Plompe Toren

This tower is the only remaining building of what once was de village of Koudekerke in Zeeland, the Netherlands. The village was abandoned, taken apart and partly lost to the sea. The tower remained and has since served as a lighthouse and is currently a monument, information centre and a lookout point.

With this photo I have experimented a bit with HDR photography.

Beach

“In which I share a photo” is going to be a series of posts entirely unrelated except for the fact that every post will feature a single photo I would like to share. This is the first one…

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Scarlet Lily Beetle

My grandparents have/had lilies in their garden. A few weeks ago they got invaded by Red Lily Beetles which are very destructive when it comes to lilies. Amazingly they did not touch any of the other plants in the garden.

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Please consider helping Safecast

In this post the excellent Wil Wheaton pointed out a certain Kickstarter project in need of some pledges. Wil isn’t one to randomly throw around awareness for projects or causes and I thank him for making an exception this time. The project is called Safecast (formerly RDTN.org) and aims to have people measure radiation levels in numerous locations in Japan and distributing this independent data to all who may benefit. Accurate data is something that isn’t available as readily as we would want and is necessary for accurate prevention and protection in the affected areas.

I know from first hand experience how radiation can affect a persons life. In my case it is partly the reason why I’m still alive to type this, the other side of the coin is that all my current health issues are directly or indirectly caused by the collateral damage done during the treatment. Radiation doesn’t discriminate between healthy or sick, young or old. This is why I support this project and try to raise just a little extra awareness through my site.

Visit the Safecast website here, or visit (and pledge if you can) the project on Kickstarter here. Thank you.

On a slightly related note; I’ve created and released a small WordPress plugin today to easily embed Kickstarter widgets in your blog: Easy Kickstarter Widget

Green Shield Bug

Having been, and still am, very busy with work (first world problem, I know) I have neglected both my blog and Flickr a bit. I’ve done a lot these last weeks but for now it is all about spring. Spring has had a good start in the Netherlands with a fair number of warm and even hot days. This has given me the opportunity to practice my insect hunting skills in the garden.

I recently upgraded from just my old Oly E-300 with standard kit-lenses to an E-30  with a Sigma 150mm ƒ2.8 Macro lens. Both are spectacular and really have given a boost to my efforts in macro photography. I usually go into the garden a few times a day and a few days ago my mom pointed out this green shield bug to me.

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