In North America we mostly know the name Old Dutch for its potato related products. However, it is not as old as the real Old Dutch in the Netherlands. A few months ago we went to Holland on a short holiday. Way too short, as usual.
We had the good chance to go to a small city called Harlingen in the north of the country in the province of Friesland. Friesland has a rich, long history of its own about which I will blog another time.
A few days ago, the weather was great. During the day, a nice blue sky, not a cloud in sight. I went out to shoot some birds and came up empty handed. I guess that the “exotic bird” season is now over. Most of them have found their homes far away from my camera. I decided to top up my vitamin D level and take some more sunshine.
Then, oh misery, some clouds appeared. First small ones. You know them, those fluffy little white clouds. Temperatures soared around +30C or +86F. Little by little, more and more clouds gathered and at one point they obscured my source of vitamin D.
We all know them, those times of the day when we see little because the sun has moved on. Some people call that night. That is where many photographers pack up and go to sleep, have a party or just clean their gear. For me this is a time to go outside and see what I can get.
Photography in the evening and in the night can be a bit challenging. First, you will be walking around in places where most people have left. And you walk there with some expensive gear and a very visible tripod.
Photographing birds on branches or walking in shallow water is one thing, getting them in their specific element is a different matter altogether. Birds are mostly known for their flying capabilities, so getting them in flight is probably a “must”.
So this time I’ll try to get some of those birds in the air and make sure they show up properly 
. It must be a funny sight to see a big guy with a fairly big camera moving it all over the place and hear him swear softly under his breath…
Once I have good subject matter, I tend to go overboard with it. Not to take a plunge, but more in the sense of boring people with “always the same”. Even on this blog you can see that there are periods of “more or less the same” type of posts. It just comes and goes with the seasons. It’s hard to find sunny, beach-ey pictures in winter.
One subject that is always possible is birds. While in winter they seem to be limited to a few species, in spring there is an explosion of species, subspecies and other distinctions of birds here in Manitoba. However, the real concentration of species lasts only for two to three weeks, then all the birds disperse to their respective homelands.