April 2026 Wildlife Photography Contest Beginner Category Winner

After a hot and rainy day in Costa Rica, my guide and I set off on a night tour of a small nature park on the rural outskirts of La Fortuna. Much of the wildlife in the cloud forests is nocturnal, so guided tours like this offered a wonderful opportunity to practise macrophotography among all sorts of insects, spiders, and other creatures rarely seen elsewhere.

We had already been hearing plenty of frog calls when we stopped to examine a small pond beside the trail, just after sunset. I initially mistook the subject of this photograph for an aquatic insect when I noticed it paddling between the lily pads. It was unbelievably small — it could have sat comfortably on my fingernail with room to spare. Thankfully, it seemed unbothered by our presence, and I was able to move in close and capture several strong frames while it rested on the surface. At that scale, surface tension overpowers gravity, and the raindrops left by the day’s weather had created a dreamlike landscape of perfect, watery orbs. Water visibly clings to the toad’s limbs and body, as though it were suspended within a droplet itself.

Very little editing was needed to make the image sing. I cropped out some empty space around the edges and made minor contrast adjustments — nothing more. Macrophotography has a remarkable ability to reveal the world of animals that are too easily overlooked or misunderstood, and I hope images like this one help illuminate just how extraordinary and ecologically vital they truly are.

Special thanks to the guides at Anura Eco Park — and to the Wet Forest Toad, for being such a generous subject.