2/22/2024

Becky in Comox last summer, 2023.

Back to basics. I haven’t posted in a while because Angela’s family took us on a vacation to Costa Rica for 10 days. We are so grateful for that trip, it’s a stunning country filled with beautiful geography, wildlife and every person we met was genuinely kind. Angela and I both left feeling inspired and we want to return to see more of it’s culture, wildlife (and also beaches, the beaches were amazing).

I made a choice before leaving on the trip that I wasn’t going to bring a whole photo kit. I know on this blog I’m largely sharing personal work shot on film, at the same time I’m also growing more into birding every year. I decided that this trip was a family trip and that ducking out for hours of time by myself to wait for birds was probably a bit of a dick move. After a few days of Pelicans, Majestic Frigatebirds, and Terns out over the water I realized the birds in Costa Rica are plentiful and beautiful. Then we started seeing even more birds on inland excursions, without going too wild, highlights were a few Bare Throated Tiger Herons (real bird name) and a Jabiru Stork. The Jabiru I really only saw in flight over marshlands through binoculars, but it was absolutely stunning. So while I wish I would have just brought the long lens, I’m also really stoked that instead I just brought my Voightlander rangefinder camera. I shot 11 rolls of film on the trip and not a single digital image.

Related to not shooting a digital image I made the choice to leave my cell phone in the hotel room every day. Outside of a few minutes scrolling and checking emails/messages on data, I didn’t want to be looking at a screen. I took the opportunity to see if I could break some of the Curse of the Glowing Information Brick while we down there. Honestly. It was amazing. Sure, I’m not really ready to throw my phone out to sea, but I’m going to be trying to be mindful of what I’m spending my time doing. There’s many times where instead of getting sucked into a telephone I just looked at the (Great Tailed) Grackles flying across the palm trees and making noise instead of seeing how much crap an algorithm wants me to think is cool.

Here we are. Back on the blog though, being ironic about the internet (complain about the state of the internet, but still produce ‘content’ I’ll share on it). I’m hopeful to find a groove again and keep up the personal outlet of personal work. And I’ll write more about some of the experiences of Costa Rica as I get my film processed and scanned.