A weekend escape just the two of us, going on a hike and bird watching from a special photo hide, a hut so to say, in the east of The Netherlands. The bird watching spot is situated in the area of the Sallandse heuvelrug, therefor we also decided to do a day hike there and as it’s quite a drive we decided to stay the weekend, nice!

Staycation in the Netherlands, or better, a nice vacation with family in times of Covid-19 that turned out to be a really fun and relaxing one! This year no mountains and epic hikes or glaciers at you doorstep, but a relaxing Dutch landscape and family around. In search of wildlife and especially birds.

So going through photo’s recently I discovered that I love golden hour, but who doesn’t as a landscape photographer. However I’m not so much a blue-purple hour photographer i.e. the time between golden hour and blue hour. Man - all those hours, by the way a big tip, they’re not actually hours, so be aware.

So this blog post is an oldie, winter photography in the dunes, where I was in search of deer and foxes with the Fujinon 100-400mm lens. Started to enjoy this lens more and more. Really looking forwards to whatever the X-H2 would offer.

When times are difficult of stressful I always tend to go back to what I really love to do. That is photography and cycling. However where cycling is still possible in the Netherlands, going out in nature is still a bit of a problem as too many people do this, especially with the nice weather of the last weeks.

This was on our wish list for a while now. Travel to Lapland, above the arctic circle, experience the snow and the cold, the wide open space and nature. Also, snowshoeing, dogsledding, going out in the wilderness with snowmobiles had also something to do with wanting to go to Lapland.

It all started with the idea to go to another part of the dunes, namely Nationaal Park Zuid Kennemerland. The first time I visited the park, I was in search of the European bison, also called the Wisent here. However I did not want to give up, so more than a year later, a retry.

Last weekend the sun finally showed itself after numerous days of grey weather with mist, rain and all sorts of dreary conditions. So this was a welcome change. The temperature was a good 8-10C with the sun steadily on the horizon it actually was a really nice warm day. Time to shoot!

I’ll keep this on short. Two interesting new places that I discovered in the Breda area for “wetlands” and forest type of photography. It was not the best day, but at the end of the day the sun just showed itself and for half an hour there was nice light.