A grey autumn day

Thursdays are my days "off". That is to say, I'm supposed to do the laundry, shopping, walk the dog, take care of my son during lunchtime, repair and maintain things in and around the house etc. There were times I took work with me from school but I don't do that anymore unless it's very urgent. The problem is that I got hooked to photography. Not the laborious work with tripods, lenses, photoshop-processing etc., but simply taking a light camera with me and snapshot what I find interesting to register. Today the photos got my priority and after this post I'll take care of the laundry. This is contrary to what's taught in time management courses, but I also learn that if you first do the "important things" ("urgent and relevant", and "not urgent but relevant") then you never can do unimportant things such as writing a post on your blog. Anyway, after my son and wife left the house for their work and school, I asked my dog Joris "Gaat-ie mee?" (Dutch for: "Will he be accompanying me?"- who said that English is shorter than Dutch?) and of course he didn't say no. Did I have my shitspoon (don't know the right word but you know what I mean) with me? My keys? My camera? I close the door behind me for a 90 minutes walk. It isn't a bright day, outsiders would say: this is no weather for taking pictures but I know better (see my photoblog, the reedland series). The shining sun gives a lot of restrictions: sharp contrasts, fragmentation of what you want to picture as a whole, etc. First I walk through our prosperous, but rather dull living quarter. People from poor countries wouldn't find it dull because there's maintained green everywhere around, and all houses have well maintained flower gardens. Despite it's 1 November, there are still flowers here and there. Then I walk along the railway street (parallel to the railway), and cross them to arrive in the countryside on a road called "Slachtedyk". I don't understand why I mention the road name because readers in the USA wouldn't find it important, but this is an unimportant walk, so let it be. On the other side of the railroad I stunned because what did I see? A protest meeting of cows! They were gathered around a protest sign and watched me silently with their eyes full of accusation. The only thing I could do for them was taking a picture and send it to the local newspaper (I did both before starting this posting - both? Redundant information, because I can't send it to the newspaper if I didn't shoot the picture before, sorry for this extra reading). I think it's more relevant for you to know what they were protesting against. It was against the construction of a new road which is intended to lead the traffic around our village, instead of going through it. But this road would go through their land and this was of course more than the ultimate they could bear. Then I decided to walk along the Slachtedyk. Joris was sniffing and trying to stop us at every tree because of the interesting odors that tickled his nose, and I was looking around for interesting picture material. Here our interests clashed, but I am the boss so the eye won over the nose, although he tried to annoy me a hundred times ( I didn't count) by pulling the belt I held him with. Yes, nice trees, yes, nice views, but here it was a lamp pole, there a car, and / or a traffic sign spoiling the potential picture. Then, after going to the right into a narrow alley, I got a new surprise. Would this be my once-in-a-lifetime picture? A whole crowd of hundreds of geese were sitting in a large meadow. We had been walking behind a rather tight wall of vegetation so they hadn't noticed us, but coming near an open spot in it, I noticed how all of them had stretched their necks to monitor what we did, ready to take off. I quickly attached Joris to a branch behind a shrub and prepared my camera, and I was just in time to capture the take-off. They flied in two groups: one to the North, the other to the South, and I realised this was a survival technique, developed in thousands of years being hunted by my fellow-species specimen. I captured first the North group, then the South group. Later on it appeared that they could have been closer for the ideal picture, and that I needed a better camera to get them crisper on the screen, but I'm satisfied. Walking further through the lane I arrived at a tree wall in nice colors with a red hay shaker which I of course pictured. On our way back I was charmed by the wheel prints of a tractor in the mud, and pictured the trees along the Slachtedyk after having hidden a lamp post behind one of the trees, if you look closely you see the lamp seemingly attached to a tree instead of its picture-disturbing pole. Walking through the streets of our living quarter I couldn't help taking pictures of a hydrangea flower bush and some rose hips, beautifully enframed in yellow leaves.

Of course I had to immediately process the harvest of pictures, which are shown above, fresh from the field, picked today. Enjoy!