Meanwhile, back in Colorado we arrived home to find that spring has finally shown up here after a very long, albeit not particularly difficult, winter. Strawberry Park, just outside Steamboat Springs, Colorado, as seen here has greened up very nicely and the all the trees are in full green. (We’ll get back to more Low Country images soon.) Today will also mark the inauguration of a new feature that we’ll share on an irregular basis. We’ll be calling this simply, The View from The Deck, as I make images looking out from my home. I loved the look of the clouds the other evening as the closest low lying ones seemed to pick up all the late sunlight while the higher clouds retained the cold steely blue of late evening to make for a lovely contrast in color and the final touch was the little tendril of cloud hanging down over Nipple Peak..

The views from the canals of Amsterdam in The Netherlands are almost all interesting, but this is one of my favorites. This view of De Oude Kerk just seems to light up with wonderful strong sidelight on the church and a beautiful soft reflective light on the canal that brings out all the texture of the lovely reflections bringing the whole image together..

Chartered in 1246 it is sufficient to say the South Holland town of Delft is old. But to say it is also one of the most picturesque towns in the Low Countries might seem unexpected. But streets like Trompet Straat in the old town just ooze more charm than one can almost stand. It is clean, charming, friendly, young, energetic and incredibly photogenic. If Norman Rockwell had been Dutch, this is the town he would have modeled everything on. Trompet Straat merely exemplifies it all. And with the lovely soft open shade allowing light to bounce all around, the street is beautifully lit with solid highlights and warm soft shadows making for something out of a hundred years ago.

We were fortunate enough to have been invited to photograph on a ranch in the southern Colorado mountains on which the Nature Conservatory has an easement. This lovely spring sunrise shot is of the West Spanish Peak in the Culebra Range way, way down in Southern Colorado hard on the Colorado/New Mexico border. The clouds were bright, vibrant and alive at sunrise and reflecting enough light back to the ground to bring the foreground to life showing the newly budded spring trees and balance the soft greens of the foreground with the strength of the background.

.

As we were driving south in Pueblo County in southern Colorado we watched with interest as quite the May storm was brewing ahead. We watched as this Nimbostratus storm cloud began to strengthen and show some signs of central rotation as it gained energy. The massive cloud was on the move and had already hidden much of the Wet Mountains in the background. The mountains to the right are gone and soon the southernmost portion of the range will disappear as well as the storm rumbles its way south. The main illumination in the image is from behind and through the cloud bringing out the striking color and texture as the light comes through the cloud as well as bounces off the ground thus also illuminating for the bottom of the storm cloud.

.

Sometimes as a storm moves in early in the morning, as here, or later in the evening, there is a small window between the clouds and the ground. When the sun comes through this little slit it can create a very warm wonderful light. In this shot, the sun is just beginning to rise as a storm moves in and the sun creates this small streak of light illuminating the trees right in front of the hill. This small streak of light illuminates the yellow Cottonwood trees within the foreground and contrasts in tone, color and mood with the darker trees and clouds in the background which remain dark without any sunlight on them. This perfect light lasted for mere minutes as the sun inched its way up higher into the sky, and then it was gone.

.

We arrived in Brussels yesterday morning and after clearing customs immediately headed for the train to go to the west and Bruges. This old city located a mere 12 miles from the North Sea is beautiful, historic and fun. Designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO it is not only a major draw for tourists to Belgium, but as capital and the hub of West Flanders as well as a university town, it is a vibrant and happening place. It is also amazingly photogenic. We made this image in the old town with the historic bell tower in the background last night well after 22:00, and there is still light on the horizon. A wonderful end to a very long day.

.

The Low Countries of Belgium and The Netherlands are criss-crossed by canals and the best way to see the country side is on bikes where many trails run along the canals. We found this old abandoned road between 2 canals near Damme in western Belgium.

The sun was just breaking over the hills to the East at the Yampa River Botanic Park in Steamboat Springs, Colorado when I saw this image. The splash of the soft early sunlight made for a clear crisp view, yet the early morning haze diffused the sun just enough to create a beautiful soft light and make for a captivating image

.

This past weekend was the closing one for the Keukenhof Gardens just southwest of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. After 8 weeks and 7 million flower bulbs they will close now until mid-march when it will be done all over again. As the height of the tulip season has come and gone a visit this time of the season allows the visitor and the photographer time to fully appreciate all the other aspects of the gardens. To celebrate, over the next few days we’ll share a number of images with you from Keueknhof.

The tulip season is fading now at Keukenhof and I thought this shot with two flowers in different phases nicely represented this transition. I loved the way the sunlight really highlighted my 2 flowers allowing the rest of the patch to seemingly fade away. And even though the tulips are past their peak, they still have a wonderful vibrancy of color.

.

The 79 acres (32 hectares) of the Keukenhof Gardens include a variety of styles, including this less formal English influenced landscape of sweeping water and walkways where the trees working in harmony create a beautiful well balanced canopy. The morning light put the perfect touch on the trees creating brilliant shadows and soft highlights

.

I found these 3 intrusive red tulips in this bed of otherwise singularly colored tulips here at the Keukenhof Gardens in Lisse in North Holland. Not only were they a different color, but they were fringed, as well! I wondered, what were these rebels doing here? Were they planted to be so different? were they intruders? or merely overlooked by a gardener? In any case, they provided a very different sort of photograph to make..

We were very lucky to have been offered the chance to spend the morning at an ostrich hatchery outside Oudtshoorn, in South Africa’s Klein Karoo (little desert), home to the world’s largest ostrich (Struthio camelus) population. Ostriches were very rare in the 1700 and 1800s as their feathers were popular in 19th century fashion with upper class ladies, high ranking military officials and posh politicians. The richer or more important you were, the more ostrich feathers you had. Ostrich preservation became a necessity after this era to ensure the livelihood of these magnificent birds.

As the chicks grow older within these hatcheries, they are moved from indoor-only nurseries, to both indoor and outdoor to finally an all outdoor location for them to grow. It was truly an AMAZING experience to spend the day here learning all about the past and bright future ahead for the ostrich species.