A Photo Essay, Without Photos
I’ve just returned from a week at Playa Conchal Resort in Costa Rica, a beautifully appointed tropical resort where my family and I were indulged with ideal weather, comfortable accommodation, a wide variety of delicious food and drink, and days spent lounging at poolside, wandering the beach, marvelling at the wildlife, and getting our adrenaline flowing with various gravity-defying and power-driven activities.
Here’s a typical day: I would rise with the sun around six, throw on a t-shirt, some shorts and sandals, grab my camera bag, and get a travel mug filled with Costa Rican coffee at the breakfast buffet just as they opened. Then I would head to the beach and either turn left or right. Right would take me to Brasilito, a nearby village that was waking with the morning sun. There, I’d wander the streets and alleyways photographing the light and shadows. Drowsy dogs, walls saturated in vivid colours, and doorways adorned with Christmas decorations were the focus of my photography. Returning along the beach, more photo opportunities awaited me as the sun was now breaking the hillside and reaching the sand and rolling surf. The shadow play on the sand through the trees was quite captivating, with footprints both fresh and fading interrupting the flat plane of sand.
On other days, turning left at the beach would take me eventually to a still sleepy beach cafe, where the bold colours and vacant furniture cried out to be photographed. Two small decaying, varicoloured rowboats left leaning upright against ancient trees also commanded my camera’s attention. But the best find of all was an abandoned house up on the hillside overlooking the beach. Half a dozen large, ornate orange pillars welcomed me to this fascinating former home. Behind these imposing sentries lay a large structure, entirely roofless, each room floored in ornate blue and white tile, half-concealed in dusty debris. The brilliance of the painted walls, some white, some orange, some blue, was artfully tainted by the patina of weather and age. Room by room I studied details with my camera, aligning windows and walls, studying proportions and colours and light. Why this once splendid home was abandoned, I don’t know. I paid two visits to this location, the second, on our final day, more methodical and studied than the first, paying very careful attention to my exposures and composition. Plans of a photo book began to form in my imagination, using these shots to complement other images from similar, but so different locations.
A pre-arranged rendezvous for a nine a.m. family breakfast pulled me homeward after each of my morning adventures, where my sleepy-faced family and I would plan the coming day. This generally consisted of pool time, beach time, and some sort of excursion, which included kayaking, zip lining, power boat tubing, and an amazing backroad ATV adventure, which turned out to be the highlight for my sons and I. My photography would continue at various points throughout the day, waiting for the warm slanted light at day’s end, usually at the beach, to finish off before a relaxing evening of dinner and conversation.
It was on our final day that this perfect routine came to an abrupt end, as it was late that morning when my camera bag was stolen from the beach. With surprising boldness, someone came up from behind our group of chairs and lifted my bag where my boys sat reading. For once, I had decided not to carry it with me as I enjoyed a short walk on the beach with my wife. At all other times, my bag was attached to my side like an appendage. This bag contained not only my valued Nikon, but three lenses, my wallet, my new iPod, my glasses, my watch, and various other items. And the greatest loss of all was hundreds of photographs that I so looked forward to coming home with, not only my personal work, but the documentation of an important family vacation.
A hasty search of the beach and the road and peering in windows of parked cars led nowhere, as did the subsequent involvement of resort security and the Costa Rican police. My unfocussed anger led to a profound disappointment which in turn, coloured my brilliant week in a drab grey. My impression of the warm and friendly Costa Rican people was suddenly tainted by one heartless individual, and my unwavering belief in karma began to crumble. This stuff doesn’t happen to me. Happy hour that afternoon wasn't, as I recounted with dismay the two or three or four steps that always seem to precede an unfortunate event.
We flew out of Costa Rica
This photo-less essay has given me a chance to record, without camera and lens, the beauty and wonder of one short, but intense week in a place far from my home and my ways, and has given me a way to create something from nothing. There are far greater losses to experience than mine. My family is home safe and sound, and with time, I’ll probably get over this loss. And as I now proceed to try to replace all my identification, and attempt to hopefully recover my lost possessions through insurance, I hope that part of me that I left behind will someday return.
