Out in the forest...

I think you all know that feeling... The desire to go out. Explore, be in nature, and breathe free. Of course in these times we all live in now that feeling might be stronger then ever. And this feeling needs to be fed, satisfied. In order to stay happy, recharge your batteries and so on. But even without taking our current situation into consideration, that feeling can just pop up anyways. And all the time.

Tonight I had a severe case of “the forest is calling” hit me. So, I just gave into that feeling. Grabbed some of my photography gear jumped in the car and off I went. Down towards one of the forest around my hometown. I am lucky, I live in an area where there are plenty of forests around.

In this blogpost you will see the results of tonight’s session in the forest. One that was not different then others in many ways. But special in its own right. The forest is where I need to be, it soothes my soul. Enjoy checking out my images, and thank you for visiting my website!

This next shot down below was a particularly nice photo to take. This is a manual focus shot. Where I zoomed in all the way on the lcd screen on the back of the camera. And manually dialed in the focus. To make sure that it was perfect. The result came out really good. With that nice foreground blur to lead your eye straight down the entire forest path. Shot on my 70-200mm F2.8 at 200mm

Out and About 2: Baexem

The second entry for this series is going to be a short one. But a very spontaneous one. Today was a lovely nice sunny and warm day. Perfect ice-cream weather haha. After the sun went down and the temperatures dropped a bit it was my time to shine. At least that how it felt to me haha. I just very randomly left for a little drive just out of town. No big plans, no expectations, nothing. But then I found some pretty decent spots and places that I just had to snap. And so I did. Here's a selection of tonight's shots. The sky was clear, very moody with the sun juuuust in there. It made the forest and the fields look so amazing. Don't you think?

All these pictures were taken between my hometown Grathem, and the one next to us to the north. Baexem. This area is not part of "Het Leudal" that I wrote about in my previous post. But its in the same municipality though. So, lets just call it part of it, shall we? Anyways, little spontaneous trips like these make me appreciate my surroundings. Far away, but also very much so: locally. Good end to a nice weekend! see you around folks!

-Arjan 

Out and About 1: Leudal

Hi all, I am going to start this series of blogs called "Out and About" This series will be blog posts about National Parks and other great outdoor locations in and around the area where I live. I will be showing you some of the most known, and lesser known spots and places in these areas.

So today I went to "Het Leudal" which is a beautiful nature reserve in the municipality of Leudal, In The Netherlands
Leudal is a municipality with close to 40.000 people living in it. With it being the biggest municipality in Central Limburg it is still very green, and has this great outdoor feel to it. No big overcrowded cities or busy highways here. The nature reserve is quite big (for Dutch standards) It extends over 900 hectares. And is filled with beautiful forests, little streams, wide open fens and plenty of hiking trails. Great place to forget everything around you, and breathe some fresh air.

Below are some photographs that I've taken today, all of them were taken between "Heythuysen" "Roggel" and "Haelen". All three are towns located in and around "Het Leudal" The nature reserve is much bigger then the tiny area I covered today, perhaps I have to dedicate a second "Out and About" blog to "Het Leudal" to cover some more areas of this place, and show you some more beauty of it through photographs!

The weather was quite dramatic today, a bit windy, heavy clouds. But that all made for quite dramatic conditions, conditions that I like to be out in. And that really work for landscape photography. Enjoy!