Photo of the Month July 2013

Photo of the Month July 2013
Photo of the Month July 2013

Night time Puffin

I have been working in the field a lot in the last month, but fortunately I had planned a one week trip to Runde, Norway, together with my father. This week was totally dedicated to photography, and we wanted to portray the island in all its forms. This meant that we did not want to focus solely on the sea-birds, for which Runde is famous. However, I did choose a picture of a puffin as my photo of the month. We spend almost every evening on the cliffs waiting for the puffins to arrive from their foraging bouts on the Atlantic Ocean. In contrast to some other puffin colonies, the puffins at Runde are not present around their burrows during the day, and they only come in, in the beginning of the evening. On this particular day, I was sitting in a small gorge in the cliff side, hoping for some shots of flying puffins. I had waited for a long time, but even just before sunset there were hardly any puffins present, so I started photographing the cliffs against the blue sky. I really liked the abstract feeling of the cliffs against the sky, but something was missing. So as soon as I saw a puffin flying near the cliff, I knew which shot I wanted to make. I waited for it to pass the cliff face I had photographed before and made this shot. I was the only puffin that evening that flew in the right place, so I was happy I made a quick decision.

Canon 5D mIII, 200mm, 1/800 @ f/9, iso 400

Photo of the Month June 2013

Photo of the Month June 2013
Photo of the Month June 2013


Kroondomein het Loo

Last month was totally dedicated to field work (as will be the next months). It was a very busy period with lots of blanket dragging to catch ticks for my research, and a lot of planning for the field work this summer. Fortunately, I had one day in which I had to select some new plots for a field experiment that we started, and as I wanted to have some pictures of the plots, I took my camera with me. This is a picture of one of the control plots for the experiment.

Spring time fully hit the Netherlands, everything is green again, but the weather has been changing a lot, from full rain to sunshine and back again. On this day, it was rather wet, with a lot of showers, which meant white skies on all of my pictures. In this one, I overexposed a few stops, to make the sky really white, and to show the many colours of green that were visible in the forest on that particular day.

Canon 5D mIII, 17mm, 1/80 @ f/10, iso 800

Photo of the Month May 2013

PotM 5-2013
Photo of the Month May 2013

Parco Nazionale d’Abruzzo, Lazio e Molise

Last month I went on a holiday to one of Italy’s oldest National Parks, Parco Nazionale d’Abruzzo, Lazio e Molise. We went there on a ‘family’ holiday, so it was mainly walking in the mountains and through the villages, and taking it easy. On the other hand, we heard that seeing bears in this national park is relatively easy, so we spend a bit more than half of our evenings in places where there would be a chance to see bears. Unfortunately, we never saw a bear, but we did see some of the most spectacular sunsets I have ever witnessed. This months Picture of the Month was taken on our last evening on a look-out point in Gioia Vecchio, which was actually the parking lot of an old church, overlooking a valley. The combination of the setting sun, the dark clouds, and the many hills, made the picture, all I had to do was press the shutter button.

Canon 5D mIII, 70mm, 1/60 @ f/8, iso 200

Photo of the Month April 2013

Photo of the Month April 2013
Photo of the Month April 2013

Back to basics

Last month was a very busy month for me, with the start of the first field work season for my PhD, and the conference in Weimar, which resulted in only one trip to the outdoors with my camera. In the last weekend of March, I went to the Hatertse vennen with some fellow members of Natuurfoto Rivierenland, a nature photography group based in Randwijk. Unfortunately, the weather forecast wasn’t to good (but it wasn’t bad either), so we were anxious to see what the weather gods would bring. It was rather cold for the time of year, which resulted in frozen water and no mist. Not the ideal circumstances I needed for the picture I had in mind. Optimistic I went searching for other possibilities to photograph and ended up photographing these geese. Canada geese are not native to Europe, and therefore I have always refused to photograph them. In this situation, however, I was ‘forced’ to work with them, and they appeared to be willing models for my picture.

Lately, I find myself going ‘back to basics’, focussing once again on the animals in their environment, and trying to tell a story, in stead of focussing on creative photography, which is depicted in this picture. The Canada geese swimming in the bogs they inhabit. The ultimate picture for me would of course be a creative picture, telling a story of an animal in it’s environment, but that one still has to be taken. So my good intention for next month will be going out with my camera more often, which won’t be too much of a problem, as I will be going on a holiday to Abruzzo NP in Italy in about a week!

Canon 5D mIII, Canon 70-200, 1/6 @ f/8, iso 100, tripod, cable release

Photo of the Month March 2013

Photo of the Month March 2013
Photo of the Month March 2013

Due to a performance with my band, and preparations for my field work, I did not go out to take pictures a lot during the last month. Fortunately, I did go on a photography trip with my father to Flevoland, of which I already showed some pictures. This picture is my favourite from the trip. It depicts a group of greater white-fronted geese flying over the Markermeer in the early morning light. They are flying from the area in which they have slept, to the area where they are going to forage.

The combination of the soft light and the pattern made by the geese, makes this picture stand out from the rest. I hope you enjoy it!

Canon 5DmIII, 200mm, 1/320 @ f/8, iso 400

Photo of the Month February 2013

Photo of the month February 2013
Photo of the month February 2013

This month a slightly different picture. We had another period with snow in the Netherlands, during which I went out several times to take some pictures. Previously I always tried to avoid any signs of human elements in my landscape photography. I wanted to show a pristine landscape away from human society, sometimes even cloning away small elements like the cables of electricity pylons cleverly hidden behind trees. The problem is, however, that everywhere there are signs of humans in the landscape, especially in the very crowded Dutch landscape. Therefore, I decided to change my thinking and I made it a New Year’s resolution to focus this year on showing the landscape as it is, with all the human elements, while still conveying the beauty of the natural world.

I have already passed these electricity pylons many times, always trying to keep them out of my pictures, irritated when they were in between me and a beautiful sunset. However, this time I tried to use the fact that they dominate the landscape by including them as the main element in my picture.

Canon 5DmIII, 29mm, 1/125 @ f/8, iso 400

Photo of the Month January 2013

Photo of the Month January 2013
Photo of the Month January 2013

The first Photo of the Month on the new website is an image I took during the short period of snow we had in the beginning of December 2012. I didn’t have much time to go out and take pictures, so I took my camera with me during field work and spend 30 minutes during lunch brake taking some pictures. Because I didn’t have a tripod with me, and because of the amount of branches sticking out from the snow, I decided to experiment with unsharp pictures due to camera shake. I really liked this black and white version, which conveyed the mood I was looking for.

Canon 40D, 50mm, 1/8 @ f/16, iso 100