Category: Photography

Aelbrechtskolk canal in the neighbourhood of Delfshaven, Rotterdam during the blue hour on a windless evening

23. December 2020

Countdown: the Best Photos of 2020

Before discussing my best photos of 2020, it’s inevitable to say something about the year itself. I probably speak on behalf of most of us when I say that it was a miserable year. And that we would rather leave it behind us as soon as possible. Let’s hope that next year will be better; at least there are some reasons for moderate optimism. Photographically it was also a somewhat different year. Foreign travel was not an option and even within the Netherlands the possibilities were limited. I always traveled carelessly all over the country by train and bus, but… Read More

Interior of a fictional museum with large photos of rusty schip's hulls on exhibition

Photography

4. November 2020

The Rust Museum

Let’s talk about rust today. In other words, about corrosion, the decay of metals caused by electrochemical reactions. There is a rule of thumb that says that with every scientific formula in a text you lose half of your readers. So for the detailed chemical explanation I refer to Wikipedia. But the bottom line is that iron is converted into iron oxide through the influence of oxygen and water. Bad news Rust is usually considered bad news. A rusty hull is regarded by the ship owner as costly and cumbersome damage. That’s understandable: the lifespan of a boat, or a… Read More

Pink blossoms of a prunus tree at Droogleever Fortuynplein in Rotterdam with in the background De Rotterdam building by Rem Koolhaas

Photography

20. April 2020

Corona springtime; nature gives and takes

Right now, especially in these turbulent times. We’ve all heard the cliché a thousand times over the past few weeks of lockdown, quarantaine and social distancing. And yet I will use it once again: particularly during this difficult time, nature can offer us comfort, hope and inspiration. Home To be honest, I don’t have that much to complain about my own situation. I have always worked at home and I don’t suddenly have to deal with children who I have to teach or who drive me crazy in other ways. There are undoubtedly better, but also much worse, places to… Read More

Silver grey Porsche Macan Turbo parked at Maasvlakte near Rotterdam with the sea and a spectacular cloudy sky in the background

Photography

10. February 2020

Porsche photography for beginners

To be honest, I usually don’t care much about cars. Okay, sometimes they are useful to get to a place where there is no public transport. Or to transport something too big for a bicycle. But I don’t have the required papers to drive them. And I can hardly see the difference between a Mercedes and an Opel. However, I hear everyone say it is good to occasionally step out of your comfort zone. So when Robin Groenendijk of 64 Porsche Lifestyleblog asked me if I wanted to take photos for an article, I didn’t have to hesitate long. And… Read More

The shining pot of the Boymans museum collection building under construction in Museum Park in Rotterdam during the blue hour on a morning the the winter of 2020

Photography

26. January 2020

January Mornings: the 2020 Edition

In a previous post I explained why early January is such a good time to go out taking photographs at daybreak. There’s no need to set the alarm inhumanely early because the latest (in the sense of the least early) sunrise is around New Year’s Day. And in this time of year sunrise coincides more or less with the morning rush hour, making it easy to adorn the photos with light trails and other special effects. Also this year I went out a few times early in the morning for a photo expedition through Rotterdam in the blue hour. Unfortunately… Read More

Details of a ship hull with peeling paint, rust stains and stripes and embossed numbers of the draught mark

Photography

19. December 2019

Countdown: the ten best photos of 2019

Here we are again: the top 10 of the best photos of the year 2019. Or well, let me put that in perspective: these are the ten best photos I took this year, in my own humble opinion. Also, it’s a kind of snapshot; tomorrow I may think very differently. But anyway, at least they are ten special pictures. The long list Like in previous years, I had a huge collection to choose from. I took around five thousand photos in 2019, from which I compiled a long list with almost two hundred nominees. 10 – Cloudburst in Roermond On… Read More

Branches and red leaves of a sweet gum tree (liquidambar styraciflua) in the Park in Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Photography

28. November 2019

Autumn in Rotterdam: a Tree Tour

I hardly have to tell the reader why it’s good to have trees in the city. They purify the air, they absord CO2, they make it slightly less hot in the summertime and they retain water after heavy rain showers. And of course they also make things more beautiful. This decorative function is most obvious in two periods: spring and autumn. Trees that in previous months were fairly inconspicuously bare or green, suddenly burst out into a feast of color. Now that the meteorological (and photographic) fall is over, this blogpost aims to give a small, totally incomplete, tour of… Read More

Rusty old installations in a pond, in the Waterloopbos (Hydraulic Forest) in the Dutch North East Polder on a rainy day in autumn

Photography

10. November 2019

The Hydraulic Forest in Autumn

The Waterloopbos (let’s translate that with Hydraulic Forest) in the Dutch North East Polder has a post-apocalyptic quality. This quality becomes almost overwhelming when you visit this forest on a rainy day in autumn. It is as if a nuclear disaster occurred here fifty years ago. Everywhere you see crumbling walls, sluices, canals and strange rusty installations, partly overgrown by the forest. Hydraulic engineering The reality is, fortunately, somewhat less dramatic. From 1952 to 1995 this area was in use by the national Hydraulic Laboratory. The numerous watercourses and ponds with their wondrous artifacts are the remains of hydraulic scale… Read More

Grassy dike between Brouwershaven and Bruinisse, part of a long distance trail around Lake Grevelingen

Photography / Various

27. October 2019

Hiking Around Lake Grevelingen

After the completion of the Oosterschelde trail, friends Arie, Maarten, Bart and I had to make a decision. Which long-distance hiking trail are we going to walk next? Aren’t there other great bodies of water in this part of the country? How about hiking around Lake Grevelingen? Remarkably, there is no official hiking route around this largest saltwater lake in Europe. But no worries, friend Bart lives a stone’s throw away from Lake Grevelingen and knows the area well. Time and time again he provides us with the most beautiful routes. It took us four years to complete the Grevelingen… Read More

A new concrete bridge in a landscape with creeks and fields of wild flowers in the Noordwaard region in Biesbosch national park on a summer day

Photography / Various

5. August 2019

Two Room for the River Projects in the Netherlands

The Room for the River program came into being after the Betuwe region and a number of other places in the Netherlands were almost flooded in the mid-1990s. The central idea was to prevent future flooding, not by the usual dyke reinforcements, but by digging new river channels and redesigning the floodplains. Also nature and recreation were supposed to be given new opportunities in these developments. Have those good intentions been implemented? Yes, they have. I’ve already written about the projects in Deventer and Nijmegen, for which I did some work myself. And this summer, I visited two other Room… Read More