Bird photography pool at eye level

Today, the final phase of the hide project is finished (see post of late December 2008). My dad and I prepared a pool in front of the hide. First we planned its position and, most importantly, its height while watching through the 600 mm lens. We leveled the bottom and sides of the pool, placed the foil and filled it with water by using a plunge pump and aggregate. Styling the sides with materials from the forest (left side with moss and a tree trunk, right side with soil, and the backside is 'just' a straight leveled water-line). After this labour we took a relaxing seat in the hide and enjoyed the birds that were almost instantly around us. We spotted over 40 birds of 8 species within a quarter of an hour. The feeders are doing a terrific job! Probably I have to do some restyling in the coming weeks, but what I saw through the camera this afternoon gave me already a lot of satisfaction. I can't wait to start photographing.

Best regards,

Dirk-Jan

Icy weekend

The Markermeer is frozen. Due to the wind and current the ice slowly moves in this large water surface. Large and small plates of ice slide on top of each other. The result is drifting ice, which settles at our dikes in beautiful patterns. Last weekend, I mainly focussed on the photography of this rare phenomenon. This happens once in a few years. Due to global warming it will become even more rare in the future. Crawling on the ice with a wide-angle lens in order to seek for nice compositions caused my knees to become black and blue. But the results are worth this 'sacrifice'. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Greetings,

Dirk-Jan

Love it or hate it?

I have a kind of love versus hate relationship with blurred pictures. This late afternoon, I spend some time experimenting with slow shutterspeeds at a dike near Lelystad. The Markermeer is partly frozen at the moment. In the last light, it was almost dark, this couple of mallards came flying towards me. Every aspect of this picture (mallards and the immense ice plain) is blurred because of a combination of slow shutterspeed and focus-tracking. I don't know why but I like the result.

Cheers,

Dirk-Jan