"Necessity is the Mother of Invention" (I always assumed it was Frank Zappa)

In any case, some of my best photographic techniques have been developed in response to specific shooting conditions and this experiment in "light painting" came about in the Cloud Forest region of Costa Rica, known as Monteverde.

Just outside of town is a wonderful place called the "Frog Pond". Inside is a collection of terrariums with a wide selection of frogs from all around Costa Rica. The froggies sleep in the daytime and feed at night so the owners request that flash photography not be used so as not to disturb the froggie's slumber.

The guides use a battery powered maglight to point out the snoozing critters and this did not seem to disturb them at all. Since a snoozing froggie is a motionless froggie, this seemed a perfect setting to experiment with long exposures, very small F stops for good depth of field and lighting the subject by "painting" it with the maglight beam while the shutter was open.

Using the digital Nikon D1x allowed me view each shot and modify the "light painting" technique as I went along.

Here are a few examples of the results of this technique.