again an updated address

Hiya all

Now I'm part of the redaction of the Natuurfotoblog and have worked with wordpress for a while, I decided to move my blog also to this site. For me it makes it easier to post topics (even from the field) and the lay out is also better.

So if you want to keep on following me, have a look at my new blog and update your bookmarks/rss-feed.

Mushrooms and others

A mushroom photography day story starting with a frog... Well ok, maybe mushrooms aren't my most favorite subjects, so if I get the possibility to do something else, I will. This frog is probably the most photographed frog in the Horsterwold as many people were laying around it while it was posing nicely. It was really nice, with all the autumn leaves around (even on top of) it, making a nice atmosphere.

The second favorite picture is still no mushroom but a butterfly. This Comma Butterfly was already prepared for winter, resting on a branch. This makes it very easy for photographers to take good pictures as they are not likely to move at all until the temperatures get above 15C again.

Well ok, one mushroom... The place where we always have our lunch break was filled with several Shaggy Manes. As they also stay at the same place for a while, I tried this nice close up.

More pictures can be found on my website, under "recent pictures"

Reflections

On Friday I attended a Nederpix-Birdpix moderator meeting in Zwolle. As usual I got a ride from Jaap. In this case we made a detour to Den Ham as he had to pick up his new camera (a canon 5DmkII, and no, I'm not jealous at all....). I agreed with myself not to spent any money, but failed to keep to that agreement. I ended up buying a 5 in 1 reflector. This can be used to lighten up shades for portrets or macro photography. This reflector has 5 different options. I has a silver, a gold and a white side that can be used to reflect light, a black side to create a nice background and it can be used as a diffuser to diffuse bright sunlight. 
I tried it the next day at the mushroom photography day. With this White Saddle I tried different versions. Here I show the golden side (a bit warmer colours), the silver side (a bit colder) and without the reflector. The effect isn't very visible here, because the pictures were taken in a forest without direct sunlight. The brighter the sun, the stronger the effect. 

Autumn

For me autumn is the time of year with nice light, beautiful colours and decay. But its also time to say goodbye to the dragonflies. When I saw several darters flying around, this picture came to mind. It combines most of those autumn aspects in 1 shot.

ps. Yesterday I gave the lecture "Het rijk van de IJsbeer" (The real of the Polar Bear) for the first time. It worked out fine, nice audience, good comments in the end. Anyone interested?? Sent me an e-mail.

Wingz

I keep on being fascinated by dragonfly wings. They seem very fragile, but still they take the dragonflies everywhere at high speed and make them very agile. When you look closer to them you see a very fine pattern resembling a stained glass window.

Sometimes you get lucky and find a dragonfly (in this case a Migrant Hawker) that sits still and allows you to come very close. When I was this close and making detail-shots another picture came to mind, one where the wing would fill the whole picture. Here I reached the limits of my lenses as I couldn't get close enough for that. So the second picture is, in contrast to almost all my pictures, quite a large crop (only 32% of the original pixels). Fortunately the original had enough sharpness to allow such a large crop.

End of summer

 Last week autumn has officially started when the sun crossed the equator. Fortunately the weather is still good, and the autumn colours haven't arrived yet. Today we went out to find the last signs of summer: the last flying dragonflies and butterflies. But it was obvious the insect season is coming to an end. Only few dragonflies were seen, but we did find quite a lot butterflies in a row of thistles. The past summer we had a large influx of Painted Ladies, a species that has a preference for thistles. So this picture is a nice ending of this summer.

Now let the autumn begin, with all its nice colours.

Lightroom 2: van bits naar output

De meesten van ons zitten het liefst buiten in het veld, de wereld te bekijken door de zoeker van een camera. Maar als we dan een succesvolle dag buiten hebben gehad, moeten al die foto’s toch op de computer bekeken, geselecteerd en bewerkt worden. Het is dan handig als we daar zo weinig mogelijk tijd aan kwijt zijn, zodat we zo snel mogelijk weer naar buiten kunnen. Adobe Lightroom is een programma dat daar enorm mee kan helpen.

Voor het Natuurfotoblog heb ik een artikel geschreven over dit nuttige programma. In het eerste deel ga ik in op wat lightroom is en waarom het zo'n handig programma is voor fotografen.