Catch if you can
A long dry Summer with a garden begging for rain.
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Posts tagged ‘Oegstgeest’
On Water
On a warm Summer’s day, there are traffic jams on the canal.
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Hovering
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.
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Front Garden Beauty
A plant in the front garden offers months of beauty in the sunlight of the morning sun.
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(The) Doors Revisited
This week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #361 is ‘Doors revisited’. That theme was also the brief for LAPC #20. A door is a pass way to another space behind it. That space can be something we know already. Or something we like to imagine to see there when we go through. And in books you can end up in another world. In this post a few doors I met in my life. One I used for a long time, most I just passed by or passed through on holidays.
The word ‘doors’ for me is also linked to the band The Doors. The name of the band came from a book by Aldous Huxley, The doors of perception. And Huxley took it from William Blake, who used it as a metaphor:
“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern . Doors lead you to another side or space, break on through to the other side.”
‘Break on through to the other side’ became the title of a Doors’ song.
So a lot can be said about doors. Luckily, we still have the photos. Here are a few from my conscious memory.
This is the front door to the house I was born and lived in for 25 years. The photo is shot on Ilford XP with a Pentax K1000.
This door in Caylus is ready to be knocked. Shot on Nikon D70.
I looked through my archive. It struck me that lots of the doors I saw there are doors of small or bigger churches. This one is on Karpathos. Shot on Nikon D70.
Another church door on Karpathos, shot on Kodak TriX with Nikon F90.
A chapel door in Lesbos, also shot on Nikon D70.
Night Fall
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Leaves
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Choices And Preferences 3 (Flowers)
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.
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Choices And Preferences 2 (Sky)
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 second one is about sky. Always there, lots of it. In color it can be blue, white, gray, dark. In mono it delivers whites, grays and dark zones. In mono the image changes it seems. An abstract sky can turn into something mysterious. The photo was shot in color.
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Triple
And another update from the garden: the Magnolia is doing superb this year. Let’s hope the abundance of green in leaves will lead to an abundance of flowers next Spring.
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Growing Tomatoes and Cucumbers in Oegstgeest
This year we try to grow tomatoes and cucumbers in the garden.
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Stunning Sunset Over Oegstgeester Kanaal
And yes, another sunset. Well, they come around every day. This one is a golden gem.
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Blue
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And Another Sunset Nudge
One can not take enough photos of sunsets.
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Drips (And Other Thoughts About Photography)
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.
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Swift
The Netherlands, Oegstgeest – July 2025
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Genesis Inspiration: Photographing the Moon with iPhone
One of my favorite bands is Genesis. In 1976 A Trick of the Tail came out with a beautiful song ‘Mad Man Moon’. Last month I tried to take a shot of the moon using my iPhone. And this is the result.
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Golden Summer Morning
And the sun also rises in gold on a Summer morning. And when you shoot it in color, it is literally photographer’s gold.
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Capturing Summer Mornings in Oegstgeest
Summer mornings can sometimes welcome you into a warm, joyful and laid back day. This is one of those days filled with ease. The sun also rises, each day, at more or less the same place. And when you catch it early, it is photographer’s gold.
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White Agapanthus
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Summer Morning
Sun shining through the trees on the start of another warm Summer day.
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Contemplation
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Unique Dutch Stereotypes and Cherished Flowers: Chrysanthemum
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”.
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Exploring Dutch Gladioli: Culture and Significance
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.
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Garden Joy: Agapanthus
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.
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Allium Afterglow
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.
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Hosta After Rain
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Rendezvous
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Roger that, Roger
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Sunset
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Coming Home
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Boats
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The Bird
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Sunflower
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Hosta
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Under Steps 2
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Under Steps 1
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Orchid
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More Peony
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Peony
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Wisteria 3
This is the Wisteria on its best! It is absolutely gorgeous, for us and the wild bees!
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Wisteria 2
The Netherlands, Oegstgeest – May 2025
This is the Wisteria on its best! It is absolutely gorgeous, for us and the wild bees!
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Wisteria
The Netherlands, Oegstgeest – May 2025
This is the Wisteria on its best! It is absolutely gorgeous, for us and the wild bees!
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When You Feel Spring
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Tulips by the bundle
We are fortunate to have a supply of reasonably cheap fresh cut flowers throughout the year in The Netherlands.
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Clouds and Rays
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Poppy Anemone
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Tulips
The Netherlands, Oegstgeest and Voorhout – April 2025
Tulips in the garden and on the field. It might be that the bulbs for our red tulips next year in the garden come from this production field in Voorhout.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed, GrainLab and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Magnolia Revisited
The Netherlands, Oegstgeest – April 2025
This year I followed the flowering of the magnolia tree in our front garden. The mono photos are taken with Nikon Zf, the colors come from the iPhone.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed, GrainLab and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
The Continuing Story of Magnolia Close Up (final sequel)
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What's (in) the Picture? 