Some scenes only reveal their magic when you strip them down to the essentials. I rarely choose black and white — often it feels like an escape hatch when colour fails. But on my latest Arnhem adventure, standing on a hill overlooking a quiet valley west of Park Sonsbeek, colour wasn’t the problem… it was the distraction.

Among the dark reds and browns of late autumn, one bright yellow tree stood defiantly luminous. In colour, it looked beautiful. But in black and white, it transformed completely: its yellow leaves turning almost white, while the surrounding forest dropped into deep shadow. The effect resembled infrared photography — a glowing silhouette breaking through a monochrome world.

Nature doesn’t present these contrasts often, at least not with this kind of precision. It reminded me of the way light interacts with pigments: yellow leaves reflect more of the spectrum, so once converted to monochrome, they soar toward the highlights while other wavelengths sink away. A tiny lesson in physics, hidden inside a valley.

I shot it handheld with my Canon 5DsR and Sigma 24–70 Art at f/2.8, 1/500 sec, ISO 125. The late-afternoon sky was blue with a soft feather-cloud drifting across it — the last warmth of a day that felt oddly mild for the season (yay climate change… said with all the sarcasm required).

Sometimes, simplicity reveals the loudest truth.

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“Drawing Circles with Light”

Sometimes photography becomes a dialogue between light and motion.
After capturing the stillness of Spoorpark, I decided to try the opposite — movement. With my Canon 5D Mark IV and the Sigma 24–70 Art still set to ISO 3200 and a 6-second exposure, I aimed for the Westpoint Tower and began to draw circles with my camera.

In those few seconds, the static lights became fluid — ribbons of color swirling through the darkness. The sensor recorded every trace of that movement, translating intentional motion blur into something new: a painted rhythm of photons and time.

It’s fascinating how a simple circular gesture can turn structured architecture into abstract light art — proof that photography isn’t only about freezing moments, but also about exploring what happens when we let them flow.

Photography, after all, is just another way of studying light and life.

#LongExposure #LightPainting #IntentionalCameraMovement #ICM #UrbanLight #NightPhotography #CreativeExposure #Spoorpark #Tilburg #WestpointTower #CityLights #ExperimentalPhotography #PhotographyAsScience #Canon5DMarkIV #Sigma2470Art #UrbanExploration #PhysicsOfLight #LightInMotion #ByMaikelPhotography #MaikeldeBakkerPhotography

Spoorpark by Night

Around 20:30, the park was almost empty, the air still, and the city quietly humming in the background. The scene was too dim for handheld photography — the light levels had dropped well below what 1/250 could handle. So, I set my Canon 5D Mark IV on the ground, attached the Sigma 24–70mm Art, and switched to a 6-second exposure at ISO 3200. A 10-second timer prevented any vibration from the shutter press.

In that brief span, photons from dozens of small light sources — streetlamps, strings of decorative bulbs, reflections off distant buildings — converged on the sensor, translating an invisible trickle of light into structured data.

Photography, in essence, is the science of collecting light, one moment at a time. This image is what those six seconds of light looked like, seen through the calm of Spoorpark at night.

#Spoorpark #TilburgByNight #LongExposurePhotography #NightPhotography #Canon5DMarkIV #SigmaArt2470 #UrbanLight #CityAtNight #PhotographyScience #LightAndData #LowLightPhotography #DocumentaryPhotography #PhysicsOfLight #UrbanLandscape #DutchPhotography #TilburgCity #FineArtPhotography #CreativeProcess #VisualStorytelling #ByMaikelPhotography

Experimenting with Double Filters

Yesterday morning I woke up at 5 a.m. It was dark, cold, and quiet — the kind of silence that makes you wonder if you should just crawl back into bed. But the sky was clear with some clouds forming near the horizon, and experience told me this could become one of those fiery sunrises worth losing sleep over.

So I packed my Canon 5DsR with the Sigma Art 24–70 mm and headed to the Loonse en Drunense Duinen. Besides chasing light, I had something else in mind — a little experiment. I wanted to see what would happen if I combined a polarizing filter with a transparent plastic petri dish (from Corning).

If you’ve ever looked at a car’s rear window through polarized sunglasses and seen those oily rainbow patterns — that’s birefringence at work. When two polarizing surfaces interact with certain plastics, they reveal hidden stress patterns in vivid colors.

So I rotated both filters until the sky exploded into gradients of purple, turquoise, and gold. No Photoshop tricks here — just light, plastic, and curiosity playing together.

Sometimes, science and art meet right in front of your lens.

#ExperimentalPhotography #CreativeFilters #PolarizerEffect #OpticalPhenomena #Birefringence #PetriDishExperiment #ScienceInArt #NatureAndLight #SkyPhotography #ColorPlay #OpticsInNature #PhotographyExperiment #LandscapePhotography #AtmosphericLight #SkyMagic #MorningGlow #NaturalLight #PhotographyArt #ExploringLight #CreativeProcess #FieldExperiment #AbstractNature #PhysicsOfLight #Canon5DsR #SigmaArt2470 #DutchLandscape #LoonseEnDrunenseDuinen #NaturePhotography #VisualExploration #CuriousMind #ArtOfSeeing #PhotographyIsScience #ChasingLight #SkyWatcher #ExperimentalArt #BehindTheLens #ColorInspiration #LightAndShadow #OpticalArt #ByMaikelPhotography