Two weeks ago I realised that if I wanted to photograph heather in bloom, I had to hurry. Somehow I noticed the few tufts of heather at my work being purple, but it didn’t really sink in. But when I stumbled across something on the web, claiming the best time to visit heather fields was half of August, it finally dawned on me. There is a chance to photograph some purple fields, but I have to start making plans asap! So on my free Wednesday I took the train to Rheden to explore De Posbank, a heather field in the national park The Veluwe, which has hills that are really uncommon in The Netherlands.

I have to admit that purple is my favourite color, I even have purple walls in my house. So being surrounded by vast purple fields made me feel like I was in heaven. I thoroughly enjoyed walking in this area. And apart from great fields, I also found some pretty trees…

Summilux 1:1.4/50mm; 1/2000 sec @ f/1.4

By the way, this kind of height difference is pretty rare around here:

The other day I read somewhere that the purple is more saturated this year because of the rain we had this summer. I knew it was good for something…

Although I am pretty happy with the images I was able to make, I thought there was a greater potential. I really wanted to get back here around dawn to combine the purple with some special light. So I went back in the weekend. I was a bit late because of navigation issues, but in the end I was pretty happy. Again clouds, I didn’t really expect that, but the some sun too:

Being there early in the morning came with an extra bonus: I ran into two deer. Below you can find one in the area with yellow grass. With the 35mm lens though it is kind of a puzzle. So I changed it for my 90mm lens, which is still not enough, specifically if the deer starts running away (which it did of course). However, I had to include the photo with the running deer, although even in the cropped photo it is still pretty small. And not totally sharp, as I need more practising my manual focus-skills. But this one is almost-sharp, so I am a bit proud of it.

After this the weather got worse, meaning rain and thunderstorm. I almost packed my stuff to go home, but I wanted to go to a different location, so I gave it another try. I am so happy I did, because the storm gave the sky some pretty spectacular colors. I found it difficult to make a selection of my photos, hence the photo-heavy post. Please let me know your favourite!

Thanks for reading!