Winter and yet Green!

May I suggest to rename November to Not-vember? For the second week in a row, I've witnessed the most beautiful sunrises from my office window, only to find myself under a dark and most of all wet sky during the weekend. I endured the bad weather yesterday and went out for a few hours. Without a single image taken, I had to return home when my electronic flashes started to flash without me touching a button. Raindrops and electronics do not match. Should have known...

Well, let's then take this image-less week to inform you about the fact that destinationanywhere.nl is going green! From the first week of January on, I will exchange the fuel consuming car for an e-scooter that makes use of batteries. The plan is to use the e-scooter for short photographic trips around my area, wherever there are tarmac roads.


I'll be using it as well for the daily commuting to my office job and all other short drives that can (should) be done without the car. The great thing about these e-scooters is that they do not make any noise and do not emit CO2 into the environment. All you have to do is charge the battery at night. Radius of a fully charged battery is about 70 kilometers. Not bad at all. Electronic vehicles are the transport of the future. In China, already lots of these e-scooters drive around. In the Netherlands, numbers are booming as well.

I really look forward to driving around on my silent and emission free e-scooter and want to advise you to have a look at the specifications of the various models available, for example here. Maybe it's something for you as well? Many small initiatives might make the big difference in the long run!

The Jewels of H2O

Another weekend with only very limited time for photography. Weather forecast was not too bad, so I decided to give landscape photography another try. With my newly acquired set of filters, I went to the local heathland, where I had found a very promising spot fot landscape photography some weeks ago (see Octobers blog). I spent an hour on two consecutive mornings at the spot, without a sigle results that I was happy with. There just was no color in the sky and there were hardly any clouds to make the sky look more interesting. Well, I won't give up and will return to the spot over and over again until I have something I like.

For better weather conditions, I guess we'll have to wait for the temperatures to drop. Some frost, fog and winter sunlight will completely change the look of any landscape. For now, it's just way too warm.
Not only for landscape photography, but also for birds at the feeding station. I went to the forest restaurant to refill the feeders, when I found that the rains in combination with the high temperatures had made the seeds partly germinate. There was a very thick layer of muck on the feeder, which took about 15 minutes to get rid of. Inspite of the vegetarian menu, it was still very busy at the restaurant. A good sign!

Before heading back home, I spent some 30 minutes on a dewdrop covered spiderweb and got this rather abstract image. I like it a lot and am happy I got at least something interesting given the far from ideal conditions. Let's see what next week will bring.

Dewdrop Abstract; Canon 1 D Mark III with 150/2.8; 1/250s at F4 and ISO 200; Gitzo tripod and remote release.

Another Day at the Office

Weather has been drab and gloomy all weekend. In conditions like these, I normally take the macrolens and look for abstract images in the microworld. Not this time.

At the end of last winter season, I got some interesting ideas on the photographic possibilities at my feeding station. These ideas have evolved into actual plans lately. And thus I reopened the Titty Inn in the local woods, feeding started about a month ago. I thought the rainy midmorning hours might be very suitable to check out the number of guests during a few hours.



I was happy to see lots of Great Tits, a lovely Nuthatch couple, some Chaffinch, a comical Willow Tit duo and the odd Robin, Wren and Blackbird. Only the Crested Tit, Blue Tit and Coal Tit have not yet made their reservations. But alas, it's still early in the season. And after all, for the kind of images I have in mind, it does not really matter what kind of bird features in the shot. Here's a standard restaurant shot of a Nuthatch. More to follow during the next weeks, hopefully with some interesting and unusual results.

European Nuthatch; Canon 1D Mark III with 500/4. 1/160s at F5 and ISO 800. Gitzo tripod from hide.

Red Dust

Not much time for photography this weekend, but I did spend lots of time outdoors. I walked through autumn colored beech forests and juniper covered fields on Friday and Sunday. On Saturday, I joined "Natuurwerkdag", an initiative that attract lots of volunteers that are willing to work a day in the outdoors.

And besides, I have an enormous postprocessing backlog. Still lots of images from Bulgaria and even Sweden (2008!) to go through, and of course the recent bulk of images from the UK.
I posted a Grey Seal pup last week, here's one from the other species that we were after: Red Deer.

There were lots of Red Deer, with only a few dominant stags. Because of the relatively high temperatures, there was not a lot of activtity going on betweeen either the dominant stags or between stags and hinds. We were fortunate to witness an early morning fight between to stags, and the resulting copulation between the victor and the hind. All of course in very low light levels.

With the lack of low temperatures, there was no early morning fog and even in backlight, the clouds of condensed breath could hardly be noticed. So much for the photographic plans I had in mind. I was lucky that one afternoon, when the sun just peeked through the clouds, this stag shook off lots of dust right against the light. Enough for me to create this atmospheric image. I'm happy with the result, although I wish there was more empty space at the bottom for the virtual hooves.

Red Deer stag; Canon 1D Mark III w. 500/4 L IS; 1/640s at F7.1 and ISO320; Gitzo tripod. 

Weaner Wonderland

Hanneke and I spent the last few days of October in the UK with the plan of photographing Red Deer during the height of the annual rutting season. On the way back to the ferry, we would visit the seal colony at Donna Nook along the Lincolnshire coast.

We spent three days with the Red Deer. Weather was what you'd typically expect from the UK: grey. On three consecutive early mornings, the sun lost the battle against the clouds. Fortunately, we got a few minutes of nice warm sunlight at the end of the days.



Because of the relatively high temperatures, the rutting season was not as frenetic as you'd expect (and hope). So not a lot of roaring, fighting and mating going on, but enough for a very enjoyable three days. The seal colony was a completely different story. We were blessed with wonderful afternoon light and a very nice sunset. And although we were way too early in the season, there were already a few of the adorable white newborn 'weaners'. With the hundreds of (Common and Grey) seals around, it was not easy to concentrate on a specific photo or isolate an individual. I got some results that I am happy with, but it is the experience of being a witness of such a spectacle of nature that is the ultimate reward for undertaking a trip like this.

Grey Seal pup; Canon 1D mark III with 500/4 L IS. 1/200s at F4 and ISO400. Lensfoot on damp beach as tripod.