Summer, that is. And like every year, we think we hardly did anything during this precious summer time. “Too short to mention!” is what I often hear from people. Yet when I make a list of things I did do during summer time, the balance is somewhat different.

The start of the summer is usually around or after May Long Weekend, the last weekend in May. Grass and reeds are still dead, but birds are already there for the new shoots.

Pictures in the dark often reveal more than the darkness can hold back. The mood is different from the same shots during daytime. Over the years I have taken quite a few nighttime shots. Identifying them all was a bit of a hassle, but I found a way.

Or at least a Lightroom plugin found a way. It found around 7000 pictures that were shot between 10pm and 7am. Most of them were night shots.

A weekend with a friend is more like it. Yet silence was a lot on the menu. It was time to take a break from the city’s noise and humdrum. The incessant sirens of emergency vehicles on business trips had started to work on my nerves. Even more when only for a short time you can sleep with your window open. That doesn’t happen much in this part of the world.

So when a friend of mine proposed to go fishing for the weekend, I thought I’d go for it. Yet my fishing is more with a camera than with a rod. To each his own, I’d say.

The end of the summer is near. Nights are cooler and days are still nice and warm. Now is the time to go camping, nights that don’t make you float away in sweat and no more mosquitoes to speak of. Perhaps a few hungry stragglers, but hey, we’re on the prairies, right? Since my first photos taken with a camera, I have liked shots in the mist.

Ok, the first camera used 120 film (6x9cm negatives), and that was expensive, misty shots were not allowed. After that, the hunt was on. Yet in Holland mist is fairly rare, there is usually too much wind to form it. Only in the deep of the night it fogs up any roads or bridges. Hardly the time for me to go out and get some pictures.