This is another photo of one of the flowers around our Langosta condo. It appears to be a variety of heliconia, although I will confess that my knowledge of different types of tropical flowers is rather limited.
The contrast between the bright flower and the dark background illustrates something that I recently read about photography while trying to get a better understanding of histograms. Each f-stop on the camera allows twice as much light as the next higher f-stop number. The human eye can handle the contrast of light that is equivalent to a range of about 8 f-stops, but a camera image can capture a range of only about 5 f-stops.
Consequently, in many scenes there is a range of brightness or darker areas that the eye sees, but which the camera will record as blackness or white-out. In today's photo, the background was not as dark as it appears in this photo, but I obviously set the exposure to capture the light on the flower and allow the background to be darker in the image than it was in reality. I like the effect of highlighting the subject of the photo.
It is essential to set the exposure manually or to use a "spot meter" for a photo such as this, rather than relying on the camera's automatic exposure. The automatic exposure will often result in a setting that averages the light for the dark and light areas of a high contrast photo, which will cause the brighter subject to be washed out.
This week we are showing photos of Chicago on our on our
Viva la Voyage travel photo site.
Every afternoon the catamaran sailboat in this photo heads out from Tamarind Bay to a few spots for snorkeling, usually near a few rocky islands up the coast. The crew provides snacks of fresh fruit and drinks, and then the boat returns at sunset so the visitors see the sunset from sea. It makes for a very pleasant afternoon.
We commonly see swimmers, dogs, surfers, and paddle boarders on Tamarindo beach, but here is a photo of some people walking their bicycle along the beach. 
Here is a surfer walking out of the surf on Tamarindo beach. I think the woman I showed yesterday had more enthusiasm walking from the ocean back to the beach, but this guy certainly has his own style. 
The young woman in this photo was obviously enjoying herself swimming at Tamarindo beach. She was with a friend and emerged from the surf with a bit of flair, don't you think? 
