The past weeks have been really cold in the Netherlands with temperatures below 0 also during the day. Even though there wasn't any snow most of the Netherlands was still white as it was covered in frost. Unfortunately I didn't have time to take pictures until the last day of the year.
On Schiermonnikoog it was quite foggy, which gave together with the frost a really nice impression. There were many flocks of Barnacle and Brent Geese on the island. Pictures of groups like that are almost black and white, except when there is a Red-breasted Goose in between them to brighten up the picture. Red-breasted Geese can be notorious difficult to find, however this one somehow showed up easily every time.
After comming back from a day unsuccessfully searching for a Great Grey Owl that had been seen the past few weeks just out of Stockholm, I joined Cecilia for a walk through Djurgården. As it was already getting dark, not much was to be seen. But on our way back the sun was lightening up the sky for the last time today. Ice on the water, a beautiful sky and the skyline of Stockholm with Nordiska Museet made for this nice picture.
In the shopping center where I get most of my groceries there is often a group of racing pigeons present. These birds feed on the bread crumbs left behind by all the people there. This is probably on of the best to humans adapted bird species in the world as they can be found in almost every city everywhere.
After looking at this group several times, I wanted to take some pictures of them in their natural environment. Today I went out to try it for the first time. This meant laying on my belly in the shopping center and attracting the birds with some seeds. The reactions were quite different, several came to see if I was doing ok, others were chasing away the pigeons and told me I shouldn't be feeding them.
In an hour I got a few nice shots, but I'll have to go back one day when the square is sunlit.
Earlier this year a camera crew of the Dutch National Television joined us on a cruise around Spitsbergen. Of course I had to be interviewed and parts of that were shown on the national evening news in the Netherlands. Yesterday I (and this Polar Bear) even featured in the year review of 2008 with the most important news items. Good to see that climate change is still a hot topic (even though they also stated it has been set back by the crisis in the financial world at the moment). Here you can see the review (most of it is in Dutch of course), the climate change part starts around 18:00.
For dragonfly photographers the winter is the time to work on websites, sort their picture database, read up on the biology of the insects and make plans for and look forward to the next season. To be short, its quite a boring season and we all hope for it to be over soon.
Unless... you go after the winterdamsels. There are two species of winterdamsels in the Netherlands, damselflies that winter as adults. Last February I joined René Manger in search for the rarest of the two, the Siberian Winter Damsel and we managed to find one!
Completely hidden in a tussock of Purple Moor-grass and I'm sure I would have never found one on my own. After this first time, I returned to the place several times and saw these small hardened insects every time. But those times were always when it was warmer and they were flying.
Today I returned, knowing that they wouldn't be flying around. I checked many tussocks, and after a while I managed my first real wintering winterdamsel! Taking good pictures was hard as well, as she had straws all around her but I managed to get a few nice ones. As the winter is hard enough for them, I didn't want to disturb her too much. The best pictures of this species you'll make when they are flying, as they will sit higher on the straws, but finding and photographing them in winter is always something really special. As it wasn't very cold today there was some movement. The sun was shining, so she moved up a little, to warm up a bit and when she saw me, she turned away from me, to hide behind her straw. When I didn't move, she would turn back, to enjoy her sun again after a while.
After I spent some time with her, I continued my search for more, but I didn't manage to find any. Now lets wait for some snow, that would make even better pictures.
This day I planned to take some pictures of city birds for a photography contest. But I got a call of a friend of mine, asking me to join her for a walk. It was really foggy and the light was becoming better as the fog was lifting a little. I looked out of the window and saw indeed that is was really grey. Not the best weather for what I had in mind, so I decided to join her.
We went for a walk in the Friese Veen, a small bog area close to my hometown. The light was really nice indeed, with the fog still around, but the sun peeking through. While taking pictures I again saw the need of buying graduated neutral density filters so I can block part of the bright skies. Something which is now high on my wish list (which I'm sure I always have, no matter how much I buy).
This picture came out pretty nice, because most of the sun was blocked by a cloud. However I still needed to use the fill light function in Lightroom, and selectively darken the area where the sun is.
As I wasn't really satisfied with the old lay out, I decided to change it and add some long time wishes. One of them was a gallery with my best pictures. It turned out to be quite hard to make this selection not too big, but the result can be seen under "topshots". Under galleries you can find my pictures, sorted in several categories.
