Mariapeel

One of the most beautiful landscapes in the neighbourhood were I live is the Mariapeel, an exploited bog area. The last peat was dug around 1975. In both photos the weather was used as a background setting. The first photo of the man-made fen lake was taken on March 11-th, a stormy day with heavy clouds and some sunshine in between. However at the end of the day the wind dropped and the clouds resolved rapidly, resulting in a few friendly white
cotton-wool shapes in the sky that are reflected by the water. On today’s photo friendly cauliflower-like clouds (cumulus) grew by local heating of the sun into some showers (cumulonimbus).
For both photos I applied a circular polarizing filter, for the latter photo I used an additional ND4 gradient filter to cover the sky and to emphasize the spotlight effect on the dead birch trunk.

Amplexus

Just as last year (see March 2008 on this blog) I tried to photograph blue-colored Moor Frogs (Rana arvalis/Heikikker) in their mating season. The blue color only last for a few days, perhaps even for one night. This time I was lucky to found an amplexus, i.e. the ♂ mounting the ♀ and gripping her firmly, at a small pool south of Eindhoven.