Nature is wonderful. My love for the natural world has been educated since I was a young boy. Through the years, whenever and wherever, I will go out to enjoy the wonders of the wild. And as long as I've been taking photographs my preference has been this wildlife, mainly to relive those moments again and again. In time I learned that others enjoy my photos as well. Therefore I decided to make my images available through the internet.

Human impact on nature. The natural world is a vulnerable world and humanity has an enormous impact on it. Not only is climate change a 'hot' item, what to think of that plastic soup that has infested our oceans! Or how about poaching! Wherever you see a Rhino-button on this site, click it to see the status of poaching of these fantastic animals. Another example: every day vast areas of primeaval forest get axed by logging companies and with them the wildlife that populated these forests disappears.

All these horrible things happen because a few selfish, ignorant pigs seem to never have enough money!! And for sure, for many people it is just their way to suvive day by day, but it is not just that. Rhinos are killed for BIG money, elephants, tigers, forests are cut down, the list is long… We can read about it or watch programs on this subject on the tv. Please visit the website of WWF to see how extensive the impact of humans is and what they do to help conservation. And how you and I can help their work!

I've seen it with my own eyes… It is heartbreaking!

Improve awareness? I believe somehow, that showing the beauty of the wild world may help to improve awareness. Hopefully not in vain.

'Photo' vs 'Image'. In my view the words 'image' and photo' have a different meaning. To me a 'photo' is what the camera takes, an 'image' is what the photographers creative mind intends with that capture. Sometimes I need to take several photographs to capture the image I'm seeing. Sometimes I can even digitally create the image I wanted. Panoramic images are another example, as some photos are digitally 'stitched' to ceate a panoramic image. The result then is strictly speaking not a (single) photograph but definitly the image I intended.

How are those panoramas made? If it all possible the camera is placed on a tripod with a level. The exposure setting should be 'M', manual' and all photos taken with the same setting to make sure they have the same exposure for a smooth blend. I then take the required number of shots, each with an overlap of about 1/3. Back home I 'stitch' these together with a pixel-editing program.

Special albumview for flora and birds. By clicking the button [Flora and birds] albums can be viewed in a non-standard way. Also a large number of extra bird photos can be viewed. These extra photos are primarily 'registration' type and for the interest of birders. The quality of the images does not always meet my photographic criteria. Sometimes they are not sharp enough, or they may be zoomed-in too much and not contain enough pixels. Or they just are not nice enough, they are not photogenic. However, I have put them on-line anyway, because I know many birders might like to see them in any case. I have also provided special search pages to easily find an image of a specific species. [new] The album 'Cape Floral Kingdom' can now also be viewed in this easy but non-standard way by clicking [Flora and birds] and choosing the third tab.

Colour scheme for bosfoto.nl. Coloured backgrounds are distracting and influence color perception of an image on that colour. For unbiased viewing, images should be presented against a calm and neutral background, i.e. shades of neutral grey and black.

Focus bracketing is a great feature for creating focus stacks where depth of field is limited. This is very useful for close-up photography, but also in other ways.

Taking the photos. One of the options for bracketing in the PEN-F is focus bracketing. Adjustable settings allow for the number of shots to be taken and the shift of focusing distance in between each shot. More photos allow for greater depth of field in the final image. Equally relevant is the shift in between each shot, and obviously there is a relationship to the aperture used. A smaller aperture allows for larger steps but has its own downsides. There are no rules (of thumb) for this, so testing and evaluating final images must build experience.

Of course the shots must be made with the camera mounted on a tripod. And for exposure consistency using a manual exposure setting is advisable.

Constructing the final image. Merging and blending the photos needs to be done on a proper and powerful computer with lots of memory. Specialized software like Zerene Stacker can be used, but Photoshop also does a very descent job. To date 20 photos were alligned and blended in Photoshop (CS6) and times waiting for PS to finish the job at hand were quite acceptable.

The results are impressive. Some of the first images are posted, see the results in the album Most recent photos. Some of the images can be clicked to compare the 'top' image, without bracketing applied, with the final image.

Meanwhile it is evident that with the camera closer to the subject, more photos are needed for full depth of field.

General. Photos are organized in albums. The Portfolio's section of the menu offers different ways of selecting an album. After selecting an album a second window will open to show that. The buttons under Information give you all kinds of info about the site, myself and my gear and more.

Choosing the option [Flora and birds] reveals a lot of specific bird related stuff. There is a tab to view bird photos available, including an album with images of a lesser quality, just birds… Also two ways of finding photos of a specific species are available. [new] The album 'Cape Floral Kingdom' can now also be viewed in this easy but non-standard way by choosing the third tab in this option.

Findig your way in the albums. The left side of an album page is the selection zone. The top part is a pull-down menu with all the other pages in that album. Photos can be selected from the pane with the thumbnails. Navigate the album in three ways: using the thumbnails, the keyboard or the buttons below the image displayed.

Albums can be viewed one-by-one, in a slideshow or in an continuous slideshow. Select a different viewing mode using the icons along the top-right of the thumbnails.

	When this camera appears to the right of the navigation controls, an additional image is available. Directions for seeing it will show-up (in yellow) below the buttons.
	This symbol top-left is an indication that the current image does not meet my normal standards of photo quality. Further reading on this in the previous tab [On the photos]
	This button opens quick 'help' panels that give a lot of details on navigating the albums. Pressing 'i' or '?' while viewing photos should give a pop-up with more comprehensive help
	A cookie 'remembers' that you have seen the 'Help'-info screen. Remove this cookie here.

For building this site and keeping it up-to-date Adobe Dreamweaver is used. Adobe used to include the 'Spry framework voor Ajax' (read update below!). Spry combines JavaScript and XML in a clever way such that webpages adjust dynamically. All relevant info is stored in xml (computer) files. This in turn is placed on screen and changed with fairly simple Spry-commands. Practicaly speaking this means that on this website, just one mouseclick on a thumbnail replaces the image and all relating information, without changing the page itself.

Spry is ideal for webdesigners (like yours truly) who only have basic knowledge of html, javascript and xml. Thanks to Spry I was able to build this site.

Update mid 2012. Adobe decided to no longer develop and support Spry. An extremely disappointing and frustrating decision resulting in lots of (obviously fruitless) protests on the internet! People (myself including) are angry at the policymakers at Adobe. No more work will be done on Spry and all the documentation was removed from adobe.com and parked on a 'sharing' site called 'github.com'. It seems to me that the greed for more money has taken over at Adobe. Ugrades were only available (annually!) if one didn't skip one, or else pay a full new license! After Dreamweaver CS6 a new version is only available for an expensive subscription to 'The Creative Cloud' (in 2012 € 61,50 per month!!). They must have really big wallets over there and no longer seem much interested in customers, no, it seems shareholders are the important player out there. (Yes, I am not happy!)

Here are some links to information on Spry and some samples (I removed the link to Dreamweaver for obvious reasons: I'm now staying away from sponsoring Adobe and its shareholders! :-(

• General info on Spry:Spry notification and reactions
• Functionality of Spry:Spry API
• Spry application:Spry samples
• Spry in practise:Spry demos