Travel Snapshot – Perfect Daylight in Tulips Garden, Keukenhof
Very close, very close. We are very close to the Keukenhof Tulips Garden. The upcoming blooming season of tulips in Netherland is less than 4 months away. From 8th March until 16th of May each year, the Keukenhof Tulips Garden would be open for public viewing. It is definitely a ‘must-visit’ travel destination in Europe, as it is the best photo taking destination with thousands of colourful tulips species found in the garden and the huge tulips field. Most importantly, it has also the best daylight of the year in Spring to take breathtaking photos. That is why I suggest to travelers to start planning your Europe travel now and make sure to include this garden in your Europe travel itinerary!
While I’m tidying up my hundreds of photos taken in the garden earlier this year to show you, here is another snapshot in the garden to show you just how wonderful is the natural lighting I had in there for what I considered as a perfectly balanced colour scene.
Some EXIF info: Photo taken with my Nikon D60 and Tamron SP10-24mm. Shutter speed 1/160s and Aperture F7.1. Focus distance was set to 10mm and cropped off the bottom edge. ISO 100. Auto White Balance. No flash fired and no exposure compensated with Matrix metering.
This photo was shot in the perfect angle where sunlight was shining from my rear left to the face of the kid, visitors at the back, those colourful trees and the field at the background. This angle of sunlight guaranteed a saturated blue skylight and white cloud. This combination of sunlight and skylight had provided a perfect daylight with little needs to adjust your camera White Balance. The result is obvious. I had a perfectly balanced colour from the image that straight out of the camera and it is exactly how beautiful my naked eyes saw at that moment in there! Check out also my photos of red tulips and purple tulips bush.
Wondering what I’ve just said? Here is some photography tips to understand day lighting.
Daylight is made up of two main light sources, sunlight and skylight. While sunlight is direct light from the sun, skylight is light that bounces off the inside of the curved atmosphere that surrounds the earth, often referred to as ‘the sky’. The overhead angle of the sun, and other factors such as the amount of cloud cover, determine the mix of skylight and sunlight in any given outdoor scene.
There is also a third natural light source that needs to be taken into account if we’re going to be able to calculate our exposures and white balance correctly. We need to consider the colour and intensity of light bouncing from the ground, and other reflective objects in our immediate location.
To achieve great colours in your photo, the balance of lights intensity coming from sunlight, skylight and other reflections is crucial. Skylight is blue in colour, so more skylight in a scene means a bluer image. Sunlight, on the other hand, is yellow in colour, just like the sun. Reflected light will have a hue similar to the colour of the object it bounces off. So, it is not easy to have the perfect combination of the above for great photos.
Whatever it is, I had it in Keukenhof Tulips Garden in spring! 
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About The Author
Cecil Lee
The author is an avid traveler and photography hobbyist who loves to share with others his travel and photo-taking experience in many popular tourist destinations around Europe, Asia and Australasia. Read the exciting stories with many photos captured on his journeys.
