Spooky moorland

This month we had many evenings with beautiful skies. On the photo above you see a sunset view taken from the “Galgenberg” right in the middle of the moor “Strabrechtse heide”. In the past criminals were hanged at this remote place (the Dutch word galg means gallow). After sunset (at 22h00 PM!) it was still spooky with all kinds nocturnal sounds, among which the strange churring trill of Nightjars (Caprimulgus europaeus/Nachtzwaluw). Just when I wanted to go home I found a Natterjack (Bufo calamita/Rugstreeppad) crawling on the sand. Unfortunately I forgot to photograph this amphibian with a wide-angle lens. The moor landscape is a ‘moderate’ HDR photo (see also posting of May 20-th 2009).

Sneak along the waterline

The Spotted Crake (Porzana porzana/Porseleinhoen) is a small waterbird of the family Rallidae. They are very secretive, and are mostly heard (a distinctive repetitive whiplash-like “hwuit-hwuit” call) rather than seen. Their breeding habitat is marshes and sedge beds across Europe into western Asia. The species is migratory, wintering in Africa and India.
Spotted Crakes have a short straight bill, yellow with a red base. Adults have mainly brown upperparts and blue-grey breast, with dark barring and white spots on the flanks. They have green legs with long toes, and a short tail which is buff underneath. The downy chicks are black, as with all rails.

Holiday butterflies

A small collection of butterflies that I photographed in the Alps during my summer holiday. The first photo shows my local field near Tschuggen, Belalp, in Switzerland, where I spotted most of these butterflies. Further from top to bottom:

• Safflower Skipper (Pyrgus carthami/Witgezoomd Spikkeldikkopje); I have never seen this species before.
• Wall Brown (Lassiommata maera/Rotsvlinder), well-camouflaged with folded wings in its natural habitat.
• Mountain Ringlet (Erebia epiphron/Bergerebia) on ‘graphical’ leaves of Great Yellow Gentian (Gentiana lutea/Gele Gentiaan).
• Purple-edged Copper (Lycaena hippothoe/Rode Vuurvlinder) to add some color to the series.
• Almond-eyed Ringlet (Erebia alberganus/Amandeloogerebia), local on southern slopes in the Alps, but here at this time of the year the most ‘frequent flyer’.

Belalp

A classic: Wide-angle shot of Alpine flora with snow-covered mountains in the background. The flower is Alpine Pasqueflower (Pulsatilla alpina/Alpenanemoon). The photo is taken at 2200m at Belalp, Switzerland. After taking this photo it started to snow, strange experience at (almost) the longest day. I used a ND4 (2 stops) gradient filter to suppress the clouded sky.

No man’s land

Colle del Gran San Bernardo (or Col du Grand Saint Bernard in French) is the most ancient pass through the Western Alps, with evidence of use as far back as the Bronze Age and many surviving traces of the Roman period. The blocky rock structure on the foreground reveals the old Strada Romana. The pass runs northeast-southwest through the Pennine Alps at a maximum elevation of 2,469m. The road running through the pass, highway E27, joins the canton of Valais, Switzerland, to the Aosta valley, Italy.
When we cross this pass harsh almost polar circumstances ruled. Strong icy winds pushed the clouds from the Swiss side upwards to the mountain slopes. After crossing the ridges, the clouds literally fall down sharply and resolved on the Italian side. Our car registered an outdoor temperature of 3°C, but with the wind chill it felt below zero.
On July 21-st, at the 16-th stage of the Tour de France 2009, the peloton will climb this HC (Haute Category) pass! I hope for them that it will be a bit warmer by then.

Some Dutch insects

Some common insects of the Mariapeel. From top to bottom: Banded Demoiselle (Calopteryx splendens /Weidebeekjuffer), Speckled Wood (Pararge aegeria/Bont Zandoogje) and a worn Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui/Distelvlinder) on flowering bramble. I tried to photograph them with ‘context’. Below you find more detailed species information.
Banded Demoiselle ♂, as on the photo, has translucent wings which each have a broad, dark iridescent blue-black spot (or band) across the outer part and a metallic blue body. Large numbers can be found in lush bank-side plants and on floating objects in slow-flowing streams and rivers and sometimes channels as well. ♂♂ court ♀♀ by opening their wings and performing an aerial dance.
Speckled Woods are highly territorial and will defend their territory against intruding ♂♂. For finding ♀♀, there exist 2 basic strategies: 1) Vigorously defend a perch and the immediate surroundings, waiting for ♀♀ to pass by. 2) Patrol a larger territory. Perching behavior is more common in ♂♂ of conifer woodland, whereas ♂♂ of meadows tend towards patrolling behavior. The nominate form has orange speckles, the tircis race, seen on the photo has yellowish cream-coloured speckles.

The Painted Lady occurs in any temperate zone, including mountains in the tropics. The species is resident only in warmer areas, but migrates in spring, and sometimes again in autumn. On average a Painted Lady butterfly travels around 1000 miles in its life. This spring huge numbers of migrating Painted Ladies are seen everywhere in The Netherlands.

Yes, my first HDR!

HDR (High Dynamic Range) imaging is a technique to capture scenery with a very large dynamic range, such as sunsets or sunrises. Generally, the range of these scenes doesn't fit on the camera sensor. The technique works as follows: In the field different exposures (in this case, -2 stops, -1 stop, neutral, and +1 stop) are taken with a fixed aperture (only shutter time varies), and later at home these exposures are combined and compressed into a single photo with a computer program. Ideally, the most underexposed image should not contain clipped pixels in white, and the most overexposed image should not contain clipped pixels in black.The combining part results in a 3x32-bit HDR color image. The compressing part, called tone-mapping, downscales this large range to a normal 3x8-bit color image. An important requirement for success is that all the exposures are perfectly aligned. In other words, no camera motion and no motion in the scene itself is allowed within the time-frame in which the series of exposures are taken. In practice, this means working with a tripod and a (wireless) remote control, and of course calm weather.
For this orchid field sunset it did the HDR postprocessing with Photomatix 3.1 using default settings.
There is a lot of debate going on the Internet about whether HDR technique gives realistic results (by the way, what are these?). Plain sensor readouts are certainly not realistic. Playing around with Photomatrix for just an evening gave me at least the feeling that I have something in my hands for the first time in my life to handle sunsets and sunrises shots properly.