A Magical World

In January, nature was confused. New buds were sprouting up because of the mild weather, even some potted flowers began to show a few new flowers. But that all changed suddenly last week: heavy frost was predicted. And last friday we experienced our first snow fall, changing the barren, brown and boring landscape in a new and magical world.

Yesterday the sun was out, no cloud in the sky, the wind had laid down and I went out for a little walk to my favorite spots. I loved the sound of the snow undermeath my boots, the fresh cold on my face, the sparkling of the ice crystals in the snow resembling like hundreds of diamonds were scattered out.
It was just magical out there.

Appreciate the Little Things in Life

I have no idea where this flower came from. I discovered it a few years ago back in the darker part of the garden. Since then it seeded itself along the shed to the doors of the shed. And despite me opening that door to get my bicycleout almost every day, it still keeps on flowering and seeding more little plants.

Mother Nature blessing me with little yellow poppies. Strong poppies. The one that comes back again and again each year despite the bad spot where it has to live.
A small miracle in my back yard.

Just a Pretty Picture!

Just a pretty picture of a tulip, way past it's date, but still looking good.

Days of September (part 4)

More pictures of the little journal that I made during September. First I tried following the prompts of Shimelle.com, but life caught up and I decided to forget the prompts and make a page about my days.
Let's start with one of my addictions: book stores and art material stores.
I admit it - I am addicted to these stores. And when I enter, all my common sense is left by the door.

I truly need that marker, or that colour paint is exactly what I am looking for. And does one ever has enough paper? Of course not!
Books? You need books cause they make you smarter, isn't that so? And if it turn out to be a boring one, I can always alter it anyway...

Dyeing fabric yourself is a fun process: you can never predict the outcome of the results. I like that. Well, at least sometimes: not knowing where you are going. Untill I am lost, but that is a different story.
Back to the fabrics!
Patience was what I really needed when I started rinsing the fabric. You have to rinse it untill the water runs clear. Several times, after hours of rinsing, I thought the pieces of fabric were ready. But by laying them aside, they started to loose more dye. Arrrggghhh.

The Lesson I learned? I like dyeing the fabric - just not the rinsing... I don't have that kind of patience.

This day a small miracle happened. Nothing that changed the world though, but something ordinary turned this normal day into a great day. My mother said my name out loud.
I know, most mothers talk to their daughters. But this was special.
Very special.
Two weeks after the major CVA which left her even more handicapped than before, my mother knew who I was. Not just a stranger next to her bed, but her daughter.
When she said it, I realised that saying that one word meant the world to me.

Driving around in the Netherlands can sometimes be a great and boring adventure. In September lots of roadwork was going on and we sneaked to Breda using smaller roads and thinking we were so smart to duck the traffic jams.
We managed to escape two major traffic jams but in the end we drove into other (smaller though) traffic jams. It was a hot day and I was frustrated. I did not want to spend the whole day in the car.
I got a bit irritated. Especially when we were so close to the end point and drove right in another one. I looked in the rear window and saw Ashley enjoying the ride and being relaxed as one (dog) can be.
Sigh, sometimes I wish I was a dog.

I think this page needs no explanation. Under pressure: these two words say it all.

Days of September (part 3)

As promised, more pictures of the little art journal that I made about my life in September. This page was about the spiders that I scared away (in other words plainly killed) when cleaning the shutters outside. I know, spiders do a good job by catching all kind of insects. But I needed to do my job too!

I don't know why I was so upset when someone said that I was a chaotic. Maybe because I do my best to organise and structure life in my family. So for this page I rescued some of my ToDo lists from the waste basket and tacked them messy on this page. As proof that I am not? Convincing myself? Anyway, every time I see that page I have to smile!

Painting class started again in September and I was eager to get some serious painting done. But starting up again after a long summer was not that easy. I started with a painting of flowers, then changed my mind, covered it in gesso and started on a bird in the sky. And changed my mind again... And to this day the painting is still not finished! :D

I enjoyed the warm and glowing days of September so much that I did not notice the changing colours untill I went out with Ashley, our dog, to one of our favorite places! Time really flies.

I captured Coco in a crazy, lazy position on the couch. She was not feeling well and I took her to the vet (miauwing all the way down there). One shot of antibiotics was needed, because Coco does not do pills!
I have tried several times before getting her to take tablets: wrapped in liver, grounded and wrapped in ham. But whatever trick I try, it always ends with me being scratched by a very determined cat to spit out tablets as soon as possible. So now instead of getting scratched by her every day, the lady gets one (expensive) shot of the vet... Well, at least I don't get caught in her nails!
Special cat food should prevent more trouble...

On this day a telephone call that seemed so unreal. My mother had a cerebrovascular accident: a severe haemorrhage in the brain. I was told that she was blind according to the doctor and her blood pressure over the top. It seemed impossible to get well and we prepared for the worse.
But against all odds she did survive! Later that day she reacted on my hands in front of her face - her (poor) sight came back. And the next day she could take her medication again because the 'swallow reflex' came back. She did not recover fully and I feel like I am loosing her bit by bit.
On this day I learned that letting go was harder than I ever thought.

Days of September (Part 2)

At last, after 3 weeks my computer is back from the repairshop. Next time a fuse is blown, I will check the electric appliances in the house right away! My DH casually announced that he had blown a fuse but there was nothing to worry about.
The computer had been turned on when the fuse went down, but since it was protected by a power surge I never expected to smell something burned when I came back in my room. Sniffing like a dog I went around the outlets. The scent came from the corner where my computer stands. At that moment my heart skipped a beat. I turned on the monitor but that seemed OK. I just assumed that the computer was all right as well and that the burning smell came from the socket which DH had used.

A few hours later I turned on the computer. No way. It did not turn on. I had enough hope though that only the power unit had been burned. Since I also had problems starting up Windows Vista, I saw this as a good opportunity to have these problems fixed as well.
But one setback after the other followed. Like: power units not available for this casing, new casing needed, start problems due to bad memory chip.
To make the story short, it took 3 weeks to get the computer back.

But I was happy as a kid when I picked up the computer and gladly payed the bill. The joy did not last long. After two days the old start up problem accured again... I phoned the store and asked them to fish out the 'old' memory chip from the bin - which they did - and asked for assistance in solving this mystery.

Now the problem seems to be in my anti-virus software... You know, that piece of software you can't use without cause it protects the computer. Well, only if it works smoothly with Vista, it is. For now I try to solve this problem with the people of Kaspersky.

So here at last, are, as promised, some more pages of the journal that I made in September. Well, better late then never... :-)
Since I had extra time left when the computer was in repair, I reworked most of the pages during these past weeks. I will need to shoot new pictures to show you how they really look. So I only upload two pages today. Hopefully the rest will follow later this week. If I can keep that *#@!*&* computer running!

These pages were made when I enjoyed the last warm days of September: quilting in the sun, taking pictures of butterflies and enjoying the many birds in the garden. Life's little pleasures...

More photographs processed

It seems that the holiday in Norfolk is my most productive holiday photograph wise! I took so many (different) photographs and still have not all images processed! I shoot always in RAW, a digital format which you could see as a digital negative that has to be processed (adjust colour, colour balance, contrast etc.) before you have the final picture that can be shown on the web or be printed out.
Creake Abbey was a wonderful place to be. I liked the tranquility of the place, these old crumbled down buildings, still standing as a testament for the people who lived here and tried to make life easier for the older people.
The abbey was built in as a home for several old men who needed care. The building was extended over 300 years till a plague killed all the inhabitants except the abbot, who was the only survivor.
How devasting this must have been. The abbey was abandent and left to fall apart.
This goes not so quick with these old buildings with those thick walls.
Lucky for us that they are still there - to enjoy them.

Since there were hardly any people visiting here, I had loads of opportunities to take pictures from all angles. This one was taken with me lying on the freshly mowed grass, a lovely experiece!
A perfect afternoon: feeling the spirit of time, beautiful structures with such a beauty, ever changing weather with gloomy skies and rays of sunlight spreading out.
How do you capture the essence of such a wonderful place?

Well, this is one of my efforts!

Evening at Cromer Pier

While we were in Norfolk, John from the EPZ website organised a mini EPZmeet with EPZers Kathy, Vince and me with hubbie in Norwich. Not the first EPZ ers we met on our holiday - on our first sunset at the beach of Hunstanton we had also met Jules by chance!
Since we could not get enough of EPZ members, we also had a mini - mini - meet with Kathy and Vince at the Pier of Cromer the last week of the holiday.

The Pier was much smaller than I thought, but had wonderful features. I liked these old benches. The sunset was obscured by clouds, so we had hardly any colour in the sky. At home I decided that I could add my own colours to the image! I opted for these soft colours and a pinhole effect.

Before the sunset, there was enough light to just walk around and take pictures of the Pier without our tripods - the unused tripods were worth a shot as well!

And guess what? The girls were wandering around with the biggest tripods...! :-)

Peaceful Place

While in Norfolk, we went out to the Broads because my hubbie wanted to photograph the mills there. During our search for these mills, we came across this little church and overgrown old graveyard.
It was late afternoon, the sun was just coming over the top of the trees which surrounded the church yard.
The white flowers of the weeds were catching the light, swinging on the light breeze. The old tombstones were scattered around the yard. Some were still standing up, others were leaning over. The stones were quite old, often covered in patterns of lychen.
I stood in the shadow of the old trees and overlooked the scene. It was such a peaceful moment, the light, the breeze and the mood of the yard. Untouched for such a long time, undisturbed for years.
Despite all the photographic rules, I took this shot into the sunlight, hoping to capture that peaceful moment.
When I look at this photograph, I still remember that feeling, the peace and the quiet.

Bird with Attitude

Normally a photographer won't take a picture of a bird who has turned his back to the lens. Because without the head, the eyes, there is often not much to look at.
But this was not true for this bird. Look at him, can you see how he is walking? Like a model on a catwalk. This is a bird with attitude, I'll tell you!
I was working at this image while the radio played the song: "I am walking away from the troubles in my life" by Craig David.
The perfect title for this image.

Pictures from Norfolk

I haven't started yet to process all my pictures from our recent holiday to Norfolk, England. As usual I am wrapped up in paperwork which seems to reduce my creative energy by the day.
Here are a few that I managed to do.
The first one was at our first evening in Hunstanton. We went to the beach, hoping for a beautiful sunset but the clouds were hiding the setting sun. Still trying to get the most of the evening I tried several positions, but one other photographer was also on the beach and kept his place, keeping showing up in my frame. So I picked up the tripod and bag and splashed through the water past him to set up the camera again.
While passing him, the man asks: "Are you by any chance an EPZer?" Yeah, of course I am! What a coincidence to meet another photographer from the EPZ website while spending an evening on the beach! What a small place the world can be!



This shot was taken the next evening on that same beach. The wind was blowing pretty hard and the waves were quite high. Since the tide was in, it was not easy to take pictures while fiddling with the filters and in the meantime escaping the bigger waves, jumping from rock to rock, or running away.
Soon one of my boots was filled with water! No time though to do something about it since we had some colour in the sky and the light changed by the minute, so pressing the button on that camera and trying different positions and compositions was more important.
Too bad that I did not know about this 'salt spray' thing at the seaside. I managed to keep the filters dry, but did not notice that the salty air was polluting the filters anyway. So in the end most of the shots of that evening were ruined by the tiny specks of salt which were sprayed into the air...
This one had the least spray on it.



The Norfolk coast is filled with little creecks and tiny harbours. We found this wreck near one of the nature reserves. Just a little boat, left behind for years and neglected. Though I took a nice picture of the wreck with good evening light, I found that combining it with different shots and elimanating the colours the image was much stronger.
Hope to get more time to process the other pictures too!

Holiday in Norfolk

This year we had the luxury of going on a holiday for two weeks, instead of the ususal one week getaways.
I felt that I needed to take all my artmaterials with me, hoping that I would be able to spend time painting. But I was too restless.
Luckily, I also brought my photographic gear with me, including my macro lens. This one is kept usually at home because of the extra weight to carry around and the lack of space in my photobag.
I took the time to capture the last of the bluebells growing near the cottage we had rented - at the edge of a grand estate.
There were also some 'Columbines' growing - I like these flowers for their complicated shapes and wonderful colours. This shot is one of my favorite - I like the warm hot colours! Too bad that the weather was a bit chilly. But it provided some dramatic skies to include in the landscape photograpy, and that is always a bonus!

Celebrating Spring

At last - spring has arrived! We had a week with lots of sun, such a welcome change from the normal grey skies.
And here, just a simple picture of a tulip from the bunch which my daughter bought for me.

Three Wise Owls

Yesterday I uploaded this image that I made from my photographs to Ephotozine.com and it was awarded with one of the EPZ awards: the HC!
Quite an honour! This is only the third HC I received on the site for my photography (and digital manipulation).

The first HC I received was back in 2006 when I mainly photographed flowers with a macro lens.
The second HC was for my (reworked) version of the waterfalls of the Buachaille Etive Mor (Glencoe, Scotland). It was only after removing some branches that the picture was awarded the HC...
It took quite a while to clone away the branches in Photoshop without any traces. You can find that picture in my blog in the entry of 1 december 2008:
http://exploringart.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html
Scroll down the page to view the picture.

So these owls have received my third HC award. Now I even have to work harder to achieve the Premier Award, the highest award on the site. It might take a couple of years or so to achieve that top award!

Neglect

I am still working on processing pictures that I took from our last trip in November to Scotland. Because I shoot in RAW, it leaves a lot of room to play with the picture before the final result is achieved. That is a lot of fun, but also a lot of wondering what I should do with the image. Which parts of the image should be a bit darker, which parts need more light, how do I crop the image, is this composition boring... etc...
Loads of thinking is involved and a lot of decisions have to be made. After all, I want to get the best of the picture that I took.

I really like to get involved so deeply in an image, but so now and then I just need to play! This is what I often do with the digital collages that I make. Often there is just a word, a mood, a sentence from a book that triggers an idea that I want to translate into an image.
So with some photographs that I took while we were in France a few years ago, I made this collage with the concept of Neglect.

This boat symbolises for me what happens when we neglect important things in life - whether it is about feelings, relations or important events. When we ignore them, we tend to not take care of them and often the results are like this boat. It gets broken, the paint peels away and the wood rots away. In true life neglect can result in loss and wounds. Sometimes even beyond repair...

A Winter Wonderland in the Netherlands

Last friday we woke up in a beautiful world. Everything around us was covered in a thick layer of frost, turning the landscape into a christmas card. The sky was clear blue - no grey clouds - and the sun was shining.

Time for some photography! Walking around in this winter wonderland was wonderful - the white cover made even look the most common bushes special.
I felt like walking in an infra red landscape - just turn the blues in the photo into black and it seems almost like infra red...


And this weekend it was clear that the ice was safe. A little lake between the dyke and the river was frozen solid. People from our little village were ice skating and even playing ice hockey. I had no time to take real good photographs, but here is a quick snapshot of the scene.

A Little Bit More of Scotland

This is one of the landscape shots that I took in the Scottish Highlands. The mountain is called Bauchaille Etive Mor, or also known as the Black Sheperd. Depending on the weather, this waterfall is a small stream, or is a strong force of water.
On this particular day, the snow on the Bauchaille looked like powder sugar, the mountains far back in the background were completely covered in snow. The sky was often just gray, but because the weather changes so quickly up here, one can always wait (in the car) to see if the weather turns around. And it did! The rain was mostly gone and suddenly we had even an empty space in the sky where the blue came poking through. A magical moment!

I had found a spot, a bit lower, and balanced on a small rock which stuck out from the side. It was hardly enough space for my feet ánd tripod. But it gave me a good view on the waterfall itself and hopefully the viewers a sense of the power of the waterfall, the wideness of the scenery and the roughness of that piece of country.
It was only later when I climbed back that I realise that the rock I stood on was not very stable. Don't think that I will ever try to repeat that!


Getting lost in Scotland happens to us more often than any other country I have been too! But it has the advantage of taking you to places that you would otherwise not have found! This shot of horses as taken on one of our 'little detours' thanks to the Scottish way of using roadsigns...
We drove a while into a very deserted place and spotted these horses. At that moment is was so cold that I could not even keep the camera steady - I was trembling of the cold.
With an iso of 800, and placing the camera on a wooden post, I was able to get some shots - but because of the amount of noise, I processed the image into Black & White and added a soft tone too.
I just loved the way they were interacting with each other - so playful, even jumping around so now and then. Too bad that they became a bit shy in front of the camera!

Just back from Scotland...

Just got back from an EPZ (Ephotozine.com) Meet in Scotland. Fifty photographers sharing one hostel at the shores of Loch Lomond! Literally chasing the light in the Highlands because of the rain, sleet and snow.
A lot of fun in the evenings, but quite exhausted after the meet... We made some new friends, met old friends again and met people in person that we only knew before from the website, often just the avatar name!

For the first time I tried my new Sigma 10-20 mm wide angle lens which is perfect to capture landscapes. But it also distorts the view which made it harder for me to compose good shots.
Back home reviewing the photographs that I took, I felt that I better also had used my old 18-55 mm lens...

Scotland is a great country to be in. I like the remoteness and the roughness of this country. Nature rules here and you simply have to adjust to it. I was so glad that I brought some waterproof boots, warm gloves (thin enough to fiddle with the dials on the camera), warm silly hat, waterproof pair of trousers and a windproof jacket lined with a fleece!
Otherwise I would have had to shelter in the car most of the time. Especially since we spent 2 days in Glencoe.
The weather changes there by the hour. Which gives one hope - is it raining, you can wait in the car untill it stops (maybe even for just 10 minutes or so).

This was the last EPZ Meet at Rowardennan that Davie organised. Still I hope that it is not the last time that hubbie and I visited Glencoe, Lomond and the Trossachs. There are so many beautiful places to capture!

Autumn...

Summer certainly has gone. It is not that I know this only by nature colouring the leaves and shedding them, but also because my agenda gets swamped again with appointments and paperwork is piling up again.
Luckily we managed to get away last week for an afternoon and spent some time in the woods. Not for walking of course, but photographing mushrooms!
It must have been quite a sight: both my partner and I, lying on the damp ground, looking through the camera with these large lenses to capture even the smallest mushroom. That alone might have been funny, but if you knew how much gear we had with us... Photobags, beanbag, reflector, tripod, different lenses (though I only used the macro lens). A jogger even stopped and asked if we were professionals - oh no, just some crazy people trying to get away from the pressures of our life and trying to relax! :-)
Well, not all pictures turned out so great in the end. But getting in touch, literally, with nature was a rewarding experience.

Blind Fool

I finally managed to work on the next digital collage. Blind Fool is the title of this collage.
I think everybody can relate to that title so now and then. Obviously this falcon has been blinded by his owner, but sometimes we blindfold ourselves hoping that some problems will solve themselves if we just don't look at them or don't think about it.
Ahhh, blind fools we are...