The land of Costa Rica is something that will exceed your expectations. The national slogan “pura vida”, pure life, couldn’t be more realistic and effective. Life and death are everywhere, running after each other in a wild nature that represents the 5% of the planet’s biodiversity. This land is a kind of paradise for photographers, as you are surrounded by wild animals and fantastic landscapes.
On the beach where I took this photo there were many animals, from monkeys to iguanas and I have been also attacked by a strange kind of flying ants. I had to throw my clothes off and my camera and jump into the sea to stop them from attacking me.
When I got back on the shore, I saw this busy hermit crab. I had no clue about where he was trying to go but it looked really convinced about his route. I started following one of the main nature photography rule, getting at the same level of the animal’s gaze. Photographic shot after shot I got this photo that I titled “perspective” and that was candidate at the international competition Wild Life Photographer of the Year 2016.
What looked to me as nothing more than a track on the sand, for this hermit crab was an insurmountable obstacle. It arrived there on the edge of the track, it stopped a few seconds, than it looked around and he started to look for an alternative route. In those few seconds in which it was observing, thinking and calculating the new route, I asked myself what kind of perspective this small creature, that can live many years, can have on the surrounding world. I will never get an answer to my question but that gaze frozen into the photo makes me think about how it can be important, sometime, to place yourself in the other’s perspective. A mental exercise that unfortunately we are not doing that often.
Here the link to the Costa Rica gallery.
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