Misty Schutsloterwijde Sunset

Friday, daddy day. Usually this means that I spend the whole day with the girls, but today they are at my in-laws where they will also spend the night. In the morning Nienke and Inge were at school. It was Show Time at school, where the children get up on the stage and sing and dance. Nienke was singing a song in English (keep in mind, she's Dutch!) and also had some solo lines. She was very nervous but she did extremely well. Inge's class was on stage too and Inge also did well with her songs. Great work girls! Ellis and I were in the audience enjoying every minute.

So I had the afternoon all to myself since Martine was at work. Colleague, friend and fellow blipper Niels and I went to the Giethoorn area to capture a sunset. The weather forecast was looking good: partly cloudy around sunset. We didn't know the area so we went there in time to find a good location. It proved more difficult than we expected, but we did find one and nicely in time too.

Unfortunately, partly cloudy today meant: no clouds nearby but a thick layer where the sun was setting. Temperature dropped quickly, causing problems with condensation on camera, lenses and filters. After fighting the conditions by cleaning everything between shots, I decided to give it one more go with the Big Stopper and a 0.9 ND filter combined, with an estimated shutter speed of 10 minutes. Surely there would be lots of condensation on the filters but it actually might look as if there was mist. I added two additional minutes to be safe, but it turned out 12 minutes was still not enough. However, I did like how this turned out so I'm using it for my blip today.

Niels used his telezoom lens to get a great cloudscape at the same location and it proves what I knew already: I need one of those! Check out Niels' blip here.

After the shoot we drove back to Groningen and had dinner at a good restaurant. Thank you Niels, it was lots of fun!