On the night of September 28th 2015 a rare total lunar eclipse of a supermoon, resulting in a bloodmoon, was visible across the world.
This picture was taken from my balcony in Amsterdam. During the event, I saw something flying quickly through the dark and soon realised this was a heron. I was excited that it landed on the roof on the other side of the street and waited until the moon moved closer ‘towards’ the roof to get both the moon and the heron in the image.
The next total lunar eclipse visible in the Netherlands will be on December 20th 2029.
A bird flying above the Amsterdam Central station area.
This is the Amazon just after sunrise in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, Ecuador. The morning fog, visible in the forest on the background, gives away the time of the day as the nocturnal creatures give way to wildlife active during the daytime. Read the full Amazon story.
This is a look down into the Valle de Cocora in the Andean Mountains of Colombia, a stunning place with a wide variety of flora and fauna. At the moment that the picture was taken, the valley itself was covered in fog. This is why you are unable to see the hundreds of palm trees that are normally visible and that can reach a height of 60 meter. One is visible, and it stands high above the other types of trees. Horses roam free here, and down the hill, one of them can be spotted.
Riet is the Dutch name for reed. I shot this image in the Oostvaardersplassen, a Dutch national park, which consists of endless amounts of reed. However, it never becomes boring.
A swarm of cormorants flying over the lighthouse of Marken called the ‘Paard van Marken’ (Horse of Marken) in the Netherlands. Marken is a former island, now a peninsula, in a huge lake called the IJsselmeer. This lake used to be the Zuiderzee (Southern Sea), but due to the constructing of the Afsluitdijk (Closure Dike) in 1932 was disconnected from the Waddenzee (Wadden Sea) that is connected to the North Sea.
These cormorants very likely fly to the Oostvaardersplassen, which is a large nature reserve in the Netherlands, attracting many cormorants and other birds.
Barnacle Geeze ascending on an early morning with a herd of Konik horses on the background in the Oostvaardersplassen, the Netherlands. This national park is the result of the constructing of the Afsluitdijk (Closure Dike), which in 1932 disconnected the Zuiderzee (Southern Sea) from the Waddenzee (Wadden Sea) that is connected to the North Sea. The lake called the IJsselmeer was born. Following the years after the construction of the Closure Dike, a natural area started to develop, which would become the Oostvaardersplassen.
A sunset from a dike overlooking Spaarnwoude, with wild geese flying over. Spaarnwoude is a recreational area between Amsterdam and Haarlem, which used to be a dumping-ground up to the end of the 1960s.
The Noordermolen (meaning Northern windmill) is a polder windmill in the little town Noorddijk, close to the city of Groningen in the North of the Netherlands. The windmill was built in 1888 in order to control the water level in the Noorderpolder. In the Second World War the windmill was used as a hiding place for Jewish people. Today, it still functions although it is has not operated since 1980.
On this early winter morning, it was cold, overcasted and windy. These are the kind of conditions that are common in the Netherlands, and it is presented well in the image.
At a beach in Weligama, Sri Lanka, the celestial bodies in the night sky slowly ‘disappear’ as the light of our sun enters the atmosphere.
Sunrise at Sri Pada, Sri Lanka’s second highest mountain. At an elevation of 2.243 meter the sunrise is a spectacular sight and welcomed after a hike that started at 1:30 at night. The sky is clear from this vantage point but ‘below’ the sun a cloud cover hides the Indian Ocean from the eye.
A path leading across tea plantations along the rolling hills in Dalhousie, a small Sri Lankan village in the Nuwara Eliya District. The sun was showing its last bit of light through the clouds that started to form, creating golden sunbeams that elegantly touch the picturesque landscape.
Dalhousie is a small Sri Lankan village in the Nuwara Eliya District. This area is part of the so-called Hill Country, which is world famous for its high quality tea. Returning from a hike through the tea plantations on a sunny day, clouds started to form. The partial sunlight coming through resulted in a dramatic view with dominating blue hues.
A night view in Sri Lanka containing the upper structure of the Sama Chatiya, a Buddhist Peace Pagoda, with the Sri Pada mountain on the background.
The foot of the mountain is partly covered in clouds but the bright white lights reveal the path up to the peak. It is the path by which pilgrims climb the mountain that is considered holy. The end destination of the pilgrimage is the temple Sripada Maluwa at the peak, the bright yellow point of light. Here, according to the story, the ‘footprint of the Buddha’ was left on the mountain by the Buddha when he visited the island for the third and last time. The goal is to reach the top before sunrise in order to enjoy this spectacular moment, see the triangular shadow of the mountain casted on the landscape, and for the religious people to perform religious rituals.
The Sama Chatiya is a Buddhist World Peace Pagoda at the foot of the Sri Pada, a Sri Lankan mountain considered holy. A World Peace Pagoda is a Buddhist stupa, which is “a monument to inspire peace, designed to provide a focus for people of all races and creeds, and to help unite them in their search for world peace” (Source: Wikipedia). Like most of the World Peace Pagoda’s in the world, the Sama Chatiya was built under the guidance of Nichidatsu Fujii (1885 – 1985), a Japanese Buddhist monk who founded the religious movement Nipponzan-Myōhōji-Daisanga. This movement is a small Buddhist order that is actively engaged in the worldwide peace movement.
The Sri Pada mountain in Sri Lanka is considered holy by the Sri Lankans and the walk up to the top as a pilgrimage. The tradition is to arrive at the peak before the sun rises around 6 a.m. The hike up is a great, but demanding, experience. Waking up around two ‘o clock at night, there is a seven kilometre long stairway between you and the top. However, along the trail you are treated with amazing views, such as this one with in the background the Sama Chatiya, a Buddhist Peace Pagoda.
While you travel by train to Kandy, one of the Sri Lankan cities of the ancient kings, you pass many grand landscapes such as this one. With the train moving and vegetation and trees mostly obstructing an open view, it was difficult to properly capture this scenery with its sky dweller.
Winter sunset on a cold Christmas Eve in ‘het Aekingerzand’ in National Park Drents-Friese Wold, the Netherlands. This is a sand-drift area, which is why this place is also called ‘Kale Duinen’, which translates as ‘Bald Dunes’.
These sand-drift areas are relatively rare in the Netherlands. Because of forestation het Aekingerzand was threatened to survive. Consequently, 200 hectare of forest was cut down. A herd of sheep now provides in the grazing of the heathland in order to preserve the landscape.
It might look as if this is a stretch of beach on a remote tropical island. However, this is a Praia Vermelha (Vermelha Beach) in the middle of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This is the view over the beach from the famous 396 meter high Pão de Açúcar (Sugarloaf Mountain), from which you can overlook a great deal of the city.
A waterfall with the mountain tops of Cuernos del Paine (Horns of Paine) on the background. Paine is an old indigenous word for the colour blue. The landscape is part of Parque Nacional de Torres del Paine in Chilean Patagonia in which you find mountains, glaciers, lakes, rivers and consequently, many waterfalls. The remarkable contrast of the black and white rock of Cuernos del Paine is caused by glacial erosion that occurred over tens of thousands of years.
These are the kind of clouds you find in Patagonia, the most southern end of South America. The photo was taken in the Parque Nacional Torres del Paine in Chile, in which you find mountains, glaciers, lakes, rivers, and sometimes four seasons in one day. This type of cloud is called the Altocumulus lenticularis (alto means high; cumulus means heaped or piled; lenticularis means almond-shaped or lens-shaped), meaning it is a type of middle-altitude cloud with wavy, rounded shapes. They are typical for mountainous landscapes and are sometimes mistaken for unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
Parque Nacional de Torres del Paine in Chilean Patagonia is a breath-taking wilderness. This horse is wild but not afraid of humans as the horses are left in peace.
Flamingos flying over the largest salt flat in the world, Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni. Large numbers of these birds live in the surrounding area, where deserts and lagoons span an area of many hundreds of kilometres. Flamingos owe their distinctive colour to their diet. They eat algae and crustaceans (such as shrimp) from the lagoons that contain pigments which are broken down by enzymes in the flamingo’s liver and deposited in the feathers.
These are the kind of desert views that you come across in the Southwest of Bolivia in the Potosí Department, rather close to the Salar de Uyuni (the world famous salt flat). This plain has an elevation of around four kilometres above sea level, with the mountains in the back reaching up another three kilometres into the sky. Here, it is very, very quiet.
These are the kind of desert views that you come across in the Southwest of Bolivia in the Potosí Department, rather close to the Salar de Uyuni (the world famous salt flat). This plain has an elevation of around four kilometres above sea level, with the mountains in the back reaching up another three kilometres into the sky. Here, it is very, very quiet.
A mountain reflected in a lagoon with flamingos, in the desert of Southwest Bolivia, in the Potosí Department. In this region, there are numerous volcanoes and lagoons, of which the latter each have a different chemical composition.
The sun sets behind this volcano in the desert of Southwest Bolivia in the Potosí Department. As the rain approaches and the shivering temperature of this high altitude desert-night sets in, it is about time to find shelter. However, for this moment, the unusual combination of light and shadow in this landscape portrayed by the elements is one to enjoy. We were driving to the nearest lodging, but I was drawn by the spectacle and had to get out of the car.
Lake Titicaca is South America’s largest lake and considered the world’s highest navigable lake at 3,812 meters. It is shared by Bolivia and Peru and part of the Andes mountain range. This unusual cloud formation is viewed from the ‘Isla del Sol’, or ‘Island of the Sun’, one of the lake’s islands. Buy this!
It is 4:50 in the morning in the Valle del Colca. As the sun comes up, the moon sets behind the Andean mountains of Southern Peru. The ‘Colca Canyon’ is a place to wake up early since there is so much to discover in this beautiful place. Villages are found both along the river that streams at the bottom of the canyon, as higher up the plateaus. Here, you find the biggest bird on earth flying above your head, the Andean Condor, with a wingspan of almost three meters. Hiking through the colourful land and curved paths from village to village, terrace to terrace, top to bottom or the other way around, is simply an extraordinary experience.
This is a sunset near the Peruvian desert village Huacachina, also known as the ‘oasis of America’. This desert is known as the Sechura desert (or Nazca desert) and together with the neighbouring Atacama desert forms a 3,500 kilometre long desert strip. The sand dunes stretch up to hundreds of meters high.
The shoreline of Montezuma on the Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica. This region is one of the five so-called Blue Zones. These zones, research has shown, are areas of the world where people live longer lives.
A view like this is the result of a combination of specific conditions. First, ocean storms must create the kinetic energy needed for waves to form and reach the land. An offshore wind will push up the wave, postponing the moment it breaks. At the moment it does break, the offshore wind causes the tip of the wave to spray backwards into the ocean. These are the kind of waves surfers long for.