

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Birds on Calle Nueva

7 days ago, Friday, March 10, I left my house at 5:40 am and took the city streets for the 20 minute walk to Calle Nueva alongside Roca Verde but with no entrance from our development. I saw a few birds on the city streets enroute and then a little past Colegio Técnico (our technical high school on 10th Ave.) I always start seeing birds and continue to as I cross the stream and go up the hill alongside Roca Verde. I’ll do a post about the road tomorrow and explain why I think birds have decreased there and will more in the future, but for today here’s the 11 birds I got useable photos of for the blog and darn it! I missed snapping the 2 Motmots I saw!  🙂

First a photo I consider kind of “artsy” – a black bird on black & silver power lines with the morning sunrise turning the clouds in front of him black & orange as he seems to stare at them in unbelief!  🙂  Sort of dramatic, don’t you think?  🙂

Great-tailed Grackle watching the sunrise on Calle Nueva in Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica.

Continue reading “Birds on Calle Nueva”

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My 2022 in Photos

From the top of a volcano to the mangroves at the ocean’s edge and even in the tiny garden behind my casita, I’ve daily photographed nature for 8 years here and called that photography “Nature as Art!” and shared it in this blog.  🙂 

I like this Collins Online Dictionary definition:

Nature is all the animals, plants, and other things in the world that are not made by people, and all the events and processes that are not caused by people. 

Thus in nature I worship God and find my peace & inspiration from Him, the creator of it all!

Each year I find it difficult to select only 12 photos from the year and I first tried to come up with 12 “categories” of nature to make sure I selected a variety, but that became as cumbersome as trying to have a “photo-a-month.” So I decided to just stick with “12 favorites,” even if more than 12 are favorites! 🙂

So, however labeled, here’s 12 photos I made in 2022!

Happy New Year and Pura vida! 🙂

This 1st of 12 is looking out at the Pacific Ocean from Playa Cativo Lodge, Golfo Dulce, Piedras Blancas NP and the 12th photo below is a shot  looking out over the Atlantic Ocean at sunrise from Hotel Banana Azul. Coast to coast nature photos!   🙂

To the nearly 500 email subscribers: I hope you read on for the other 11 favorite photos . . .

Continue reading “My 2022 in Photos”

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What will I Have at the Art Show?

Wall Art

I’m bringing 21 photos printed on metal with a special mounting piece to give your wall art a contemporary 3-D look or a nice little shadow. In many sizes and subjects!

This Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth is just one choice! There’s birds, butterflies, monkeys, and flowers too!

Plus three other product categories . . .

Continue reading “What will I Have at the Art Show?”
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Morning Vista . . .

. . . is one I never tire of and though the same, it is slightly different every morning with changing light, sky, clouds and foliage. I am so thankful to live retired in a tranquil little farming town in what might be the most nature-centered and ecology-minded little country in the world! We use 99% renewable electricity and are slowly but steadily moving towards electric cars and buses and have more than 25% of the country’s land set aside in reserves or national parks and we still plant trees! Pura vida!

View from my terrace every morning at breakfast + birds & butterflies! 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

View GALLERY: From My Roca Verde Terrace

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Wet Birds at Gandoca-Manzanillo

This morning’s rain not only interfered with a beautiful sunrise but also dampened my birding expedition with a great guide this morning. I try not to give up too quickly on such efforts, but did cut our hike a little shorter after my camera fogged up on the inside. All 12 of the following birds were photographed in the rain even if not obvious! 🙂 And we saw more birds and other animals, even in the rain! 🙂 Just imagine what it would have been like with a clear morning!

Broad-winged Hawk, Gandoca-Manzanillo Refuge, Limón, Costa Rica
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