Winter in the Dunes

 Haarlem, nature  No Responses »
Mar 052013
 

Yes, it is still winter here.  I don’t even see buds on the trees in the dunes yet and since there aren’t any bulbs occurring naturally here, there are no little flowers popping up either.  There are, however, lots of interesting tree shapes.

These photos were taken Sunday while DB was running and I was walking in Zuid-Kennermerland National Park, just a short 10 minute drive from our house.  If you continue west through the dunes you end up at the beach, either Bloemendaal or Parnassia.

I saw several trees with bark rubbed or cut off.  How did this happen?  I think either humans or the Highlands Cattle that roam around here did this.  I can’t imagine why a human would have wanted to do this but I can imagine that a bovine with an itchy head and horns would do this.  Or maybe the deer with new antlers.

After about 40 minutes of wandering around, DB came running up.  These photos make it look like we had the whole dunes to ourselves. Not quite.  There were actually a lot of runners on Sunday.  It’s a popular place to walk and run, even on a grey, cold winter day.

Photo Shoot

 photography  No Responses »
Jan 122013
 

This afternoon DB and I headed into the dunes from Parnassia to take photos of me and my 2 new sweaters.  We had sun but it was very cold.  Unfortunately, few of the photos are any good.  I’m no model and DB is new to photography.  We do our best.  We did learn a lot and will head back out there to try again with the information gathered from this first try.  It would also be good if I could lose 15 pounds (6kg) in the next couple of weeks, but that’s not likely.

After the photo shoot, while walking back to the car, I took the above photo.  I don’t know what possessed me to change it to B&W since I don’t normally do B&W, but I’m glad I gave it a try.  I think it’s much nicer this way.  Here’s the original:

Over the next week I’ll see what I can salvage from the sweater photos and see what magic I can do in Photoshop.  Hey, if magazines can make models look “perfect”, I should be able to do the same, right?

Here’s my best photo from the day:

Indulgence on Friday

 Amsterdam, photography  No Responses »
Jan 042013
 

I had been meaning to get to the FOAM for months now to see the Diane Arbus exhibit there.  Today we finally made it.  We got there early before it got busy, which is good.  The FOAM is small with lots of hallways taking you from one small room to the next and I imagine if it’s crowded it wouldn’t be much fun.  I hate having to negotiate space with people in order to see things on walls.

If you want to see this exhibit, hurry, it ends 14 January.  There are not only photos taken by Dian Arbus, but what I found really interesting was the section about her life, how she became a photographer, what cameras she used, who hired her and what media she was involved with.

What DB and I both found curious about the photos chosen for the exhibit is that they were all so somber.  Looking at the books in the shop later, and looking at her original proof sheets on display, she had a lot of photos of happy looking people.  For some reason, whoever chose these particular photos to hang on the walls, didn’t use them.  No happy people allowed.  Curious.

Like all highly acclaimed artists, she makes her art look easy.  If you didn’t know better you’d come away thinking “well, I could have taken those photos”.  Well, no you couldn’t.  Look at how she used light.  Look how she used contrast.  What has she chosen to include, and more importantly exclude, in the picture frame.  That takes an eye that nearly everyone else doesn’t have.  When you look at the cameras she used it is even more amazing that she got those shots.  Even with all our fancy camera equipment available these days, that is fairly affordable, we take snapshots that no one will look twice at.  And I won’t even start about Instagram, something I really hate….

Looking at her first Nikon on display I had a momentary longing for my first 35mm camera, a Pentax with a 50mm lens.  Totally manual.  I took B&W film and developed the negatives and made prints in the darkroom at school.  It would take me days, even weeks, to come up with something I liked and would show anyone else.  A far cry from our instant everything digital world.

Going to this exhibit was inspiring for me.  If nothing else, it made me realize again that I need to carry my camera with me at all times.  Using my iPhone camera is just plain laziness.

Oh, btw, after the FOAM, we had lunch at an Irish pub.  We pretended to be tourists and had the full Irish breakfast.

Then we went to Soap and had hour long massages.  It was indeed a self indulgent day.

End of Summer

 nature, photography  4 Responses »
Sep 162012
 

You’d never know that last weekend we had summer-like weather and had to smear on sunscreen all weekend.  Gone.  All gone.  This morning I went to the beach to walk and take photos.  I took my big camera for a change.

I parked at Bloemendaal, where I took the above photo.  You can see that they are starting to tear down the summer restaurants.  Here too, a little further up the beach:

You can see how grey the morning was.  It was windy, but it wasn’t cold.  I walked up the beach to Parnassia.  It was a lot more lively than Bloemendaal, for one reason only….. DOGS!

There were little bitty dogs

Funny dogs:

and really really BIG dogs:

Herds of dogs, such as

6 Golden Labs owned by one family

3 Bernese Mountain dogs owned by one man and his son

2 very large poodle looking dogs owned by one couple

There was the very proud dog owner.  This man was smiling ear to ear with his little dog.  He was busy making movies of the dog fetching a stick.  Ahhhhh.

Eventually I ran out of dog beach and doubled back to head up into the dunes from Parnassia.  I figured, I wasn’t running, I needed the exercise, I already had my camera with me, so go into the dunes and walk to the little lake and see what you find.

The first thing I found was a herd of horses.  These wild horses roam around the dunes, north to south.  I don’t know if they are ever moved around by people or if they belong to anyone besides the National Park (this being Kennemer National Park).  I hadn’t seen them for nearly the whole summer.

And then there were the trees and flowers and grasses of the dunes:

As you can see in the last 2 photos, the sun finally did come out by the end of my walk.  And by the end of my walk I was TIRED!  I had not intended to walk for nearly 2 hours, but once you are that far from your car you have no choice but to walk back.  I often have this problem.  I want to walk farther and farther and I deny to myself that getting back will be long and tiring.  I always make it back though.

When I left the house I was feeling kind of bad because I wasn’t running or biking.  I felt like a lazy slug, taking the car and a camera.  But by the time I had walked all that way through sand and hills, I realized how good it was for me and how well it cleared my head.  And I have the photos as a bonus!

Critters

 nature, photography  No Responses »
Jun 272012
 

While at Lake Almanor I tried to take some photos of deer and chipmunks and birds.  My telephoto lens was broken so all I had was my 50mm lens.  Bummer.

The deer were so shy and ran way at the mere sniff of you.  I managed to get this photo of one hiding from us, but watching us closely.  See her in the background?

No? Well, blown up maybe?

There were also chipmunks running around near our little cabin (and don’t get the idea this was a little cabin in the middle of no where; there were other cabins and trailers parked in a little neighborhood all around us).  I tried to get photos of them, but they were so fast and I was so slow.

Here’s one in motion.  Super Chipmunk!

I don’t have any decent bird photos to show you, but we saw redheaded woodpeckers and a meadow bird with bright orange under his wings and several other kinds of jays and hawks and pelicans and egrets.  Maybe next trip I’ll get better photos.

Things to Learn

 Haarlem, nature  1 Response »
May 212012
 

Yesterday was Sunday and Sundays are always running days at our house.  This is our “long run” day, even if a “long run” consists of only several kilometers.  Sundays are always the longest runs of the week.

Lately I’ve been suffering, shall we say, age related issues.  I have headaches every day.  Hot flashes.  I can’t sleep.  I’m tired and fed up.  I’m always on the verge of a migraine.  I felt like this yesterday and decided that I just wasn’t up to running, no matter how far.  We went to the dunes anyway, DB ran, and I walked and took some photos.  At least I got outside and moved a bit.

I hope you aren’t tired of my dunes and polder photos yet, because here come some more.  I’m still learning about my new camera and trying out things.  One thing I learned is that those birds who sing so sweetly are almost impossible to take photos of.  They are fast and very small.  I started off taking photos of things that were barely moving.

My best tree photo:

My best flower photo:

My best animal photo:

My best bird photo.  Do you know what kind of bird this is?  I don’t.  I was following the sound of a woodpecker, but this doesn’t look like a woodpecker.  Please let me know if you know!

Just when we were about to leave the walking path suddenly there was a rush of sound, hooves pounding the ground and four deer ran across the path behind us.  I tried to get a good photo but they were very fast.  This is the best I could do.  There were two adults and two young ones still with spots on their backs.

They looked just like White Tail Deer that we have in the U.S.  They weren’t as big as Mule Deer and their ears weren’t that big either. Their while tails flicked up when they ran.

And that’s my story of my not-run from yesterday.  I have made a doctor appointment for this week to get my hormone situation sorted out.  I’m hoping for drugs and instant relief.

Wild in Your Own Back Yard

 Haarlem, nature, photography  No Responses »
May 172012
 

Yesterday afternoon I braved the weather to go for a walk and take some photos.  Don’t let the sunshine fool you.  It was windy and very chilly.  I ended up walking for 2 hours and was so tired when I got home.  I got a few nice photos for my troubles.

Herons are so common around here.  In Amsterdam they are scavengers and hang around the street markets waiting for the fish sellers to pack up for the day so they can get any fallen scraps.  These in our local fields are more wild.  They are actually hunting in the little creeks.

There are geese everywhere.  Further out in the fields they are hidden in higher grass and it’s really hard to see if they have any goslings or not.  I managed to see these….

Yes, those are WWII bunkers in the background.  They are still a common site in this part of the Netherlands.

I also saw these birds, which I first called ducks, but DB quickly corrected me and informed me they are ‘fuut’ or grebe in English.

Even though there are a lot of wild birds in the area, it’s not really a wild area.  There are people everywhere and that means people trash.  Some birds are really good at scavenging human waste.  This bird was pulling out everything he found in this trash bin, located next to the path along the Spaarne.  I can imagine people will walk by and blame the fishermen or teenagers for the mess, but they’d be wrong.

When I was nearly home I saw the local black swans again.  Today I saw 4 of them.  I think there are 5 in total in the area.

They are very difficult to photograph.  Their feathers seem to swallow all the light and I either get black holes or reflected shiny light off their backs.

Next walking trip I need to head into the dunes and wait patiently for rabbits, foxes and woodpeckers!

New Photo Opportunities

 photography  3 Responses »
May 042012
 

Over the last few months I’ve been selling yarn stash, looking under every rock, plotting and scheming all in order to buy a new camera.  My old Canon Rebel was 9 years old and in technology years that makes it older than Methuselah.  I hadn’t used it in a very long time.  Over the last few years I’ve gone through a series of small point and shoot cameras and while I’m completely happy with my Panasonic P&S, I still miss a “proper” camera of a certain quality.  Outside of the bigger and better lens issue, I think my Panasonic takes better photos than my Canon DSLR.  A sad state of affairs.

Besides scraping the money together, I had to decide WHICH camera to buy.  Now that’s the fun part!  I researched everything within the price range I thought I could manage.  My first choice was the Nikon D5100.  It has everything I want.  Then I looked at the new 4/3 size cameras which were very tempting.  The Sony NEX 5N is especially nice and gets rave reviews.  Then Nikon announced the D3200 which is just shipping in the U.S. and will soon be shipping in Europe.  Oh oh oh.  What to choose?

Yesterday I went into the new Saturn in Amsterdam, east of the Central Station, just west of the city library in the Oosterdoks area.  This shop just opened yesterday and was quite crowded.  It was also crowded because 50 Cent, the man himself, showed up for a promo event.  Needless to say, I didn’t stick around for that.  But what I did do was hold cameras and I talked to the Nikon reps there.  They were very enthusiastic about the new One series.  But I just couldn’t shake the D5100 out of my mind and they had a super sale on those DSLRs.  I walked away still confused and undecided.

Last night I started surfing the web-0-sphere again and discovered that Cameraland in Alkmaar (a meer 30 minutes from home) had a super price for the D5100 with a 18-105 lens.  That was it.  I decided.

This morning DB and I packed up my old Canon and my long lens plus a video camera I was hoping they would also take.  Oh, I forgot to mention that I had already emailed a couple of camera stores near my mom in California to see if I would be better off taking everything there this summer and trade and buy in the U.S.  NO ONE wanted my old camera.

Cameraland is a very big well stocked shop.  This is serious stuff!  They have loads of profi equipment as well as the usual consumer stuff.  They gave me 100 euros for my old Canon and lens but didn’t want the video camera.  I’ll have to put that on eBay and see what happens.  I bought the D5100 and 18-105 lens as planned (without the 18-55 kit lens).  I was very tempted by a 50mm 1.8 lens especially for concerts and portraits, but I think I can get that much cheaper in the U.S.  The man who helped us was very friendly and knowledgeable and could talk about cameras all day long if we let him.  I really do recommend this shop.

Here are a couple of photos from my back garden.  It’s a grey day outside and has been misty and damp all day.  I caught a break in the weather and quickly took these.  My first real photos with my new camera.  I’m so happy and excited I could pop!

Now you’ll have to put up with even more photos of my cat, and garden and the beach.  I’ll probably take this thing everywhere with me for a while so hopefully I’ll find more interesting subjects to share with you. :-)

p.s. my favorite camera review site is www.dpreview.com.  I’ve been looking at this site for years.  Another good one is Steve’s Digicams.  Do you have a favorite camera site?