From the fluttering wings of a hummingbird to the cold crystals of ice and from the blooming dandelion to its transformation into a flurry ball of seeds: there is an abundance of art in nature and one only has to look around to see it.

I love the sea, for many reasons. I love the soothing sound of small waves reaching shore after having travelled thousands of miles from distant places. I love its produces: please do wake me up for lobster. I love the sweet memories of fishing marlin with my father. And I love the fact that it’s hardly possible not to take an interesting image. This here’s the North Sea at the end of the day when the rain had just passed and the setting sun was breaking through on the horizon. I love the sea.

Even though I used to abhor Valentine’s day, I forever turned it into a highlight of happiness when, Valentine’s day 2003, I asked my lovely Lise to marry me. Of course you already knew that but I had to find a reason to post today so I’ll gladly repeat myself. Happy Valentine’s to everyone!

Slowly but surely the thick layer of snow that has covered Brussels the past week is yielding to warmer temperatures, so I’m afraid we’ll have to stick to dreamin’ this year. The image shown above is from last Saturday and as usual I couldn’t choose so here’s another one, and here, here and here too. While I love the heat of the tropics, there is a certain magic in the frosty brilliance of a snow-covered forest in bleak wintry sunlight. Anyway, merry Christmas to all of you!

The first snow of the season arrived today around noon and it arrived in vast quantities. Especially the forest, where the falling flakes drown out all sound except the occasional happy twittering of a bird that hasn’t yet discovered it’s bad news for her, becomes a place of magic. One almost feels as if one’s the first to ever walk underneath its lofty canopy, trodding through centimeters of a snowy white blanket where no tracks yet exist, while mere minutes later the evidence of one’s own existence has vanished under a fresh layer. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…

Last weekend we spent a few hours at the southernmost stretch of coast of the Netherlands. Arriving back at our car the first splats of rain started dropping and mere minutes later visibility was down to 10 meters. The torrential rain and accompanying storm that has flooded big parts of the UK had finally arrived on the mainland.

One of the good things about having a dog is that you’re out in the woods several times a week. One of the bad things about having a dog is that you’re out in the woods even when it rains (and I hate rain). It didn’t rain last Friday however so I got to shoot a less moody autumn variety of my best-selling “on the origin of barcode”. Now, six days later, it seems autumn has already left the building and winter has arrived.

As promised, though a week late, a picture many here in the Old World will have made themselves of the gently rolling slopes of Tuscany. Taken earlier it would have been more pleasing but then again: there is something to be said for sleeping in. Especially in such a nice place as Fattoria San Martino, an ecologically managed small agriturismo on the edge of sedate and wonderful Montepulciano. And that ends this commercial.

(…) Fever / in the morning / fever all through the night (…)

Not just any fever, but hay-fever and not only in the morning and all through the night, but 24/7. However much I love flowers (ask my wife, she gets them… uhm… once a year?) I really hate it that this spring, for the first time, I have a serious bout of hay-fever. The strange thing is I only seem to have it in France, so maybe this is nature’s way of telling me it is time to move on. And so we’ll do, this summer, to Brussels.

One year ago today I got the news a friend had decided he was better off not living this life anymore and so I posted the simple things on this blog. All I said in that entry is still valid and so I present you with another simple thing: the branches of a bare tree. I took it a while back for a private client who wanted to have an image of a particular tree in a particular park as a constant reminder of the tranquility she’d felt just lying underneath it while looking up.