When writing the previous post, my Blogger dashboard showed me that my next post would be my 250th since I started blogging back in 2008. A true milestone, back then I would have never guessed I would ever make it to 250 posts. But I did, and I decided to celebrate the occasion with flowers and a completely new website. The galleries have been updated and refreshed, the design got a medium make-over and the site is easier to navigate and update. That will do for the next year or so.
About the flowers: one evening last week, I decided to give the tenthide another try and see if the Little Owl male was willing to show himself. He was not, but from the hide I could see an interesting sunset develop. What I also could see from the hide was the far shore of the stream and the adjacent meadow that was full of Cuckoo Flowers (Cardamine pratensis; Pinksterbloem) and Meadow Buttercup (Ranunculus acris; Scherpe Boterbloem). That would surely make for interesting opportunities and color combinations, so when the sun had sunk below the treeline and the light was too dim for any decent owl shots (should he have appeared), I rushed to the meadow and setup the landscape gear. I found it hard to find a decent composition because the meadow did not offer any true leading lines. In the end I settled for a composition that showed the enormous mass of flowers and enough of that superb sky. With the jagged treeline, it was impossible to photograph the scene only using filters, the highest trees would simply have become too dark. So I took shots at two exposures and blended in the darker sky in postpocessing. New territory for me, but something I will definitely keep on doing for challenging landscapes like this one.
Buttercup Meadow; Canon 5D Mark III w. 17-40/4L; 2s and 0.8s at F16 and ISO200; tripod
[fb_button]
