From city to nature photography

In my second post I shared a bit about my hometown Arnhem. The place where I started to learn photography. I shared something about the city's history and it's surroundings and what common pitfalls might be when photographing your home town. This post is about how my photography journey continued from city photography to nature.

Sonsbeek park, Arnhem (golden hour)

Always learning. Golden hour.

When I got a little more up to speed with photography I learned that it was all about the light. So I only went out for photography when the light was "good", during golden hour, the hour before sunset or the hour after sunrise. Somehow I believed that it was the only time a day that one could actually make "good" photo's... Fortunately there is always something left to learn, especially in photography. So soon I learned I was wrong about the golden hour being the "only" time a day to do photography, although it is still a great time to go outside and take some shots.

Arnhem City, moments before sunset.

Into the blue hour.

While I was shooting a lot of sunsets and golden hour photography in and around the city, I noticed that the hour after sunset could sometimes deliver some amazing colors in the sky, so I stayed out until it was too dark to shoot. In the city I waited until the city lights went on and did some long exposures and played with the different options long exposure shots provided.

Blue hour, Arnhem

Blue hour, Kinderdijk

Blue hour, Rotterdam

Blue hour, Amsterdam

I really started to love blue hour photography and went from city to city and visited some well known places in the Netherlands. Blue hour photography is fun to do and it helps you better understand how a camera works in regard to shutter speed and exposure. If you're new to photography, I would definitely recommend doing some blue hour photography! Beware, you need a tripod. In the near future I will do a entire post about blue hour photography and all there is I know about it.

To Nature

As mentioned in my previous post, Arnhem is surrounded by a vast amount of nature. Something I didn't pay that much attention to before I started photography. But, as photography is about seeing things differently, I also started looking differently at the nature close to my home. And more and more I found myself hiking and exploring the fields and woodlands surrounding my city. And my oh my, what did I struggle!

It somehow felt like starting all over again. I had such a hard time finding a subject or a composition that eventually I returned to golden hour and sunset/sunrise photography, this time not in the city but in nature.

It turned out to be a good way to enjoy nature photography and explore the area. It made me think about good places to catch a sunrise or a sunset. A full moon rise and so on. I started planning my trips, knowing how the light should be and by doing so I also learned more about composition in landscape and nature photography. In my next post I will share more about how that turned out.

Best, Thijs