From Seattle to Salt Lake

While vast parts of North America suffered from the heat and thunderstorms lately, the North-West of the USA enjoyed a few months of really mild and nice weather.
We were  glad to celebrate this time of year, together with all sorts of mammals (bisons, bears, chipmunks, deer, moose), birds, flowers, insects and a few people. Coming from Seattle we travelled through friendly Washington and admired the mountanous and amazing scenery of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. In Yellowstone Mother Earth was quite activ; she was bubbling and spouting all over the place and coloured the steamy pools in an unusual and pleasant way.
I'm thankful I have been able to fully enjoy this fresh and wonderful part of the world and hope to share some of it through my photos.

Texas Southcoast

Having a son living in Texas is a motive to explore this funny state every now and again. This time we went to the coastline at the gulf of Mexico to experience the sea, the rivers and the swamps.
Being a lover of birds, butterflies and reptiles, I was happy to encounter a variety of long-legged seabirds, alligators, pelicans and swallowtails. It seemed to be the right time of year to visit the wild refuge areas and canoe along the rivers.
In the evenings there were of course the refreshing margaritas, nothing wrong with this side of Texas!

Portrait

Portrait photography is not my kind of thing. It seems to me that it's almost impossible to catch the complexity of a human character in one frame. This time I made an exception. A fortnight ago, just before the performance of " Louis", a musical about the origin of jazz, our conductor, Jaap Schallenberg, appeared. He had just transformed himself from a casual type of guy into a real "chef d'orchestre". He had this somewhat naughty and exited look upon his face. He felt self confident to bring this evening, together with a big choir, his theatre orchestra and some sixty children, to great heights and a happy ending. And so he did!

Sechelles

A month ago we had the luck to visit three of the Sechelles (Mahe, Praslin, Curieuse). 

I never experienced a paradise like this before: happy, peaceful people, proud women, fruit all over the place, funny animals like crabs, palmspiders, fodies, geckos and fruitbats and last but not least flowers in happy colours and palmtrees in all sorts of which the Coco the Mer was the most special one. 

The temperature was quite high, it was too warm to make a long walk, but the sea was clear, clean, luke warm and very swimmable:-)

Hope to be back there one day, enjoy my photo impression!

                                                                             

 

"Young civil servant of the year 2011" award

In the beautiful environment of the old town hall of Rotterdam, at the 27th of January, 

a serious battle was fought between four contestants to win the prestigious award "young civil servant of the year 2011".
I was asked to create an appropriate photopainting, which was well-received ;-)

The winner, Pieter van Hofwegen, projectmanager at the ministry of general affairs.

The future civil servant: transparant, idealistic and open minded.

Cabo Verde

Last spring we went to Cabo Verde: Sal, Sao Vicente and San Antao. Islands which were covered in sunlight and where houses, people, flowers and even the sea looked more than colourful. A combination of brand new and very old roads made it possible to admire all wind directions of the islands. Apart from the visual pleasure and the nice temperature we enjoyed the rich seafood and the friendliness of the people. Cabo Verde, a great place to be!