Sunset Views in Katwijk – Wind, Water and Cabins
The view at the beach from the boulevard of Katwijk aan Zee, a few hours before sunset.
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The view at the beach from the boulevard of Katwijk aan Zee, a few hours before sunset.
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The view at the Northsea just before dinner 🙂 at the boulevard of Katwijk aan Zee.
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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).
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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.
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In Summer the garden of castle De Keukenhof is filled with beautiful Dahlia’s. I just choose one for the photo.
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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.
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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’.
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Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta Click the picture for a larger version


The use of glasshouses is widespread in The Netherlands for all kinds of crops and flowers. Lens Artists Weekly Photo Challenge #316 is ‘Common Object’.
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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.
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The Netherlands is famous for Delft’s Blauw (Delft Blue) pottery. At Drievliet they organized a selfie picture stand with two iconic statues to be virtually kissed. I framed it in a different way.
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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.
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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‘.
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Drievliet is a small and very old amusement park. Over fifty years ago I first went there on a school trip. Then most of the attractions had to be moved by muscle power. Last week I had my second visit to Drievliet with our grand children. The park is dramatically changed but still has the same appeal to kids: lots of fun to be had on rides, slides, rollercoasters, ferris wheels, merrygorounds etc. And of course the fries and icecream in between. The weather was not that good, but the clouds added to the view from the ferris wheel looking at downtown Den Haag.
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The weekly LAPC #312 is sense of scale’. When you look up to the sky for a while, it seems you are looking down from the sky to earth.
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The weekly LAPC #312 is sense of scale’. When you look up to the sky and see a plane coming over, one is never that much aware of the enormous scale of the space over our heads.
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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’
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Just around the corner is a field where cut flowers are grown for sale. It is a small beautiful plot with different stages of different flower types. And a good spot for inspiration.
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A small regatta on its way under a grey rainy sky.
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A view at a beach in Scheveningen. Waiting for the Summer to really start with some higher temperatures.
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The Moon just stands there it seems, and mostly I do not pay too much attention to it. The power of the moon is enormous though, as it influences the level of the seas on Earth. At odd moments in the evening or morning I grab my camera when I spot the moon, I just can’t resist. This is one of those times, the haziness reminds me of the sand in the Sahara, the setting of Le Petit Prince, a beautiful book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Could this moon be asteroid B 612? The power of imagination, see what your eyes can not see.
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June was wet, and July started wet but seems to end with more sun and less rain. It is a typical Dutch Summer.
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A small regatta on its way under a grey rainy sky.
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The basin of an old watertower against the sky. It is not the nicest of buildings, but somehow it draws my attention when I see it. Last year I published its head in color, this time I choose for mono.
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Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta Click the picture for a larger version
Government departments rise up in the sky. For some the only way is up.
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Lines in the sky seen from one of the most beautiful frames for pictures in The Netherlands: a train window offering a beautiful frame with always changing content in it.
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Leann Cole suggested ‘tourist attractions, near and far’ as LAPC’s 307. My motivation for going to places changed in my life time. From ‘active’ holidays (including climbing some big mountains by bycicle) to complete leisure (eg seeing the Greek Isles with lots of lazy moments). And in between the travels to dig into the culture and essence of a place on earth, to learn and experience it. But wherever I went as a ‘photographer’ I tried to capture where I was. To be stunned by what is just there in front of you, the unexpected. And yes, the times I did visit an ‘iconic attraction’ I tried to find my own way of framing it, trying to keep away form the cliches that are so widely known. For this challenge I dig into my blogs archive, all the photos are here published already.
Over the years I learned to value and appreciate my own way of looking, being surprised by my own views of what I saw and how I saw it. To appreciate simple things of beauty that stuck out or the composition of objects. If you travel far, you are only there for a moment, if you stay close to home you have access all of the time. But being close to home the challenge is bigger to stay open, to see what is there, to not take it for granted.
Today is the ‘near’ version. So close to where I live, but for tourists reasons to travel. I just browsed and picked out some themes that may strike recognition: flowers, flower parade, Rotterdam and its architecture and harbour, Leiden (my alma mater and birthplace of Rembrandt), windmills, flat lands, watermanagement (polder, canals) and the beach. All of them so near and familiar.
I hope you do enjoy the gallery, and if you want to plunge deep into more of it I invite you to search by category finding Amsterdam, Den Haag, more flower fields and flowers and who knows Dutch clogs?






























The lights seem to fade slowly along the A12 motorway leading into Den Haag.
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The Netherlands, Oegstgeest – May and June 2024
A rose is a rose is a rose, someone wrote that a long time ago. But it is still true, each rose is unique. So much symbolism and sweetness in a picture. The garden offers them in abundance this year.
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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)
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The grass on this side of the little canal is the same as on the other side of the canal, the light is just different.
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Allium is one of our favorite bulbflowers in the garden. I present it as a twin set of mono next to color. Each version brings out different qualitaties in the flower I think, but that is of course subjective.
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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.
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LAPC #306 is ‘habitat’. As humans we share the earth with lots of natural life, we share habitats (the human home, the natural ecosystem), we co-exist. Our relation with earth is not balanced. It tilts favorably towards the human interest, disrupting the natural habitats of many. If we as humans do not change our relationship with earth, then humanity kills itself, leaving a planet to recover from being abused. Not survival of the fittest, but termination of the dumbest.
A Heron, sitting on a lamppost, overlooking the articificial canal, as a cyclist uses a cycling path in the background.
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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.
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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 second set is an old elevator at the Rijnhaven.
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Architecture can be beautiful in full color as well in monochrome. In ‘twins’ I show the monochrome twin of the color shot of the high risings in Rotterdam on the Kop van Zuid in Rotterdam. The first set is De Rotterdam by Rem Koolhaas.
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The De Rotterdam towers over the old warehouses on the Kop van Zuid in Rotterdam. The use of housing changed from industrial to living.
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LAPC challenge #305 is about composition: two rectangles as a play tool to frame a photo. Sometimes you get lots more than two, which adds to another aspect of composition: repetition. Not sure if this qualifies as a valid entry, but I do like the building. This is De Rotterdam by Rem Koolhaas.
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Rijnhaven, Kop van Zuid, Rotterdam.
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This weeks LAPC # 304 is ‘Background: behind the subject’. Poppies against a familiar backdrop in the landscape of The Netherlands,
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The Lens Artist Photo Challenge #301 is ‘floral’. A red rose against the drop of Wysteria.
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Hoek van Holland, looking at Maasvlakte, the harbor of Rotterdam.
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The Lens Artist Photo Challenge #301 is ‘floral’. A red rose against the drop of Wysteria.
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The Lens Artists Photo Challenge #297 is ‘music to my eyes’. Images and music are a strong way of bringing back memories, feelings, situations you once experienced. This photo clicked my memory for a Pink Floyd album ‘Obscured by clouds’. It is not so much the clouds that obscure in this image, the branches of the trees create a web of lines over the sky and sun.
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The Netherlands, Voorhout – April 2024
The yearly flower parade of the Bollenstreek showing bulb flower creativity and offering mesmerizing smells.
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The Netherlands, Voorhout – April 2024
The yearly flower parade of the Bollenstreek showing bulb flower creativity and offering mesmerizing smells.
Shot with Nikon D500, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a bigger version.
This is an old cart that was used in the past at flower auctions. Long ago I used to work in the Summer months at the bulbflower auction Flora Rijnsburg (Now part of the Royal Flora Holland Group). These carts transported flowers through sales at the clock and distribution of them to the buyer via a transporter belt. They were extremely heavy and not easy to handle.
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