I wanted to dedicate todays post to the local celebrations of Queen’s Day in the Netherlands, but our country is in disbelief after the tragedy in the city of Apeldoorn. A car crashed into a crowd who were watching a parade when the Queen and her family past by in an open bus. He killed four people and later this night a fifth person died in the hospital as a result of the injuries.
The Netherlands has been an open minded society. The Queen could be hugged and kissed during celebrations and her sons danced with the crowd. Today we started the celebrations with the same expectations, but at 11:49 AM a lunatic stole other peoples life in front of national television. The day ended with flags half-mast throughout the nation.
Queen’s Day is usually a day of fairs, folklore, dance, and music. And today was no exception. We went to a fair in Down town Ede were we attended a demonstration of the Martial Arts school. Later today we visited a fair in our neighbourhood, but the atmosphere was just not the same.
My son saw so many stuff to buy, but we really had to stop him. But apparently he didn’t like it.
All photographs by Wouter Brandsma
The light was difficult today. It was partly cloudy, sometimes with strong shadows and bright light and sometimes hardly any shadows to be seen. Instead of relying on the lightmeter of the camera, I trusted the sunny f16 rule. Together with the manual focusing, mostly zone-focusing, I encountered no problems with the camera.
And although my friend, who loaned me her Sigma DP1, insisted I would take the Ricoh GX200 with me together with the DP1. I just took only the DP1 with me and it worked remarkably well.
Sigma released a new version of their Sigma Photo Pro RAW converter (version 3.5 for Windows and 3.3 for the Mac). This new version is able to handle the RAW photographs from the new Sigma DP2, but let to a lot of responses from users about the way it handled highlights differently and worser. I personally didn’t encounter that, but I did notice that the newer version applies more noise reduction at high ISO photographs in comparison the older 2.5 version for Windows. The good thing is that Sigma got a lot of RAW photographs from users world wide and are working on a solution.
I will be a offline until Monday without any internet access.
Wouter Brandsma 
I was shocked when I saw the news on the BBC. My daughter lives just north of Apeldoorn, I knew she and her family had not gone there, but never the less that did not diminish my concern.
I first experienced The Queens Birthday in 2002, I was fascinated because there is no equivalent day in the UK. In England the only time you see flags displayed outside houses is when the English football team is playing the finals of a competition. You wouldn’t see flags flown in Wales or Scotland.
The one thing that did strike me was: the Dutch are so integrated into the European Union yet have a National Day, while the British are anti EU yet do not have a National Day.
By the way nice set of photos.
It certainly was a shock and the atmosphere was very unreal yesterday.
Trade and exports is what we do for a living and have been doing so since the Dutch Golden Age. We are not nationalistic and not immensily proud about our country. But during Queen’s Day, the Royal’s birthdays, Liberation Day and during soccer championships we become one nation and proud of our rather ought origin.
I think it is completely different from the UK in my opinion.
Hi Wouter!
We’d been having such an interesting exchange on a mutual acquaintance’s blog that I thought it about time I visited you “at home” so to speak.
And what do I find? A fascinating tale of your Queen’s Day celebrations. I think its absolutely delightful that she can wander around and make real contact with her subjects (“The Queen could be hugged and kissed during celebrations and her sons danced with the crowd”). It says so much for the respect and affection with which she must be regarded.
But so sorry to hear about the car crash. How absolutely terrible. This is the first I’d heard about it as I’ve not been keeping up with the “mainstream” news for quite a few days.
Thank you Mike for visiting. The talk in town is whether these kind of celebrations are now celebrations of the past. And many people hope it will continue this way, despite the possible thread.
And it sure was an interesting exchange at Mark’s blog.
Cheers,
Wouter
I too watched the news from your country and was quite saddened to see such a wonderful occasion marred in such a manner.
Quite enjoying the second and third pictures (person with dog and light post shadows). The strong shadows make me smile for some reason.
I hadn’t heard of the sunny f/16 rule so I looked it up. Very interesting. I’ll have to try this for fun one day, but a question: are there any problems with diffraction at f/16?
I will dedicate a post soon to the sunny f/16 rule my friend. It will make you wonder why the manufacturers added a lightmeter to their cameras.
But honestly. Cam just told the most of it.
Wouter — still very upset about all that happened…. 😦
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forkboy — the Sunny 16 rule can be modified to work at any aperture, it’s just a starting point.
as i would never shoot at f/16 (diffraction definitely sets in), i could modify the shutter speed to correspond with opening up the aperture.
for instance on a sunny day:
ISO 100, f/16, and a shutter speed of 1/125th =
ISO 100, f/8, and a shutter speed of 1/500th
It was a sad day Cam. In the end 7 people died, including the driver.