For a few weeks I had enjoyed watching different bats fly through our plantation, visiting mostly banana and papaya trees. They were drinking nectar from the banana flowers and feeding on ripe papayas.

As I studied their behavior around the trees and started to observe often clearly defined flying routes and approaches of the flowers I decided to try to photograph them. With a bit of testing and continuously trying different settings and lighting angles it turned out not to be  too hard from a technical side.

But you do need patience, and lots of it…

We have plenty of banana trees, often on fairly steep slopes and surrounded by coffee and other fruit trees. To get enough space, a good angle, position for the flashes and potentially nice composition took night after night after night of trial and error… Long nights, with lots of sore hands from holding the camera remote trigger, finger on the shutter release button, hours and hours, night in, night out!

Eventually patience and perseverance pays off!