2025 Favourite Moments

The year is almost over and like every year, it’s time to look back. And as most of the years, There’s a combination of photos from the Netherlands and international work that I quickly want to take you through.

We end this year with some nice awards on my mushroom series ‘Mushrooms in their Natural World’, that won 2 big awards: 2nd prize in the International Photographer of the Year, and 1st prize in the portfolio category of the Lowlands photographer of the year. I participated this year with the mindset ‘Let’s try, why not’ and was happy to see that my work is appreciated by judges locally and around the world.

But let’s at look at the photos of this year!

First interesting fact: there are quite some winter photos in this collection! Winter conditions that most people did not even see: January 6, early morning blue hour my hometown of Amersfoort was covered in a thin layer of snow. Everything was white! By the time the sun came up and the roofs got hot from heating, most snow was already gone. Most people didn’t even get to see it. Same thing happened on November 23. Another thin layer of snow. This time unexpected. I woke up early, shocked, upon seeing the white world. I quickly drove to my neighbouring city Utrecht to do a similar capture. Again, after sunrise most snow was already gone. But I did capture 2 snowy mornings without most people realising it :)

Other unusual winter conditions in the Netherlands were later in January when only the ‘Posbank’ a part that is slightly higher, was completely frozen for almost week, while the rest of the country was just business as usual. I was there almost every day to capture the amazing winter conditions. Something I had never seen before.

Staying in the winter mood I decided to go on a quick Slovenia trip, also in January to photograph Slovenian churches in winter conditions. It was spontaneous and I met up with my friend Piotr, that showed me some of the most beautiful places. I was there just for a few days, but came back with some beautiful images. We had fog, snow, everything.

About international trips: I did a few other spontaneous short trips this year purely to go for ‘conditions’. I went a few days to the dolomites in summer with a full week of rain prediction, purely to get epic moody mountain photos. This was one of my favourite moments at the Cadina mountain range at Tres Cime, where the sun peaked just below the clouds for only 10 mins before sunrise to cast this incredible light and rainbow over one of my favourite spots. Me and Leonarda were the only ones there to see and photograph it.

Earlier in the year my friend Jabi called me and said there was a big storm coming on the Basque coast in Spain. So I quickly flew there and we captured some epic wave shots. But the very last afternoon we captured this one, at the famous Gaztelugatze. Similar conditions as the last photo: Dark clouds and right before the sunset the sun came through and the sky exploded with even a rainbow.

I keep trying to push boundaries of my moon photos. This is one that I had been trying to photograph for years: A windmill with a big moon and the perfect fog layer. This year I finally managed to get it right:

And then there was also the lunar eclipse this year, which wasn’t easy to capture with a subject. But in the end, this also worked out and I managed to get the shot above the church tower of Zutphen with the perfect eclipse phase.

Going back to the windmills, here are some of my favourites of this year:

Garden of Eden : I keep pushing boundaries windmill photos, often trying to incorporate the environment with multiple layers. This is one of those shots. Flowers, a spiderweb, backlit and a windmill as a backdrop. Not an easy shot, but a shot I am very happy with.

The Perfect Fog Blanket at Kindredijk: I have been coming here for probably more than 50 times. But it’s not easy to get that perfect fog blanket. In march this year, we finally got a perfect morning like this. From below you didn’t see much, but going up with the drone not even that hough, everything looked absolutely perfect.

Storm in Vlissingen: A place I revisited after many year during a big storm this year. I got what I wanted: high waves and very dynamic conditions, in a single photo. And yes, I got completely soaked taking this shot.

And My favourite windmill photo of the year: Horses running in front of a windmill; This is a shot I had in mind for many years. I had always wawnted to capture horses in front of a windmill during a foggy morning and this year I finally did it. And even a mother with her baby. Absolutely beautiful moment.

Then one of my absolute favourite moments of the year: Seeing wild tulips for the first time in Kyrgyzstan. I went with the World Tulip Society on a research mission, and found wild tulips right in front of this spectacular mountain backdrop. Seeing 2 of my favourite subjects: tulips and Kyrgyzstan in the same landscape almost literally made me cry!

Every summer for many years in a row I spent some time in Greenland. Always in the same area, Disko Bay. Does it get boring? Absolutely never. It’s always different. The colours of the midnight sun keep surprising me. This one was one those nights around the ice. The sky exploded 360 degrees with super intense reds. By far the most spectacular sunset I had seen this year.

Also in summer, I decided to ‘revisit’ some firefly locations in the Netherlands. I knew that they were here as I photographed them many years ago . But this year , I decided to spend some proper time to actually try to get a good shot. It took me many nights to practise and get it right (check my YouTube video about it), but I finally got a shot that I was very happy with. But it didn’t come easy!

These years I try to visit the US at least once a year. I like the photography community there and ofcourse they have some amazing landscapes. I wanted to photograph the fall colours around Colorado for a while already, so when I was invited at the Horizons Photo conference in Durango this year, I decided to do just that. Colorado did not disappoint, Its autumn colours are simply incredible.

Going back to the start where I mentioned my awards about my mushroom series: My favourite mushroom photo of the year is this one named ‘Mushroom City’ where I found this interesting twisted tree brench full of mushrooms:

Taking about our autumn: This year it was actually quite beautiful. We didn’t get many incredible misty conditions, but the colours were spectacular. This one one of the best mornings we got this year, with peak autumn colours and perfect fog.

That about sums it up for this year. I keep doing my thing and will be back with new projects and photos next year. I want to thank everyone for their big support everywhere. This can be via a simple comment, message, email or buying one of my products. I couldn’t have imagine the success of my book for example. Unfortunately, the 2nd print run is now completely sold out already (the next one coming in January). Before November, I still had quite some books, but everyone bought so much for the holidays! Thanks again!

Wishing everyone a super beautiful end of the year!