That Old Dutch feeling
For this edition of the Monday series, I thought I’d go back in time a bit and take an image from 2008 and treat it a little differently…
How about bringing a bit of that very Dutch feeling into a scene? Canals, brick houses, a clocktower and a flag.
A Saturday of discovery!
As I sit here watching a bit of Premier League football after breakfast, a quick post to provide an idea for a Saturday if you happen to be in the Netherlands…
The Institute of Sound & Vision in Hilversum is an architecturally stunning building, both on the outside and the inside, as captured in this image. Striking colors and angles make this a sight to behold!
Additionally, the exhibits are always thought, ear and eye provoking making this a wonderful visit.
A closer look at these behemoths of power! Don’t tilt at them!
In yesterday’s Kinderdijk post I shared the variety of weather conditions that we experienced at Kinderdijk; during the 90 or so minutes that we were there, the only season we missed was Winter!
The classic Dutch windmill is an engineering marvel that can withstand centuries of whatever Mother Nature throws at it…
Starting at the top, we have the cap of the windmill; its head, so to speak. This section can be rotated around its vertical axis, as it sits on wheels inside the cap. This enables the miller to turn the windmill into the wind, so that it can generate its power.
This rotation is achieved using the capstan wheel, which is on the tail of the windmill. Chains are attached to anchor points in the ground, and then the wheel is turned to rotate the cap in the direction of the anchor point. Note the gentleman in the wood shoes; he’s the miller responsible for this windmill, the Nederwaard No. 2, which houses the Windmill Museum.
Of course, you need a braking mechanism to slow down rotation of the sails; the brake handle sticks out from the cap; this on his painted in the colors of the Dutch flag, red, white and blue.
When the miller wants to operate the windmill, one of the interesting jobs is to unroll the canvas to cover the sail; this involves climbing up the lattice and tying the canvas to the sail. Not that it can be reefed, just like a sailboat, to adjust for the strength of the wind. Imagine climbing up in wooden shoes when the breeze is picking up; I think this could be a harrowing bit of work.
As we’re getting ready to wrap up, I took one more look back through capstan wheel to soak in this majestic view!
I felt lucky to get this turnaround in the weather, because with this sun and clear air, the scenery of Kinderdijk is simply glorious!
Does it get any more Dutch than this?
A big part of our Rhine river cruise was the opportunity to visit a lot of wonderful places, including some in the country that I was born and raised in: the Netherlands. As the windmills of Kinderdijk were one of the options, my wife and I decided to do that tour…
As we arrived at Kinderdijk, the sky looked threatening, so luckily I had put the rain gear on my camera, as it started pouring while the sun was bright across parts of this scene. It made for a great dramatic shot that captures 5 of the 19 windmills.
Within minutes was dry again and some of the sky started clearing. This is windmill number 1 on the Nederwaard side; this windmill is of the type ‘Grondzeiler’, which translates literally to ‘Groundsailor’. The name makes sense, as the blades or sails come close to the ground when they turn.
Of course, one of the benefits of these weather conditions is that rainbows will appear and they were stunning!
And then the sun came out in its fullest glory! Even though the light was strong, I couldn’t resist capturing this shot. Let me know how many windmills you count in this shot!
Our guide for this tour was really knowledgeable and made the whole presentation very interesting; it helps that she was born and raised in Kinderdijk! During a break, we chatted in Dutch and she wasn’t surprised to find out that growing up in the Netherlands, I had never visited Kinderdijk; it’s not uncommon, as there are 1,200 historic windmills in the entire country, so you’re never very far from one. As matter of fact, in the house where we lived when I was just finishing elementary school and going to high school, I had British friends who lived in a windmill.
Tomorrow’s Kinderdijk post, I’ll chat about some of the details of these iconic symbols of Dutch culture, and we’ll talk about their operation.
A quick canal tour around Amsterdam
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.
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.
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.”
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…
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!
The walking photographer
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…
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…
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.
A view of what is to come!
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)…
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!
Virtual trip around the world?
Welcome to week 207 of the Tuesday Photo Challenge!
In deciding on a theme for this week, there was something that led me to the choice of Travel. As most of use are not traveling at the moment, it might be nice to travel virtually through our various blogs and share some of those enjoyed moments with each other. So, let’s share some of those wonderful places that we have visited in this week’s challenge!
Very much looking forward to seeing all those great places!
Here’s a place that is dear to my heart…
The Centraal Station in Rotterdam is a magnificent transportation hub that is a great connector of all modes of transportation and filled with traffic during good times!
The full rules of this challenge are in TPC Guidelines, but here’s the tl;dr:
Please be safe, communicate with one another and bring hope to all!
Pretty boats in a row…
Welcome to the 200th round up of the Tuesday Photo Challenge!
Thank you for a stunning set of responses to this week’s theme of Numbers! It is not surprising that numerology suited you very well, as the volume of creative out was very numerous! There were some really cool surprises among your responses and some that I could very much relate to. I hope that you enjoy reading this set of posts, as much as I did!
Have fun catching up on your reading!
Here are some numbers for the fish…
This image goes back to a visit to the lovely fishing village of Volendam in 2015; these boats were lined up perfectly for me creating a colorful display.
Please enjoy the following blog posts:
Please let all these wonderful authors know how much you enjoy their blog posts!
Confessions of a traveler!
As I selected Retrospective for this week’s TPC theme, I thought it would be nice to look back at countries visited during the 2010s! So here it goes!
Austria
Looking down from the shorter tower of the Stephanskirche provides an incredible view across all of Vienna!
Canada
In Vancouver, BC, I got to walk among the treetops, high up above the canyon floor (below…)
Scotland
On the Isle of Skye, I got to see some of the most incredible landscapes, such as here, where I’m a ways up in the Quiraing range. I could sit here forever and watch the clouds change the landscape!
Israel
I got some time in Israel to explore the Apollonia National Park in Herzliya; this amazing Roman settlement was a wonder to behold!
Italy
Our Italian trip was filled with amazing towns (idea for some posts…), such as Massa Maritima; the hill towns in Tuscany are just stunning! And the food was awesome too!
Netherlands
As can be expected, there have been numerous trips to the Netherlands, and Rotterdam is still among my favorite cities in this world!
Iceland
Iceland is filled with amazing vistas, and I spent way too little time there (4 days) to scratch the surface. One of my discoveries was the Herring Era museum in Siglufjördur! It brought one back to a different time!
Czech Republic
Sometimes, travel doesn’t go as planned, and you get to spend an additional 24 hours in a location. This happened in Prague, which is not a bad place to find yourself in!
Ukraine
My visit to Ukraine was fantastic, as the hospitality was amazing and I got to see some of the sights, such as the view here!
England
Liverpool, England, was an impromptu visit that gave me the opportunity to see my favorite Premier League team play at Anfield, their home ground! A fantastic city too!
In less than 2 weeks, I will be in India, so the adventure continues!!
Places - Nature - Photography
ich zeige euch meine stadt wie ich sie sehe
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