Sometimes the subject matters a lot

Sand Lizard aka Lacerta agilis
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

I've been after one of these for about a month. They're skittish and well camouflaged. Finally I got one. With the trusty ol' 28-105.

Sand lizard also known, in dutch, as dune lizard. One of the 4 species of lizard native to the Netherlands.

Ai Chihuahua!

Ai Chihuahua!
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Or, what you can do if you take your camera with you. Spotted this and had the d300 with me.

small fry

small fry
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

About the limit of my tokina I think. These were freshly hatched and about 3mm.

living in my garden

DSC_3621
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

This sort of bee. I got an "insect hotel" which is a wooden frame with pieces of reed like you can see here. All sorts of insects live there now.

Black Cormorant

Cormorant
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Sloppy nest builders these birds. They'll land in the top of a tree and wrestle away whatever small branch they can.

I still remember sometime in the second part of the 1980s. The first breeding pair was back and it made the news. These days there's thousands of these birds around and they're pushing other fish eating birds away.

Peanutball

Peanutball
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Or how I love that D300. Lovely action shot this!

Seems like the year has flown by, already it's may again and the yearly peanutball tournament is here again.

Pied wagtail in flight

Pied wagtail in flight
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

This is hard. The D300's AF system is excellent but my Sigma 70-300 isn't the fastest to focus and I don't have the skills yet to track these birds.

Why I'm no fan of UV filters for protection. http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1034&message=31831120

What's horizontal?

base player
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

One of my pet peeves in photo processing is pictures that are a few degrees short of proper horizontal or vertical.

When I used photoshop as my main editing tool I used ptlens to correct this. In Capture NX it's build in. These tools tend to work by the user (that's me) identifying a straight line. Usually works great.

However, in situations like these it can pose problems. The building is 400+ years old and the window isn't very straight any more. The base player? I doubt it, he was pretty mobile and enjoying his music. An object on the ground? Again, doubtfull, the ground wasn't perfectly level.

In the end I fiddled with it, rotated it about 3 degrees counterclockwise and left it at that.

Sunshine on my cappuccino

Sunshine on my capuccino
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

I've never been a fan of franchise restaurants. But today I went to a Bagels and Beans in Leiden and decided I like it. Good, fresh bagels, nice staff, decent coffee. Good concept. OK, the bagels are a little lighter than they should be and the cappuccinos are huge but there's a big audience for that.
Only thing I really didn't like were the very sweet muffins but that's personal. Since I bake these things myself I've tweaked my recipe to be less sweet. I like it that way but it does mean I find most other muffins (and a lot of pastry) too sweet. Other people won't have this problem I expect.

At the feeder

At the feeder
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

One of the gang of 7 house sparrows that come to my feeder. Tricky shots with my simple sigma 70-300.

Annual pilgrimage to the efteling

Lost!
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

And just as every year we went to visit the efteling. Bought a new map and still had a hard time navigating trough the sprookjesbos.