Yesterday all of a sudden, after a whole day of drab and dreary weather the sky cleared in the evening. It was the second longest day of the year. I immediately grabbed my gear and headed out to the Valkenburgse Meer. A location close to my home that I haven’t visited for some time. In my mind I wanted to capture a nice reflection and was hoping to find some nice foreground interest. As I said I’ve been to this location before but this time I wanted to do something different than shoot the jetty.

The weather was warm and nice, I was walking around the lake looking for something that would draw my eye and there it was… A line of buoy’s was my first intention but I found it hard to get a nice balanced composition. There were a lot of people taking their dogs out for a walk and the dogs ran in and out of the water frequently. If you look close at sone of the buoy-shots you can see some ripples in the water. So every time I had to wait a little for the dogs to stop playing and the water to get to rest. Finally the dog owners were finished with talking to each other and I had the place to myself.

The  golden light and setting reminded me of the poem by Tolkien;

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

Here’s a shot taken with my iPhone of my setup;

Next to the line with the buoy’s for the swimmers was something in the water. I do not know what it is, my guess is that it is the container for the buoys when they are not in use.. But it was red and had an interesting shape so I was trying to incorporate it into my view. And it was working quite nicely. I tried several different compositions but the ones below were the few that worked for me.

Stuff I used: Nikon D90, Sigma 10-20 3,5-4,5 HSM, Hitech 0.3 hard grad ND filter, polarising filter, Manfrotto 290 tripod, wireless shutter release.

All images are single image captures.

Here are the results that have made it through the processing… Be sure to click on the images as they look a lot better in full size… Enjoy.