Tulips, Tulips, Tulips!

Images by Arthur Morris & Denise Ippolito. Card Design by Denise Ippolito.

Holland 2014 7 1/2-Day/8-Night: A Creative Adventure/BIRDS AS ART/Tulips & A Touch of Holland IPT. April 17-April 24, 2014 :$4995 Limit: 12 photographers/Openings 9

This trip needs 8 registrants to run so please do not purchase your plane tickets until you hear from us; right now we need 5 more folks. Join us for an extraordinary learning experience.

Join Denise Ippolito, Flower Queen and the author of “Bloomin’ Ideas,” and Arthur Morris, Canon Explorer of Light Emeritus and one of the planet’s premier photographic educators for a great trip to Holland in mid-April 2014. Day 1 of the IPT will be April 17, 2014. We will have a short afternoon get-together and then our first photographic session at the justly-famed Keukenhof.

The primary subjects will be tulips and orchids at Keukenhof and the spectacularly amazing tulip, hyacinth, and daffodil bulb fields around Lisse. In addition we will spend one full day in Amsterdam. There will be optional visits the Van Gogh Museum in the morning and the Anne Frank House in the afternoon; there will be plenty of time for street photography as well. And some great food. On another day we will have a wonderful early dinner at Kinderdijk and then head out with our gear to photograph the windmills and possibly some birds for those who bring their longs lenses. We will spend an afternoon in the lovely Dutch town of Edam where we will do some street photography and enjoy a superb dinner.

For those who will be bringing a big lens we will likely have an optional bird photography afternoon or two or possibly three. The big attraction should be gorgeous Purple Herons in flight at a breeding marsh. We would be photographing them from the roadside. And we might be able to find a few Great-crested Grebes at a location near Keukenhof.

This tulip center image was created at the Willem-Alexander Pavilion at Keukenhof, Lisse, Holland with the tripod-mounted Canon Telephoto EF 180mm f/3.5L Macro USM Autofocus lens and the Canon EOS-5D Mark III. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1 1/3 stops: 1/100 sec. at f/9 in Av mode. Central sensor AI Servo/Rear Focus on the knife edge of the small diagonal petal in the lower left third and re-compose. Click here if you missed the Rear Focus Tutorial. Click on the image to see a larger version. Join us in Holland next year and learn to see creatively with a variety of focal length lenses.

Other than the arrival date: April 17, Day 1, and the date of our last photography sessions on April 24, Day 8, there is no set itinerary. We will check the weather and play everything by ear to maximize the photographic opportunities. We will try to do Amsterdam on a cloudy day. Those who wish to try for birds will do so on sunny afternoons with west or southwest winds. For Kinderdijk we will do our best to be there on a sunny afternoon with west winds as there are some birds there as well as the windmills.

There are several huge pluses to this trip. First off, denise is an amazingly skilled and caring instructor. Both her creativity and her willingness to share and to help beginning and intermediate photographers are–in my experience–unmatched. And though I have learned a ton about flower photography from denise, our styles and our techniques do vary to some degree. You will be counseled by both of us. While denise will hunt you down to help you; my teaching style is more “the closer you stay to me, the more you will learn.” The sky, of course, is the limit.

This tulip image was created at the Willem-Alexander Pavilion at Keukenhof, Lisse, Holland with the tripod-mounted Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS II USM lens and the Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital camera body. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1 stop: 1/60 sec. at f/11 in Manual mode. Manual focus on the lower left petal edge. Click on the image to enjoy a larger size. I used a long focal length to isolate my subject and carefully chose a perspective that yielded a background of grey walkway.

You will learn to create tight abstracts, how to best use depth-of-field (or the lack thereof) to improve your flower photography, how to get the right exposure and make sharp images every time, how to see the shot, and how to choose the best perspective for a given situation. And you will of course learn to create a variety of pleasingly blurred flower images. If you bring a long lens, you will learn to use it effectively for flower photography. Denise’s two favorite flower lenses are the Canon 100mm macro and the Canon 24-105mm zoom. Mine are the Canon 180mm macro lens and the Canon 600mm f/4L IS II, both always on a tripod and both often used with extension tubes and/or the 1.4X teleconverters. Denise hand holds a great deal of the time. For flower field blurs denise uses the same lenses mentioned above. My favorite is the 70-200 often with a 1.4X TC but I use both the 24-105 and the 600 II as well. Both of us use and love the Canon EOS-5D Mark III for all of our flower photography. The in-camera HDR and Multiple Exposure features are a blast.

One of the great advantages of our trip is that we will be staying in a single, strategically located hotel that is quite excellent. Do note that all ground transfers to and from Schipol will be via hotel shuttle bus.

This tulip image was created at the Willem-Alexander Pavilion at Keukenhof, Lisse, Holland with the tripod-mounted Canon Telephoto EF 180mm f/3.5L Macro USM Autofocus lens and the Canon EOS-5D Mark III. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +2/3 stop: 1/15 sec. at f/8 in Manual mode. Central sensor AI Servo/Rear Focus on the knife edge of the petal on the lest and re-compose. Click here if you missed the Rear Focus Tutorial. Click on the image to see a larger version. Once you have a decent image set up it is best to make lots of images while varying your framing just a bit. That’s what I did here; this single image stood out from the pack.

What’s included: Eight hotel nights. All ground transportation except for airport transfers as noted above. In-the-field instruction and small group image review and Photoshop sessions. All meals from dinner on Day 1 through dinner on Day 7. The hotel we are staying in often offers both lunch and dinner buffets. The food is excellent. Whenever you order off the menu be it at the hotel or at one of the several fine-dining spots that we will be enjoying at various locations, only the cost of your main course is included. On these occasions the cost of soups, appetizers, salads, sodas and other beverages, alcoholic drinks and wine, bottled water, and desserts are not included. This is done in part in hopes that folks will be less inclined to enjoy an eight course dinner so that we can get to bed early. As with all A Creative Adventure/BIRDS AS ART Instructional Photo-Tours both the photo sessions and the days are long. Nothing that we do however will be demanding. Being able to sit down on the ground with your gear is, however, a huge plus. Anyone in halfway decent shape should be fine.

Snacks, personal items, phone calls, etc. are not included.

Beware of seemingly longer, slightly less expensive tours that include travel days and days sitting in the hotel doing nothing as part of the tour. In addition, other similar trips have you changing hotels needlessly. The cost of this years trip is a bit higher than last years to reflect our increased experience and the extra hotel night that is included. One final note on other similar trips: the instructors on this trip actually instruct. On other similar trips the instructors, though usually imminently qualified, serve for the most part as van drivers….

This image of the inside of the Willem-Alexander Pavilion at Keukenhof, Lisse, Holland with the hand held Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM zoom lens (at 85mm) and the Canon EOS-5D Mark III. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +2/3 stop: 1/800 sec. at f/2.8 in Av mode. Central sensor AI Servo/Rear Focus on the red and white tulips 1/3 of the way into the frame and re-compose. Click here if you missed the Rear Focus Tutorial. Click on the image to see a larger version. A simple walk into the Willem-Alexander Pavilion puts most folks into sensory overload. Note the stand of yellow and orange tulips in the lower right: Beauty of Spryng was pretty much everyone’s favorite.

Happy Campers only please. A non-refundable deposit of $1,000 per person is required to hold your spot. The second payment of $2,000 due by October 30, 2013. The balance is due on January 15, 2014. Payments in full are of course welcome at any time. All payments including the deposit must be made by check made out to “Arthur Morris.” As life has a way of throwing an occasional curve ball our way, you are urged to purchase travel insurance within 15 days of our cashing your check. I use and recommend Travel Insurance Services. All payments are non-refundable unless the trip fills to capacity. In that case, all payments but your deposit will be refunded. If the trip does not run every penny will be refunded. Again, please do not purchase your air tickets until you hear from us that the trip is a go. We are very confident that it will.

All checks should be made out to “Arthur Morris” and sent to: Arthur Morris, PO Box 7245, Indian Lake Estates, FL 33855.

For couples or friends signing up at the same time for the tulip trip, a $200/personduo discount will be applied to the final payment.

This image was created in-camera at Keukehof Gardens in Lisse Holland on the first Tulip IPT with the tripod-mounted Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens and the Canon EOS 5D Mark III. ISO 100. Evaluative metering +1 stop at f/22 in Tv mode. See the similar image in the blog post here and try and figure out how both of these images were created. Central sensor Surround/AI Servo Rear Focus about 1/3 of the way into the frame and then panned vertically. Click here if you missed the Rear Focus Tutorial. Click on the image to see a larger version.

When you send your deposit check, please print and sign the paperwork here.

If you are interested in joining us, please let me know asap via e-mail.

Please e-mail if you have any questions:

artie: samandmayasgrandpa@att.net

denise: photographybydenise221@gmail.com

This image of a backlit windmill blade was created at Kinderdijk, Holland with the tripod-mounted Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS II USM lens and the Canon EOS-1D X. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1/3 stop: 1/1000 sec. at f/11 in Manual mode. Next year’s trip includes a late afternoon visit to Kinderdijk and street photography in Amsterdam and Edam. There will be lots of fine dining (meals on us!) in all three of these spots. Chose a sensor all the way to the left of and two rows down from the Central sensor (Surround)/AI Servo Rear Focus active at the moment of exposure. Click here if you missed the Rear Focus Tutorial. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Your Favorite?

Take a moment to leave a comment and let us know which of the images above you like the best, and why.

Tulips on the Blog

Whether or not you are seriously thinking of joining us in Holland next April you may wish to re-visit some of the tulip blog posts.

The first was “Dire Tulip Forecast Update” Plus Super Bonus Bird here.

“Tulip Field Painting” featured six of my favorite tulip field pan blurs.

“Keukenhof Tulip Petal Dreams” featured five tight or abstract tulip images; you can see them all here.

Click here to see what happened when I brought my 600mm f/4L IS II into the Willem Alexander Pavilion.

If you like orchids you will surely enjoy “Centers of Attraction.”

Learn about wide angle tulip field image design in the “Variety” blog post.

Lastly, BAA Bulletin #439 features the Holland Tulip IPT report, two great flower/tulip photography lessons, four very sweet tulips images, and my favorite windmill image from the trip. Click here to access BAA Bulletin #439.