About the Image(s)

It is not a bird but it does fly and has wings. I took it at a workshop in
Costa Rica. A was technically complicated.

We walk about 300 meters into the jungle about 10 PM on a wet muddy narrow
dark trail with our head lamps to light our way. At a small clearing the
workshop leaders set up two off-camera speedlights set to low power (1/16)
with short flash durations to freeze the bat's wing motion. The flashes were
connected to an infrared beam trigger. A flower was set up nearby on a
tripod.

We set up our cameras about 15'-20' away on tripods. Then someone place
their hand to the right of the flower where we hoped a bat would appear.
Using a flashlight on the flower and hand, we compose and focused on the
hand at f8 to f11 and locked focus. You want some forgiveness with the dof.
Set ISO to 400. Then you set your camera to take continuous exposures of
with each exposure being 1 to 2 minutes. I used 2 minutes. A number of the
folks in the workshop had difficulty setting their cameras to do this in the
dark. It is not a common way to set up a camera for multiple exposures. The
leaders then put some sugar water into the flower. Turned off all the
lights, press our remote shutter and hope for the best. It was completely
dark so even though our shutters were open nothing was registering on the
sensors until the flashes went off. If a bat approached the flower, the
off-camera flashes and infrared beam trigger become our shutter making the
exposures. We would often get multiple bats in a single image when the
flashes go off several times within the 1 or 2 minutes of the exposure.
After 15 minutes or so we would turn off our cameras, turn on our head
lamps, review our shots, refocus and recompose, add more sugar water to the
flower, turn off all the lights and start all over again. I got lucky a few
times. This image won the image of the year for my club in 2024.

ISO 400, f11, 2min, 280mm