Autumn brought is rain. After a beautiful Summer that was quite dry it is time to get used to grey clouds and their contents. And be grateful we do have rain.
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.
Sometimes it just happens. You are in a place and the light is fantastic, and there is so much to frame in a photo. The sunset is spectacular and for some odd 30 minutes you are in a photography candy shop. This is a selection of what ended up on my phone on that hot August evening.
Yesterday I told you about my passion and history in monochrome. And that I do shoot sunsets in black and white. Here is another one of the same sunset, but framed different. I will publish an overview of all those shots of same sunset that evening. Each of them show a bit of it, it’s in my humble opinion nice to see the big picture.
If you did not notice, I am a big fan of monochrome. In fact, monochrome film was way back the medium I started with. It was cheap and you print your own photos in a darkroom. That was adventurous and frustrating at the same time. Not to sound old, but nowadays with wonderful software, editing images is easier, faster and more fun. And you instantly see what you get! But sometimes I do miss the anxiety of the darkroom, seeing a photo come up in the developer. Back to now. I do shoot sunsets in black and white, and here is one. The atmosphere of the shot is different, more dark and eerie.
When there are landscapes, what is the landscape of a sea called? To me watching the sea is like an escape of the real world, dreaming into the image that is presented. This is the layered story of an image, with each of the layers adding to it. The beach with the humans grounded on the sand under their feet, almost insignificant in size. The vast sea stretching into the far distance, rippled in the wind and current, offering a seemingly flat smooth surface. The boats and windmills that seem to float on the water that sparkles in the light of the lowering sun. And on top of all that the backdrop of the sky painted lightly by the softer light that lays a filter over the all of it. Put a frame around it and you have a nice photo.
The theme for this week LAPC 316 is ‘Destanation: Fun‘. Going to the beach is fun, but witnessing a brilliant sunset on a warm Summer evening, while a display of boats and windmills complete the scene, is true fun. Here is the full view of the scenery of the sunset, I just picked out parts of it in other photos published earlier (and after).
The theme for this week LAPC 316 is ‘Destanation: Fun‘. Going to the beach is fun, but witnessing a brilliant sunset on a warm Summer evening, while a dispaly of boats and windmills complete the scene, is true fun. I published a few of them already two weeks ago (see the archive Katwijk). I hope you still have fun watching them.
The sky over The Netherlands is a wonderful object for photos, we do have lot of sky over our flat land above the low horizon. And that sky can be quite dramatic, even more in monochrome.
In Summer the fields that grow the Spring’s bulb flowers (tulips, daffodils and hyacinths) may grow other flowers. Some years the fields are flooded or covered up to be gassed, to clean, other years they produce crops like these.
The Netherlands is as flat as a pancake. That is the way foreigners describe my precious habitat. It is not completely accurate, we do have some hills and dunes. The advantage of a flat surface is that we have lots of sky above the horizon. Here a typical Summer scene: rain filled sky and cows in the meadows, the odd windmill and farm.
Cut flowers are a common good in The Netherlands. This is the field of a grower, just around the corner. He harvested the thistles and moved them to the flower auction for sale. This is the ones left over on the field. For Lens Artists Weekly Photo Challenge #316 ‘Common Object’.
Last week we had dinner on the beach and were treated to a beautiful sunset. And, as always when a subject grips me, I took loads of pictures. The iPhone makes it really easy just to snap, zoom, frame and play with light. So the last days I published some of them for the theme of this week for LAPC 314: ‘shorelines‘. It is probably serendipity, but it matched nicely on this set of photos. So to close the week a final one of this sunset. I hope you enjoyed them. And the left over of this shoot will probably appear in the near future.
The theme for this week LAPC 314 is ‘shorelines‘. My main shoreline is the beach of the Noordzee. And the views it offers, particularly at special moments of the day like a sunset. The sky looks like it offers an extra layer of reflection for the sun, a second horizon.
When you are on a spot where you see such a wonderful sunset, it is normal to shoot multiple photos. This couple appeared in a few of the photos already, but each time they are in a shot, it is the framing of a different story as I see it. Maybe you do too. The theme for this week LAPC 314 is ‘shorelines‘.
The sun sets, everything is cleaned up and ready for tomorrow for new clients. It is the Summer rhythm of the beach on the shoreline of the Noordzee. The theme for this week LAPC 314 is ‘shorelines‘.
Building tunnels is not common in The Netherlands, the soil is mostly consisting of clay on top of a sandpackage. However, recently a new connection between motorway A4 and A44 was opened: the Corbulo Tunnel (link to a video). This is a shot from the first time I travelled throught it. The weekly LAPC #312 is sense of scale’
The A12 motorway leading into Den Haag downtown. You have to get into town to get out of the car, a free wording of a slogan used in the sixties and later in a beautiful Genesis song ‘Carpet Crawlers’ (the link to the Ray Wilson/Steve Hackette live version of 2014 in the Royal Albert Hall)
A wet garden at night. And by the way, I love that WordPress AI generating amazing titles that I can not come up with. I stick with them as long as they make me smile. Nocturnal, sounds like a great piece of music.
Architecture can be beautiful in full color as well in monochrome. In ‘twins’ I show the monochrome twin of the color shot at the Kop van Zuid in Rotterdam. The fift and last set is again New Orleans.