I’m sure I wasn’t the only photographer out there with my camera this Monday, right after the first snowfall of the year… We haven’t had such a thick layer of snow in years, and it resulted in fantastic images! In my local area: Bijlmerweide in Amsterdam Zuidoost, I was able to photograph this grey heron—first from a distance, in the landscape near the water, in the falling snow. Later, he gradually came closer.
After watching me from a distance for a while, and then, to my surprise, walking straight towards me, it finally swerved and circled me with a stately, purposeful stride.
There it stood still again, watching me intently… so close now, and so relaxed, that I could easily get a close-up with the telephoto zoom…
A special experience: being stalked by a heron. Only much later did I realize that, because of the plastic bag around my camera, he probably thought he was going to be fed… So, begging heron! 😀 Too bad for him: I didn’t have any food with me either. But I did get a nice series of photos!
And the heron? … once he was truly convinced I had nothing to offer him, he took to the wing and slowly winged away, looking for a snack a little further away!
Two weeks ago we were able to participate for the first time in a Moth count led by Nico Dekker, Coordinator Butterfly Working Group (Vlinderwerkgroep) KNNV – Ilperveld, Landsmeer at Visitors Centre Landscape North Holland. What a special experience! Behind the visitors centre of the Ilperveld a white cloth measuring several metres was stretched, which was illuminated by a very strong, vibrating lamp. It was switched on as soon as it started to get dark, around 22:30, and immediately the first insects appeared: moths, but also beetles, flies, mosquitoes, and a lot of other small fry… Within no time there were hundreds of them. Quite a ticklish feeling!
Inventory and identification
A few people from the Butterfly Foundation and some other interested parties had quickly positioned themselves around the cloth, and took turns in an attempt to photograph and/or identify as many of these creepy crawlies as possible.
Hopwortelboorder – Hepialus humuli
Nico had an insect book with him to identify the various species, and here and there we were shown some beautiful species and given names. Apart from that I was mainly dependent on taking photos – in the hope that they would be good enough to have them identified later via Observation.org.
Photographing insects in the dark
Taking photos in the dark turned out to be even more complicated than expected. Everything moved, flew, hopped, crawled and hopped around, in such large numbers that you didn’t know where to look first, let alone how and where to focus. In addition, the flickering lamp appeared to project red horizontal lines on the canvas, which were not visible to the naked eye, but were visible in the photos. All photos were therefore significantly lightened in post-processing, sharpened and noise-free, and where possible the background was cleaned up a bit.
After sorting through hundreds of photos, and with a bit of luck and a lot of fiddling, you are moving from this :
It is unbelievable how many different species we saw that night! I was able to identify and name a total of 71 different species using Waarneming.nl. But there were many more. Beautiful creatures with often equally surprising and poetic names. The ‘top pieces’ of the evening for me were undoubtedly the Ermine Moth and the Rhinoceros Beetle. But certainly also some other gems that you can see below in my personal ‘top 10’. You can soon find a number of others on my website Photodeck Steppeland – Moth Count(work in progress…)
During our walk in Nature reserve the ‘Riethoek’ (Reedcorner, Amsterdam Zuidoost), looking for small creepy crawlies for our ‘1000 species year’ project, we were just focusing on a Long Jawed Spider when this happened:
Long Jawed spider male in stretch poseTaps a stretched web threadStrekspin vrouw verschijnt – bevruchtingFemale spider appears – fertilizationThreads come out of the abdomenA net is being madeYellow eggs are addedEgg package almost readyMating Long Jawed spiders Family Tetragnathidae – species still unknown. 2025-05-31 Riethoek, Amsterdam Zuidoost
Entree building of Palace Het Loo, modern architecture by architect Koen van Velsen. The combination of windows, stairs, mirrors and reflections of the autumn landscape outside makes for a abstract impression . Photographed in Crown Domain ‘het Loo’, Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, during a panel testing day with the Tamron 16-300 mm F3,5-6,3 DiII VC PZD zoom – organized by the Dutch photography Magazine ‘Focus’ .
Yesterday I participated in a testing panel day, organized by the Dutch photography magazine “Focus”. A group of 12 readers was invited to try out the new, award winning Tamron 16-300 mm F3,5-6,3 DiII VC PZD zoom lens.
16 mm wide angle to 300 mm zoom in one lens… what does that look like?
Well, we went to the Royal Palace “Het Loo” in Apeldoorn, where we could experiment with this awesome lens.
Here is what it looks like:
Royal Stables Palace ‘Het Loo’ – 16mm wide angle
Mare and foal on the weather vane of the Royal stables – 300 mm tele
Such a reach, all within one lens, isn’t that amazing??!!
Today is the first day of a new 6-day photography adventure…
Coming Wednesday, November 19, I’ll participate in a test panel of the Focus magazine, a Dutch photography magazine. They have invited a group of 12 of their readers for a 1 day meeting to test the brand new EISA Award winning zoom lens : the Tamron 16-300 mm F3,5-6,3 Di II VC PZD .
I applied to participate as soon as I read the invitation in the magazine, about two weeks ago, and was very excited to receive an email that I was selected as a possible participant. However, soon enough I would discover that I would not be able to participate with my own familiar Pentax K10 D camera. This new Tamron lens is only compatible with Canon, Nikon and Sony APS-C DSLR camera’s… Bummer!! So what to do?
For a moment, I thought of giving up on the idea of participating, but then I remembered that some time ago, for another reason, I had explored a little on the possibilities of renting a strong telelens for a few days, since I don’t have the budget to buy one. So, if it is possible to rent a lens, then probably it’s possible to rent a camera as well?
So I picked up the research again, and found a few companies in Amsterdam, that are renting out camera’s and other equipment. After long negotiation and emailing back and forth, the first company didn’t work out for me, and again, I almost gave up on the idea. But luckily, I decided to still contact the second company on my list, and there, all obstacles seemed to have disappeared as snow for the sun, and without any complications. And for a much more reasonable price too!! I could order a Canon EOS 7D camera complete with a 18-135mm zoom lens and hire it for a period of 5 days. This would give me the opportunity and time ahead to test and get used to the camera first, before participating in the testing of the new Tamron zoom lens.
So, to make a long story short, this morning I went to pick up the Canon EOS 7D and have been spending a few hours for a hike in the Vliegenbos (VliegenWoods) in Amsterdam North to start trying it out right away. How exciting!! This camera definitely is a higher class camera than my Pentax K10 D, and it’s such a challenge to figure out how it works, and how to get the settings right. And although there is still quite some studying to be done, some of the pics today turned out to be quite nice, so I hope it will only get better in the few coming days, as I continue to get more familiar with the camera.
So here you go for the first few pics made with the Canon EOS 7D. In a following post later on, I’ll tell a little more about the location, the Vliegenbos in Amsterdam North (Netherlands) – For now, enjoy my first autumn images made this year!
Last week I was in Leiden for the International Photo Festival. I wanted to make a photo story about it for Demotix. And if you were able to follow my blogs these past days, then you know already that this wasn’t the only thing I photographed… Indeed, after a very long day, I came home with over 800 photo’s and enough material to make not just one, but at least 4 photo stories! And I wasn’t bored for one moment!
Ten of my own favourites of this series, I’ve selected for this blog. Some of them are also on Demotix, in colour, but there are some others that didn’t fit into the Demotix series, and I’d like to show those here. I transmitted them all into a nice light sepia.
I think that this series gives a very nice impression of the Photo Festival, and my interpretation of it. So I’m really happy to show them to you here.
About the International Photo Festival Leiden
The second International Photo Festival Leiden takes place in the autumn of 2014, Oct 11 till Nov 8. It aims at providing a platform for young talented, professional photographers, by giving them a chance to expose themselves to a broader audience.
278 international photographers entered their work : more than 1100 unique images. A jury existing of experts from the photography and art world selected 20 talented new photographers. On different locations in Leiden, the open air exhibition leads visitors along 80 of their works.
It was a great course and you haven’t been able to follow it live, or to see a re-broadcast, it is possible to buy the course in 22 downloadable video segments. I really recommend it for everyone who would like to make an income by making art. I surely learned a lot and will likely go back to my notes or rebroadcasts in the future.
A collection a day
During one of the sections of the course, Lisa told us about one of the projects she did a few years ago. It’s called ‘A collection a day’ , and that’s exactly what it is: during a whole year, every day, Lisa either photographed or drew a collection, and posted about it on her blog. I was so fascinated about that idea that I went over to take a look at it, and … it’s marvellous! The variation in the objects she collected and photographed is enormous, and the fact that she alternated the photo’s with her own drawings and illustrations of collections made the whole only more colourful and varied.
I LOVE collections too, and have been collecting small, ordinary things of all kinds all my life. The idea of putting them together and showing them to the world is so awesome. It gives the ordinary things that colour and beautify our lives another dimension, and ‘a larger impact’… And what a commitment to do this every day, 365 days, a whole year long! That’s something I would never manage to do. But I would like to do something more with my own little collections too, and Lisa’s project definitely brought me some great ideas!
Day 1: Vintage erasers by Lisa Congdon (*)
Day 331 : Plates by Lisa Congdon (*)
Lisa’s collections are now recently printed as a book, and I think it would be great to have something like that on your coffee table, and to browse through it once in a while. Something for my wish list for sure! So if you love collections too, and would like to have a look, head over to her blog, where you can see all her blogposts online, or to her website, where Lisa tells you about her project, and the way she went about it, and where you can order her book!
Book: “A collection a day” by Lisa Congdon (*)
Thanks a lot, Lisa, for a great course, and for this great inspiration!
Do you have some collections yourself, and did you ever photograph them or blog about them? If you did, do let me know, I would love to come and see yours!
It’s a few weeks now that I skipped posting my Sunday Street photo’s, because I had other things to do that had priority. But I don’t want to forget about it all together. So, although it’s Monday night already, here come my Sunday Street shots.
Till now, I picked two different photo’s for my English and Dutch blog, but as of today, I’ll pick two, and post them on both of my blogs. Here they come 🙂
Discovering Beauty 