Small crystal world

The blooming fields near Noordwijk give a spectacular view of flowerbeds!

This picture was shot near where I live in Holland back in 2015. Between where I grew up and where I live now in The Netherlands, there is the “bollenstreek”, in English: The flowerbulb area. All sorts of flowers are grown here out in the open and during the weeks in April, the flowers will bloom. This gives a very nice opportunity to make some shots of blooming flowerbeds for miles and miles. When you get near the flowers, you can really smell them!
In a previous blog, a photograph was already discussed that I shot in the same area, on the same trip.

The “Bollenstreek” is a tourist attraction. Or, at least… it has become a tourist attraction. Of course, the flowerbeds are beautiful, but there are so many tourists that go to the area when the flowers are in their peak period, that it is actually hard to get around in the area due to traffic jams of all the tourists! That’s why I planned a trip to the flower fields in the early morning, just to avoid the crowds 🙂
At the end of our trip, we drove by this beautiful blue field full of narcissus flowers of which all of them bloomed. That is actually quite tricky for planning… not all flowers open at the same time! You sometimes see a complete green field of flowers that are still in their buds. And then you drive 100 meters more, and you see the greatest blue field of flowers you can imagine. We had just ordered a crystal ball to try to make some photo’s with it and I wanted to try that on this spot. I took my tripod with me, just to put the ball on top off. That’s why you do not see the underside of the ball 🙂

I was still in the Aperture priority mode in 2015 and therefore put my aperture on 7.1 because I wanted to have some depth of (flower)field but also wanted to focus on what was sharp in the ball. With an ISO of 100, this lead to an exposure of 1/320th of a second. I think I should have used a filter because the flowers are quite dark, but the sky is very bright. However, when I would have used a filter (soft-edge), the view in the crystal ball would have been very different because it is the other way around.
In post, I have tried to get the highlights down, but this gives now a strange ring with the sun. I also did not shoot in RAW back then, so in post, there was not really anything possible anymore. Next time perhaps I would shoot several shots with different exposure and would have made it an HDR. A reason to go back there once again 🙂
Anyhow, I think it is quite a fun photo and making use of the crystal ball made it a great impulsive photo!

Camera settings:

Location