AquaScaping

Aquascaping is underwater gardening in your fishtank, this can be done in many styles.
The style of which I'm a fan is the one to create landscapes that you normally find above the water.
Some people are really good at it, as you can see on this website .

Since I wanna do something new with my tank,

I decided to give it a try myself.

I want to start with a simple type of landscape,
so I picked "Chocolate hills" those can be seen on the island Bohol in the Philippines.

It's a fun looking landscape, and it matches with my asian fresh water fish.

So I bought some stuff and plants to get started, and now I'm hoping it can be put in the tank within weeks.

I bought some stone hiding places, and coconuts, to get the right color and effect I'm going to put java moss on top.

To make this work I only needed some fishline and a scissors.




Since the hills are not all the same size I needed
different sizes for my tank as well.

So I use the stone hiding places for the bigger hills,
and the coconuts for the lower ones.

I will start with just making 3 hills, to see if my idea will work.

At the picture on the right you can see how I attached the moss to the stone.

After that I used the remaining moss to cover some parts of the other hills.



It is not that much at the moment but the moss will grow and start to cover the rest.

If I put the hills straight away in my tank, the moss will be quickly in my filter because of my fishes.

So I put the hills in a small spare tank, so the moss can stick itself firmly to the hills. When I think the hills are covered enough I will move the hills to my main tank.

For now I can only wait untill the moss starts doing it's job.

The comming weeks and months I will try to update the progress that I make.

Pilot boats

The "Gemini" is one of the three pilot boats that are at Vlissingen (Flushing). DAy and night they bring pilots to the big ships that are comming from sea.


Vlissingen itself has a decent harbour with lots of activity, but it's also at the start of the inland trip to the harbour of Antwerp.

The "Pieter Deconinck", is one of the two Belgium pilot boats that are stationed in Vlissingen.

The bring the pilots on board of the ships going to Antwerp.

The "Ravelingen" is the second pilot boat for the belgian pilots.


It is really nice to see how these boats, get themselves next to the way bigger ships.

On the right the picture shows, how a pilot boards a ship in the middle of the water way without any of the boats stopping.

Tang fishes

Tang fishes are part of the "Acanthuridae" (thorn tails) family.
The ones I have seen are all very colorful

The "Blue Tang" is one of the most famous because of the movie "finding Nemo".

The "Blue Tang" looks nice, but some of it's relatives look way nicer. Like the "Desjardini sailfin tang", they have nice color patterns.

As shown on the picture to the left, their fins can be really looking like a sail.

There are many different species, but they all have one thing in common.

The sharp spine on their caudal keel, it looks almost always the same color blue.

So when handling these fish watch out with your hands. You might injure yourself with it.

All the pictures are taken at "Het Arsenaal" in Vlissingen (the Netherlands).

Dermogenys Pusillus

Three days ago I bought new fishes, for my fishtank. Four of them were "dermogenys pusillus", something completely different than my other fishes.

They are nice looking, surface dwellers, that leave other fish alone.

If you look it up at known aquarium fish sites, you will see that they can be kept with small none- agressive fishes.

But the dead fishes on the pictures are mine, because apparantly "Danio Frankei" are also too stress full for these fishes. The Danio's are not agressive but they have an energy, like they are on a 100% suger diet.

During the first day, the fishes just hid between the glass and my babytrap. They are known to be shy at first so I thought nothing was wrong.

But the second day coming back from work, I found two of them are already dead. One was not swimming that good and the fourth was still healthy.




The two alive ones are now in my old fishtank at my mom's place, they are doing good. Too bad I couldn't take pictures of these beautiful fishes while they were alive.

Soon I will upload some pictures of my other fishes.

Kölner Dom

The pictures in  this article, are all made in- or outside the cathedral of Köln. It is one of the biggest churches in europe, and the biggest from Germany.

The windows are really nice and colourfull looking, with each telling another story.

It is verry crowded inside so it can be hard to take a nice picture. People will bump in too you or stand right in front of you. But it's worth the try.

There are also some really nice statues inside and outside the church.

Like this one on the left I do not know the name of it, but I call it "Please pull my finger".

In the middle on the sides of all the pilars are statues, I think of all the bishops that served there. I wish I could put the correct names with the pictures but I really don't know.

The Real city jungle 4

This round I will only upload birds that I spotted inside the city.
Now the weather becomes colder, the birds are more busy with finding food.


This will help me taking pictures of them.
On the left a Pica-pica that was alerted, because it was close to some roadkill that attracted others as well.

On the right a Buteo-buteo (Buzzard) that was eating from some roadkill.

Two Pica-pica (Eurasian Magpie) tried to eat from it as well. They didn't stand a change untill  the Buzzard almost got hit by a car and went off.

One street away the Heron on the left, was cleaning itself  on top of a light post. From there it had a view on two different waters.

The Heron just sat there and looked around no rush and tension here.

The Parus-major (Great tit) is my own peeping tom,
since it looks inside my house once in a while.

This time I spotted him, and caught him in the act.






Below a couple Phoenicurus ochrarus that are visiting my garden. Top male, bottom female.

The real city jungle 3

This weekend I went out, to take pictures again. I went to a part, where I knew there would be caterpillars.

During the picture taking I noticed, different insect species on the plants arround them.

On the left the "Dolerus germanicus" is trying to hide behind some pieces of grass.

It didn't want to sit still, so the pictures are not marvelous but I think it's OK.

The wasp on the right is sitting on a street light.
They eat caterpillars so no surprise it was there.

I think it used the metal to get warmer, because it was only sitting in the sunny part.

Waiting for the next meal, no need to hunt just to pick.

On the left a darkling beetle, looking for food at the flowers.

Moving way slower then the other 2 above, and just taking it's time.

The real city jungle 2

This male goose, was swimming near the nest. The female is still sitting on the eggs.

After a few minutes he putted his head on the water, and hardly moved from that point.

I have know idea why, I can imagine he plays dead and hopes we loose interest. If somebody knows why please put the answer in a comment.

This little fly was sitting on the back of my house. Turns out it came with the fertilized soil in my garden.

It looked funny and I had no idea what species it was. During my search I found out, they are also seen as a pest. Specially when the sewage under your house breaks, he and his friends visit you.

This sparrow is "the gatekeeper" sitting on a fence behind the office. This is the only shot I got before it flew away again.

But this picture shows my project, exposing nature in the city.

The real city jungle

"The real city jungle", is my new foto project. I want to try, to photograph as  much as possible nature in the city. I don't mean in parks or in the forest around my city, but in between the houses and offices.

The city for my project is the city I live in, Amersfoort, in the Netherlands.

The common coots here on the left, are living in the office park.

The ducks on the right are swimming near one of the shopping centers.

So there is plenty of new life in the city, this spring.

On the left a "green lacewing" sitting on the door of my shed. I kinda like their eyes, with the oil effect.

So this was the start of the project, I hope I get many different species of animals and plants.

The pictures I have so far, are shown at "projects/the real city jungle" or click here.

More updates will follow!

Workshop Animal photography

March 10 me and my brother joined a workshop animal photography, at the Amersfoort Zoo.
It was a nice course to refresh some of the basics, of photography. And offcourse to get some good tips on animal photography. More information about the course you can find, at the following link. Link to course

During the second part of the course, you get some sort of free run through the zoo. During that part we first went too the part, where the keep the reptiles and amfibians.

On the left you see a "Pogona vitticeps" , posing for me.

This is just a crop and not the complete picture.

Taken with my Nikon D7000 + Nikkor 50mm AF-S f1.4.

Under you see the same one, but different picture and crop.

In the zoo they have a dino forrest,

but if you look at this head you see the real dino's.

A part of the course was about shooting through glass,

these both pictures I took through the glass window.

I prefer the picture here on the right, the crop makes the animal look better.

We also had to be creative with the pictures we took. So the next 2 pictures I took at the Savanna at the zoo.

This Giraffe I decided to frame between 2 poles, with the vertical frame I tried to capture the length of the Giraffe. The birds were just in front, so I also framed this one.   

Birds

The bird on the right I saw at the beach from Texel, near the lighthouse. It was nice weather for a walk on the beach.

I brought my Olympus with the 135-400 mm Sigma and a tripod. Going there I thought I could spot some vessel at sea or some birds at the wave breakers.

But I saw this one walking in front of me, I quickley dropped my tripod on the sand. And took some pictures, before the bird walked behind the edge of the small dune.

The picture on the left, I have taken on a different beach of Texel called "de Slufter". Slufter means a small sea arm going into the land, in this case the water you see on the picture.

This picture I have taken with my, Olympus E-400 + Zuiko 70 -300 mm by hand. It might not be the most detailed shot, but the action is good enough for me.

The dive ended up with nothing, but the bird tried a few more times going down stream.

In Holland it's verry popular to do bird photography by car. You just drive between the fields to spot all kinds of birds.

This one posed nicely for me and my brother just a couple of meters from the car. Taken with my E-400, + Sigma 135-400mm from a bean bag on the door.

The bird didn't mind us at all, and stayed on the same spot so we left him like this.

Raptors part II

My other message about raptors ended at the Palawan crocodile farm. This one will start from there.

One of the birds they have, is a white bellied sea eagle. That is too injured to go back into the wild.

Even though it might not have the strength, as it should it have. It still looks as a powerfull bird.

The bird is injured at his wings so it can't fly anymore. Thanks to the crocodile farm, it still has an ok life.

For me it was still a hard picture to take, because his white belly reflected so much sun light.

The bird was too far away from me to use my flash, and I didn't brought any tripod with me.

But with some post processing I think I got the colors better.

I hope some time in the future I get the chance to re-take the picture.

Luckily I don't always have to go that far to see a raptor, or in this case an owl. This female forrest owl, was sitting in the park next to my house.

I was able to go back a few times to try for a better photo. Because it turned out, that the spot I was standing for this picture was right underneed her young ones.

So I was kinda lucky that she kept her claws to herself. It is one of the biggest owls we have here in Holland and also the most agressive species.

The Common Kestrel on the left, I spotted at Texel the biggest island in Holland. It was sitting on a sign, that tells you to not go further.

Behind the sign is a big breeding and resting area for birds. For this male it is also a hunting area, he has to share it with some Hen harriers.

He let me get close enough to take some decent shots, but he was aware and ready to fly away any moment. So after enough shots I walked away so he could stay at his overview point.