This time of year it is fun to take the bicycle and check out the flowers in the area. Especially when the sun shines. As most of my photos on here are taken on iPhone I do fit the brief of this week’s LAPC theme week (#391) ‘Phone photography’ easy.
Shot with iPhone 17 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version
The garden comes back to green and colors. This tree was a new addition and looked quite poorly but is recovering day by day.
The LAPC theme this week (#391) is ‘Phone photography’.
Shot with iPhone 17 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version
Time is something I sometimes can not grasp. On the one hand it is always the same: a second stays a second, a minute a minute, an hour an hour, a day a day, a week a week, a month a month. On the odd extra day every four years it is a ‘given’ that a year has 365 days. On the other hand time can slip through your hands. It seems to go faster, or slower. It is on your side or not.
This Spring is one of those moments that makes me wonder about time. There is an order in bulbflowers, but daffodils with hyacinths, while tulips pop up in the garden makes me confused. Is it going faster? But in the end the beauty and scent of flowers stays amazing.
The LAPC theme this week (#391) is ‘Phone photography’. Having a smartphone on me all of the time, with a camera that is getting better and better, is quite normal. As Tina says she rarely shoots other than with her phone. The same applies to me. The Iphone is handy, technology for dummies, always near and light. And it offers more an more quality and creativity. On the other hand it still lacks lots of technology you can find on a system camera. So I am in a hybrid state: daily the phone, on occasion the system camera. Getting on a bicycle enjoying the fields is easier with my iPhone. It produces a nice quality. It is convenient. But shooting the flower parade requires a systemcamera.But that is something for next time.
Shot with iPhone 17 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version
The bulb fields are blooming. And to be honest, it goes quite fast. The daffodils are almost gone, hyacinths start to arrive and there is a lot of fields with tulips, still waiting to pop there heads up. Here a daffodil field.
Shot with iPhone 17 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version
If you visit my blog – like I hope you do or from now start to do – you must have recognized my ‘old’ love for monochrome. When I started this hobby, mono was fashionable and a standard for news photography. And it was cheaper. In this series I offer you two versions of a photo. And you can prefer one over the other, or not.
This week’s theme is ‘Time to relax’. On a bicycle ride through fields where soon bulb flowers will pop up, together with other cyclists. On the color version you can see the deep purple of early hyacinths. With Some yellow late Daffodils.
Shot with iPhone 17 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version
Daffodils are among the first bulbflowers to pop up in Spring.
Shot with iPhone 17 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
LAPC #386 invites to use the power of juxtaposition. Basically put two objects in a frame to create a narrative or reaction about their relation. Here the story of two sunflowers.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Having fresh flowers in the house is a blessing.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta Click the picture for a larger version
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
In the front garden, next to the Japanese Anemone, there is a Knautia Arvensis. It is more easily known as Field Scabiosa.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
In the front garden, next to the Japanese Anemone, there is a Knautia Arvensis. It is more easily known as Field Scabiosa. It is literally a star.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
To close the series of the Japanese Anemone, a last one in color.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
I like monochrome photography for many reasons. One of them is the ability to play with the mood in the photo. Just by adjusting the aperture time or the opening of the lens, the same light delivers a different mood. This one and the photo I published yesterday, were shot on the same day.
Lens- Artist Challenge #364 is ‘Quiet Moment’. Close ups of natural beauty are a wonderful instrument to just be quiet, enjoying the view. And to realize all is connected.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Lens- Artist Challenge #364 is ‘Quiet Moment’. Close ups of natural beauty are a wonderful instrument to just be quiet, enjoying the view. And to realize all is connected.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Lens- Artist Challenge #364 is ‘Quiet Moment’. A bicycle ride to clear the head. Seeing the bulbs for Spring being planted.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
The Japanese Anemone in the front garden at close look.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version
A plant in the front garden offers months of beauty in the sunlight of the morning sun. Using the portrait mode of the iPhone results in ‘hovering’ effects of parts of the plant that seem now unattached.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version
A plant in the front garden offers months of beauty in the sunlight of the morning sun.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
The garden of castle De Keukenhof.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta Click the picture for a larger version
In Spring this field produces either hyacinths, daffodils or tulips. In Summer this year it produces Dahlia.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
The Netherlands, Lisse – August 2025
In Summer the garden of castle De Keukenhof is filled with beautiful Dahlia’s.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta Click the picture for a larger version
In Spring this field produces either hyacinths, daffodils or tulips. In Summer this year it produces Dahlia.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
I have a fondness for black and white aka monochrome. That grew on me. Mono was cheaper 50 years ago and more ‘easy’ to handle in a dark room. Monochrome gives something extra at times. The sphere, the grain. And over all these years I learned to see objects in monochrome, visualizing what something looks like in grays.
When I bought my first Nikon digital camera (the D70), I naively asked ‘where is the monochrome setting?’. It was not there. Shooting was color only. If I wanted mono I had to create it myself afterwards in Lightroom, Photoshop or an app like Snapseed. But lucky for me, on the iPhone and on the recent Nikon Zf, there are monochrome settings. To be honest, that was one of the reasons to buy a Zf. So now I have a choice: choose a mono or color setting, or turn color afterward turn it into mono.
I know the taste of my ‘audience’ is different than mine. In three days I like to find out more about your taste. What do you fancy more: a photo in mono or in color?
This third and last one is about flowers, waiting for the recycle bin. The photo was shot in color.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
This week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #359 is ‘Tools of Photo Compositions: Lines, Colors and Patterns’. Photography is about seeing. But what do you see? I can only talk for myself. It all starts with an appeal. Something in the real world captures my eyes. Most of the times that is spontaneous. It is about being there in the moment. What I visualize tells me a story, a small whisper, ‘come, shoot me! It’s fun’. And when building the photo lines, patterns, colors (or monochrome tones) are tools to try to bring that story out. And then the shutter clicks. My photo’s are my story of the world. My way of giving ‘voice’ to something that made me press the shutter, that reflects inside me. Yet, my click with the image can be totally different than the click of the observer.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version
We Dutch are often described as being on the penny. Of course, we all wear wooden clogs. We eat stroopwafels all the time. We have a fetish for windmills. And do not forget to accuse us of creating our own country by fighting the sea. We drink to gain courage and let you pay your own meal. Add tulips and other bulb flowers to finish the picture of the Dutch. Oh yes, we are considered rude. We call it ‘direct’.
In the end we sure have a laugh about all that is said about us, Dutchies, worldwide. But if you combine being on the penny with buying flowers, you choose flowers that stay good for weeks: Chrysanthemum. As Johan Cruyff used to say: “every disadvantage, has its advantage”.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta Click the picture for a larger version
In The Netherlands, we do grow lots of cut flowers. A lot of them are exported but there is plenty of supply for the domestic market. In our household we have fresh cut flowers every week. Last week we had these big fellows. Gladioli are famous for the saying ‘death or the gladioli’. A Dutch proverb that translates to ‘all or nothing’ or ‘do or die’. Success or failure.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta Click the picture for a larger version
The garden is a joy now, flowers popping up everywhere. The Agapanthus are doing very well this year. They are the diva’s this time of year. This is a white agapanthus, tweaking it a bit with Snapseed turned it into yellow all of a sudden.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta Click the picture for a larger version
This is the last stage of the yearly cycle of a giant Allium. It comes in three photo versions after showing that amazing flower, that we enjoyed this year.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta Click the picture for a larger version
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta Click the picture for a larger version
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Near the High Street of Guildford is a St. Mary’s Church with an old graveyard. The Church where Lewis Caroll used to preach under his real name.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed, GrainLab and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
The brief for this weekly Lens-Artists Challenge #349 is ‘the first thing I thought of (when I saw this)’.
Bluebells are famous. But I never saw one with my own eyes in the wild until this Spring.
This Spring I saw them flowering in the woods of Surrey. Beautiful.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
This is the Wisteria on its best! It is absolutely gorgeous, for us and the wild bees!
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
The Netherlands, Oegstgeest – May 2025
This is the Wisteria on its best! It is absolutely gorgeous, for us and the wild bees!
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
We are fortunate to have a supply of reasonably cheap fresh cut flowers throughout the year in The Netherlands.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
All the bulb flowers of Spring are now gone. We have to wait for next year to see tulips, daffodils and hyacinths ruling the fields of our flat lands. Until then we enjoy nature exploding in its full force, and after that its decline into Winter. But for now it’s amazing how fast everything springs out.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
What's (in) the Picture? 