A lovely red isn’t ugly by Johannes Jongsma

Another lovely assignment that offers endless possibilities. A typical feature of spring, of course, is the abundance of bulbous plants in the polder. But this is also the season for young animals. At one point, I’d spotted a grebe with a chick, and I thought it would be fantastic to capture a photo with the chick on its back whilst the other parent arrived with food. I did take this photo, but it really wasn’t in focus. We’d also been to the Flevopolder the first weekend. According to the weather forecast, it was supposed to be fine. The rain radar was also predicting good weather. However, once we got there, it quickly started to cloud over and we had heavy downpours. The tulip route is highly recommended – it’s incredible to see so many hectares of tulips in different colours. At one point, we came across this yellow field where several red tulips were stubbornly poking their heads out – which really stands out beautifully in the photo. You can also see just how enormous this field was. By then, I’d positioned the camera right amongst the tulips to get this composition.  I had to keep the ISO low to minimise noise. I set the aperture to f/9.5 to achieve depth of field, which resulted in a fairly slow shutter speed. I couldn’t use a tripod as there wasn’t enough space and I didn’t want to damage the other tulips.