The coast of The Netherlands, showing the Dutch version of Le Plat Pays (my flat country) from an incoming Easyjet flight from London Gatwick to Schiphol Amsterdam. Lots of windmills still.
The Netherlands, Schiphol Amsterdam – September 2024
Driving passed Schiphol we were overtaken by four Citroën Traction Avant. Three of them were into sticker collecting, the fourth was beautiful pristine.
One common misunderstanding about time is that it can fly. It does not. It is us being mesmerized how a certain amount of time goes faster in specific situations. Eg when you are on holiday, or having a great 😊 time. Each second, minute, hour, day is exactly the same as it ever was. Sometimes time seems to go slower too! Again, a misconception. But what is the figurative opposite of flying? In most of those moments I do wish time could fly.
Before the pandemic I used to cross this canal twice a day, and I took loads of photos of it, but just recently I found out about its history and historical purpose.
As most of you probably know the Dutch have a long relationship with water, and learned how water could be managed over the ages. About half of The Netherlands is below sea level; the question was and is how to keep it dry? Some say that God created the world but the Dutch created The Netherlands. In reality we manage water. In days of climate change that gets more complex. Not only the amount of water coming in by rivers and rain is growing, the soil of The Netherlands sinks as well.
In 1840 this canal was build. From 1848 the former lake the Haarlemmermeer was turned into the Haarlemmermeerpolder and this canal was used to dump the water of that lake into the North Sea. Schiphol (ship hell) was a spot in that former lake notorious for ship wrecks as the story goes.
Nowadays the canal takes out the water from the West of The Netherlands to the sea at Katwijk.
During the Corona crisis, most air traffic came to a stop. The skies are blue, and occasionally a plan (mostly cargo) comes over.
Normally every minute a plan approaches Schiphol Amsterdam Airport 25 kilometres to the North. The old is no longer, this new is for the time being.
About the B4 retouch series: I browsed my archive for pictures to publish. Some of them are partly retouched but most do have scratches, dust and stains.
Shot with Nikon F90 on Kodak TriX, scanned from film and edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a bigger version
The fifth landing strip of Schiphol Amsterdam bathing in sunlight. Unfortunately the weather is not that good right now. But it is nice to see a sky with fluffy clouds at times soon again.
shot with iPhone 6s plus using Hueless, edited using Snapseed and Marksta, click the picture for a larger version A list of other entries to this theme; if you do not want to be on this list let me know and I remove the link