Shoot the most beautiful nature pictures in peace: “A world really opens up for you”

When we walk into the dunes, just below Bergen aan Zee, the sun has not yet risen completely. “This is a nice view,” says Ronald, “but it doesn’t provide a usable photo. The sky is beautiful blue, but the dune is still dark. In the photo it becomes one dark spot.” A little later the sun rises above the trees and it is immediately clear what Ronald means. “The sunlight now gives much more depth to the landscape. You can see light and dark spots: it is alive.”

The photo with the two Common Blues is a lucky shot. “But happiness doesn’t just happen to you,” says Ronald. “I decide to sit in a place where some butterflies are flying around. I take my time: sit and watch. And then suddenly you see it. I lay down on the floor to have a perspective that is on a par with the flower bud that the butterflies sit on. If I had stopped, it would have become a completely different picture.”

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Ronald knows the most beautiful places in North Holland. The fact that he works at Landscape North Holland is of course an advantage. “I was already involved with nature. But when you’re out with a camera and you take the time for it, a world really opens up for you. Colors come to life.” We are standing next to a fallen tree where Ronald observes very closely how the colors of the bark, mosses and lichens together almost form an abstract painting.

The photo of two toads mating in a dune lake is a very literal example of a frog’s perspective. “For this photo too, I lay on my stomach next to the water. When toads mate, there is quite a lot of movement in the water, they chase each other. In this still photo, the water seems to lie like a kind of veil over the bottom path. A beautiful moment captured in an image, because I was there at the right time.”