Countdown: the best photos of 2024

It is a tradition that goes back to the early years of this blog: the annual top 10 of my best photos. Although, “best” is such a value judgment, let’s call it my favorite photos. Or maybe just the photos that have a good story to tell.

Since 2016, I have been looking at the photos I took that year every year in mid-December, selecting about 200 for the longlist. What follows is a long and painful process to distill my top 10 from that. Anyway, as long as I have the list and the accompanying blog post ready somewhere near New Year’s Eve.

The choice was once again overwhelming, due to the countless large and small photo expeditions that I made in 2024. Many walks in the neighbourhood but also two special Rotterdam photo shoots at great heights. Forty-five walks in the 10-25 kilometre segment, as well as two two-day trips to Nijmegen and Zutphen. Furthermore, I was artist in residence in Zwolle once again and I made no less than five foreign trips. Okay, four of them were just across the border in Belgium, but still.

Not all of those excursions and trips made it into the top 10. But in any case, it has become a nice and varied list that I present on this New Year’s Day.

10 – Timing in the golden hour

The blog post I intend to write about Rotterdam in the golden hour has not come to fruition in 2024. But this photo, taken on a sunny morning in January, would fit quite well there.

The sun is still quite low, shining precisely between the KPN tower and De Rotterdam building and illuminating the bridge deck of the Erasmus Bridge from below. At least, that’s how it seems. But when I look at the sunbeams at the openings in De Rotterdam I suspect that the light reaches the bridge deck via a reflection on the river Maas.

The pylon of Erasmus Bridge is almost invisible. And that gives us the opportunity to see how beautifully the rest of the bridge is designed. The elegant lines of the bridge deck as a contrast with the chunky concrete shapes of the pillar.

A water taxi also rushes through the image at exactly the right spot which, of course, is no coincidence. I timed it exactly that way; you never have to wait very long for one of those black and yellow city icons to pass by.

Incidentally, this James Cook guy on the Spido tourboat is a not entirely uncontroversial figure. I could shop another name for it but oh well…

9 – Star Trek vibes

By far the most photos on my blog were taken with my Nikon D5100 SLR camera; faithful and seemingly indestructible companion since 2011. But sometimes, in less than optimal lighting conditions, when there is no time to set up a tripod, I reach for my Samsung Milky Way mobile phone. Like here upon arrival at Rotterdam CS, after the last fellow passenger had left the train and just before the new stream of passengers entered the compartment.

That train, that was an ICNG, an Intercity New Generation, of which more and more are taken use these days. Because of the yellow-black front, the “official” nickname is The Wasp. But I can’t help thinking of the Beagle Boys from Donald Duck.

Anyway, the exterior is not visible in this photo; this is all about the interior. I don’t know if it’s those sliding doors with rounded corners, or those different colored lights, but I get strong Star Trek associations here. These trains obviously don’t reach warp speed, but 200 kilometers per hour is apparently possible. Engage!

Some research made clear that the colors have a meaning: they indicate the desired atmosphere in the different compartments. Orange stands for meeting, light blue for working and purple for silence. I’m afraid that Dutch Railways still has to do some communication about that.

In any case, I think the ICNGs are nice trains to travel with. Of course, the most important thing is that they run at all, and preferably on time and affordable. Make it so, number one!

8 – Summer at Museum Park

Will Museum Park ever be finished? Or will its completion coincide with the renovation of the adjacent Boymans museum in the early thirties? The work has been going on for more than three years now, but there are still construction fences around parts of the Park. Is the work being done by two retired construction workers between bingo and playing cards, maybe?

According to an article in local paper the Havenloods from more than a year ago, there have been some setbacks: a bankrupt contractor, delayed deliveries due to covid. But: “Before April 1 the entire Museum Park must be finished.” Well, what do you expect with such a date as a deadline.

Fortunately, there are also areas that are already finished. Around the Depot, for example, a popular stop during my city tours. And the Romantic Garden, with a network of new winding paths, has become really beautiful. Therefore, as encouragement, a photo of that garden, with an abundance of ​​purple and yellow echinacea that would make doctor Vogel jealous. The Depot can just be seen between the trees. No construction fence in sight.

7 – Gouda plane trees

Photography is a seasonal affair. For me as a city and landscape photographer at least. In the spring I walk around in a daze for weeks to capture the blossoming beauty with my camera. And an equally hallucinatory period follows in October and November. Nature gives everything it’s got one more time in a final explosion of colour. Well, final… luckily everything starts all over again a few months later.

Autumn is a great time for forest walks, you might say. Okay, that is true, but it is just as interesting to visit urban areas at that time. Because that is where you will find all-time favourites such as the ginkgo biloba, the koelreuteria paniculata and the liquidambar styraciflua.

The plane tree is not even my favourite autumn tree. But this long row of large plane trees, reflecting in the water of the Breevaart in Gouda, should immediately be added to the list of monuments. And the bright blue sky above Gouda’s gold certainly helps.

6 – The smell of Brussels sprouts

At the beginning of October I was back on Sint Philipsland, this time in the company of my travelling companion I. We passed a field with a crop that we could not immediately identify. But fortunately, Google Lens offers an answer to such questions. They turned out to be sprouts.

I had to think of an unforgettable line of poetry by Daniel Lohues: “’a piece of a cauliflower is a cauliflower in itself”. Something similar is true about sprouts, but the other way around: a sprout plant itself looks a lot like a sprout.

I like this photo because of the beautiful light on the leaves and the subtle color accent of the purple stems. Incidentally, we can see the sprouts themselves in the axils of those stems. Still young ones; they have to grow a few weeks more before they can be harvested.

5 – Springtime in Kreuzberg

At the beginning of March, I spent a week in Berlin with my traveling companion I. I previously wrote this blog about my father’s experiences in that city, in less pleasant times. But of course there is much more to see in Berlin.

As always on our city trips, I. and I walked dozens of kilometers every day, starting from the house of I.’s son B. in the Mitte district. During one of those days, Kreuzberg was our destination. After first climbing the mountain of the same name, we wandered around the former Tempelhof airport for a while. Then we walked through the Kreuzberg district, back in the direction of our accommodation.

Kreuzberg is known as a very diverse, multicultural district with a large Turkish community. But it covers a large area; the part we walked through had more the atmosphere of an upper middle class district in Amsterdam-South.

Of course, it can still be very cold in Berlin at the beginning of March. But we were lucky because the sun was shining brightly during our stay. The people of Kreuzberg came outside en masse to celebrate the beginning of spring. This photo, in which the banks of the Landwehrkanal have been taken into use as one large, beautifully curved piece of street furniture, gives a perfect impression of the atmosphere. Incidentally, most of the people sitting on the bank are still wearing winter coats. The temperature was not quite spring-like yet.

4 – A rainy night at the Markthal

Can a photo be exuberant in terms of colour, light and reflections and at the same time have something melancholic about it? Yes, it can, as this photo of the Markthal on a rainy evening proves. Taken in the blue hour, but blue is just one of the many colours in the photo’s palette. The main culprit for this is of course the artwork The Horn of Plenty by Coenen and Roskam on the inside of the Markthal arch.

Did you know (city guide mode on) that the panels of that artwork have tiny holes with an acoustic blanket behind them that prevents the hall from becoming a terrible echo chamber? And that the artwork is so clearly visible because of the innovative and incredibly transparent facade, with glass panels mounted on steel cables? (city guide mode off)

Everything reflects beautifully in the wet pavement but that rainy atmosphere naturally also contributes to the melancholic feeling. This is further enhanced by the almost total absence of people. There is someone sitting at the bar and someone else checking their phone but otherwise the usually bustling Markthal seems deserted. It’s a combination of closing time and shutter speed. It was almost eight o’clock; time to go home. And most of the people who were still there have effectively been filtered out by the long exposure.

3 – History of a motorbike

Anyone who follows my blog knows that rust plays a major role in my oeuvre. The Rusty World Map is one of the best-selling works in my webshop, which also contains a nice collection of rusty ship hulls.

Since the mooring place for sea-going vessels at Park Quay has fallen victim to excessive regulations, little new has been added to that nautical rust collection in 2024. But fortunately, in other places you can still find beautiful examples of the effects of the ravages of time on metal surfaces .

At the Persoonshaven on Feijenoord I found a motorcycle that had apparently just been dredged out of the water. The vehicle has probably been lying on the bottom of the harbor for quite some time because shells have settled on the metal.

I actually thought that iron does not rust under water. So perhaps that period in the harbour was preceded by a long history of neglect and decay. In any case, this is another beautiful interplay of rust, dirt, scratches and other phenomena, which have a different effect on each part of the motorcycle. And as an extra layer, there is also a play of sunlight and shadow.

2 – Fork in the road

I mentioned it in a previous annual review: paths and roads are beautiful objects to photograph, because you are essentially given the metaphors as a gift. A winding mud road, a well-paved footpath, they represent a difficult or prosperous course of events in a person’s life.

This photo is a special example in that series. A fork in the road, as it’s beautifully called in English. I quote Wikipedia: “a fork in the road is a metaphor for a decisive moment in life or history at which a choice between the options presented is necessary, and once this choice has been made, it cannot be reversed.”

At this fork in the road, things are of course a little less dramatic. You can choose one of the paths and retrace your steps after a hundred or two hundred meters. Both paths look easy to walk and lead through a beautiful forest, so you can hardly make a wrong choice. But still, the paths inevitably seem to go in a different direction.

The photo was taken on the island of Schouwen-Duiveland in the province of Zeeland, in the Domaniale Bossen near Westenschouwen. On a beautiful sunny day, at the end of October, on which the blue sky, the autumn colours and the play of sunlight and shadow created a nice atmosphere.

1 – Layered South

At the beginning of 2024, Ramazan from Rotta Historica organised two photo shoots at great heights in quick succession. First in the penthouse of Montevideo (for sale for 7 million euros) and then on the thirtieth floor of the Zalmhaven Tower (“only” 4 million but that is a shell, so reserve a few extra millions for the finishing)

Both photo sessions took place around sunset, so there was plenty of opportunity to capture Rotterdam during the blue hour. Naturally, both events produced dozens of gems of photos. And of course one of them has to end up in the top ten. But which one? I choose this one, taken from the Zalmhaventoren in a southerly direction. And allright, let’s make it number 1 on this list.

The most special thing about this photo are the many layers visible. In the foreground we see the Nieuwe Maas river. Then the Wilhelminapier, which in itself is also made up of different layers: from front to back the cruise terminal, Las Palmas and finally New Orleans and Montevideo.

Behind the pier we see the water of Rijnhaven harbour, followed by the district of Katendrecht, with the Codrico grain silo and the green-lit cube prominently. Flanked on either side by Fenix1 and the new construction on the Wrist.

The next layer is formed by Maashaven harbour with the purple/blue/turquoise-lit Maassilo immediately behind it. Finally, there are the early twentieth-century residential areas of Bloemhof and Vreewijk. And at the top of the image, is that a strip of light from the Ringroad?

The only thing that initially irritated me was the white van in the parking lot at the riverbank. I tried to shop it away but that turned out to be more difficult than expected. Oh well, let it be then; it is actually a nice scale element.