A delightful stroll through Amsterdam’s backstreets leads to a captivating image of a poster from the Amsterdam Marionette Theater.
This week, I am taking you back on a walk through the lovely city of Amsterdam. As my wife and I sauntered through the city, crossing canals and following alleys, we found plenty an interesting sight.
As we walked through a small street, I captured this image…
Amsterdam on a String
My first impression of this sight was the extravagant use of red on the wall that helps frame the poster. But then I also noticed the reflection of the window across the poster, which makes for a nice bit of playful composition. So, yes, here’s my window for this Wednesday, mirrored across the intriguing puppet.
The poster is located on one of the walls of the Amsterdam Marionette Theater on the Nieuwe Ridderstraat side. The reflected windows are part of a school across the little square.
This is my contribution to this week’s Monday Window; I wholeheartedly encourage you to check out the other posts linked to this cool theme!
A unique window image from our Amsterdam hotel room.
As I did a quick search through my collection of window images, I came across a rather interesting one. Last week, we looked at the personality that comes from exposure to the weather in Wednesday Window – pt. 5.5. This time, I am going much more for the shape and view from the window.
I am curious what you think about this one…
Inner Harbor View
I shot this image from the hotel room in Amsterdam, where my wife and I stayed before our Rhine river cruise.
Here’s a view of the hotel from the outside…
Hotel Victoria
From this perspective, you see immediately where our room was: in the tower just under the dome. This was definitely an unusual room, due to the shape with every modern amenity included; even the curtains were automated, so they can be closed with a remote.
We enjoyed ourselves by doing a number of touristy things in Amsterdam, such as a canal tour and eating a croquette. Having this day also gave us a chance to get over our jet lag a bit, which was smart before getting on our boat.
This is also a contribution to Monday Window, a great collection of posts!
Last September, Kris, my wife, and I took a river cruise from Amsterdam to Basel on the amazing Viking Mani; this was our first ever cruise experience, and I can tell you that Viking will raise the bar for any future vacation plans that you might have.
After arriving a day prior to our boarding date, we checked in early into our hotel, the Victoria, which is just across from the Centraal Station; after our flight from Boston, we were both happy to hop into a shower and get a short nap before exploring the city. First stop was to get some food, which for me means that I wanted to get a Dutch specialty: a beef croquette sandwich (Dutch: kroket).
Next up we decided to take a canal tour, which is the best way to see Amsterdam. I’ll highlight a couple of views from our hour-long boat trip.
The Stopera Building
In the image above, the Stopera is where the Dutch National Opera & Ballet companies have performance space, and where Amsterdam’s city hall is located. The name came from a shortening of the protest slogan against the building’s construction: “Stop the Opera”. The design approval for the building literally took decades, as the original commission started in 1955 and took until 1964 years to finally reject all proposals; a new competition was held in 1967 for a new design, which was won by the Viennese architect Wilhelm Holzbauer.
Unfortunately, budget constraints delayed the project once more. In 1979, a new approach was proposed, which would combine the opera space and city hall into a single complex; a design by Wilhelm Holzbauer and Cees Dam was approved. Under much controversy and protest, construction started in 1982 and was completed in 1986.
Jewish Resistance Monument
At the intersection of the Zwanenburgwal and the Amstel river, stands a powerful reminder of the people who once lived in the neighborhood where the Stopera stands today; Vlooienburg was an island that was built in Amsterdam to add space around 1593. This island was part of Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter, which was established during the Dutch republic, as many Sephardic Jews moved from Portugal and Spain to the more accepting environment in Amsterdam. The black monument commemorates the efforts by the Jewish population in their resistance against the Nazi occupiers during World War II; on the side of the monument is a text of the prophet Jeremiah, which laments:
“Were my eyes fountains of tears then would I weep day and night for the fallen fighters of my beloved people.”
Het IJ
Another key river of Amsterdam is the IJ, which likely is a remnant of the northern arm of the Rhine delta. Nowadays, the IJ has a seafaring shipping connection through the North Sea Canal, which stretches from Amsterdam to Ijmuiden.
From here our canal tour turned back to its mooring point, close to the main train station, and a bit later we’d go here…
The Viking Mani
There she is, our Viking longship, the Mani; named after the Norse Moon God, Mani, who flies through the night sky in his horse-drawn chariot, chased by an evil wolf looking to devour the moon. Our cabin is in view, albeit barely; it is the last visible window near the end on the upper deck. As the restaurant is at the front of the ship, we had a more than 100 m walk each way, getting our exercise, even on board!
First things first: I’ll be using the abbreviation C.P. to shorten ‘Creative Process’; titles of posts were just getting a bit long!
In today’s post, I want to share a bit about how I shoot when I’m just walking around and some of the thoughts that I put into my snapshots. Even though my photography brain isn’t constantly scanning for the next ‘amazing’ shot, there is a level of awareness of how the world around me might look through the view of a lens. Here’s an example of this…
Prins Hendrikkade
As my wife and I were walking around during our afternoon of free time before our ship’s departure, I became aware of the view ahead of us. The combination of architecture, modes of transport, sidewalk, signage, traffic light and bicycles outnumbering car, it all screams something that is very Dutch in our minds.
After that initial assessment, the creative process part of the brain kicks in, as I looked on how to capture this scene and produce the right guidance for our eyes to allow our mind to process parts of this image step by step.
The first decision was to ask my wife to stop walking for a moment, so that I could have the less-lighted space create a set of leading lines into the main parts of the image. You’ll notice that by default our eyes will start in the lower right hand part of the image and then quickly move more toward the center of the image (for an experiment, try starting your eyes in a different part of the image and notice what they do).
As I composed this shot with my iPhone, I moved to the left and right to see how the lines would lead toward the Basilica of Saint Nicholas in the background. You’ll notice that I settled more toward the left side of the sidewalk, as that enabled me to use the shadows of the building to my left to frame the image and not have the eye go all the way left in the image. Similarly, but less pronounced, the tree on the right helps frame that side.
Taking the couple of seconds to make these decisions, allowed the bicyclist coming towards me to be in the shade, and not be the subject of the shot; it helped that the traffic lights for bicyclists and pedestrians had just turned green!
Of course, I did shoot this image with a bit of safety, as you can see from the original…
iPhone original for above image
You’ll notice that there is quite a bit of extra margin, so that the crop can create a suitable image. I chose to use the iPhone’s 4:3 aspect ratio for the final image, as it felt pretty natural for this scene.
I hope that this quick overview of some of what goes on in my photography brain when I walk around. Please feel free to comment, share your process or ask questions.
As we start of the new year, many of us make resolutions and grand plans of what we would like to achieve. And yes, I do the same, as there are always a couple of things that I’d like to do better.
One of these is to spend more time catching up with my photography; as there are literally thousands of photos that I have taken and not done a single review or edit on, the goal is to put a significant dent into that backlog. I still have to figure out how I will measure this, as it will be hard to recognize progress without a decent metric.
So here’s a taste from the project that I’m cleaning up right now (and over the next week or two)…
Brouwerijgracht in Amsterdam
Yes, this is one of those typical Amsterdam shots from a canal tour boat, as we just came out of the Keizersgracht (Emperors Canal) and got a view down the Brouwerijgracht (Brewery Canal). As Kris, my wife, and I arrived in Amsterdam a day ahead of time before our Rhine cruise (great way to get over jet lag), we spent part of our afternoon touring the center of Amsterdam; there’s no better way to do that than on a canal tour.
A simple shot with my iPhone 13 Pro Max with a little touch up, as it was indeed a gorgeous day in Amsterdam.
Lots more coming from the Rhine cruise in the coming weeks!
