3Develop Beeldblog / Image Blog

Detail of the Color Map of Rotterdam cropped at the city center with all city blocks drawn in a random color

23. December 2017

Christmas: a Festival of Light and Color

Christmas is in the grayest and darkest part of the year. As far as nature is concerned, because with Christmas lights and decorations, that lack of light and color is generously compensated nowadays. In this blog post I present two maps that therefore fit very well with the Christmas season: the Light map and the Color map of Rotterdam. Solstice Christmas is the most important Christian holiday. But the origins of the festival date back to before the birth of Jesus. Both the Romans and the Germans did not let the winter solstice on 21 December pass by unnoticed. Understandably:… Read More

A freshly fallen leaf of a sweetgum tree, red with some yellow, in the grass in autumn

Photography

10. December 2017

Looking Back at the Photographic Autumn of 2017

When does autumn begin and end? The answer depends on whether you ask an astronomer or a meteorologist. Equinox and solstice The astronomical autumn begins with the autumn equinox, the moment that day and night, everywhere on Earth, have the same length. Autumn ends with the winter solstice, better known as the shortest day. In 2017, autumn officially started on 22 September at 20.01 Central European Time; the end is scheduled for December 21, 16.18. Because the length of a year on our planet (and actually on almost every other planet) is not an exact number of days, the times… Read More

The Rotterdam town hall seen from the Delftse Poort building with behind it Timmerhuis, Saint Lawrence Church and the Markthal

Photography

27. November 2017

Making photos through glass – fighting reflections

Last week, together with a number of fellow photographers, I had the opportunity to take photographs from the 37th floor of the Delftse Poort building (formerly known as Nationale Nederlanden). We were, however faced with a challenge: when making photographs through glass it’s not easy to avoid reflections. The blue hour Delftse Poort is one of the highest buildings in Rotterdam, and right in the center. You do not get a chance to take photos from such a place very often, and certainly not during the part of the day that is so popular among photographers: the hour around sunset.… Read More

Light trails from cars in the tunnel under Koninginneplein in Venlo at night with slow traffic next to the tunnel.

Design / Photography

21. November 2017

Venlo revisited: the Koninginneplein Tunnel

The tunnel under Koninginneplein (or should I say Queen’s Square?) in Venlo was completed in 2011. It ensured a smoother and prettier transition between the railway station and the city center. Through traffic went underground; from now on pedestrians could easily and safely walk into the city. Glass panels My Royal HaskoningDHV colleague Mari Baauw was the architect of the project. I had the honor to design the glass panels in the railing between the underpass and the ground level. Six years later It was not the only reason, but the Koninginneplein tunnel was my main goal when I traveled… Read More

Space art

16. November 2017

Alice and Goliath – two worlds out of many

How many Earth-like exoplanets are there in the universe? In other words: how many doubles does our beautiful water world have? We’ll never get anywhere near an exact answer but “very, very much” is, most likely, pretty close to the truth. Billions There are about 200 billion stars in our own galaxy. The number of galaxies in the universe is, coincidentally, also around 200 billion. So we are talking about roughly 40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. Even if only one in a million stars has an Earth-like planet orbiting around it, which seems like a pessimistic estimate, we still have an unimaginable number… Read More

Black and white photo of the autumn in the Brediuspark in Woerden, The Netherlands with a low sun and the reflection of trees on the water surface, with a sepia tint applied in Photoshop

Photography

10. November 2017

Black and White Photography in Photoshop

There has been a challenge going around on Facebook these days. People post a black and white photo of their daily life for seven consecutive days, without people in it and without explanation. And every day they challenge one of their Facebook friends to do the same. Sooner or later, of course, it was my turn. And it’s a real challenge for me. Photos without people, that’s no problem; on most of my photos, I’m already trying to avoid people. But with black and white, I actually had hardly any experience at all. After all, the world is in color… Read More

Map of the Netherlands with names of all 72 towns, villages and hamlets containing the word "berg" (mountain)

Cartography

1. November 2017

Mapping the Dutch Mountains

The Netherlands, as the name suggests, are as flat as a well-laid laminate floor. And yet in this country there are a lot of populated places with the word “berg” (mountain) in their name. I collected them all and put them on the Mountain Map of the Netherlands. Three Mountains “So where are those three mountains?” I wondered when I recently got out of the train at the railway station of Driebergen (meaning “three mountains). They were not there, of course. The nearby Utrechtse Heuvelrug (Utrecht Ridge) is at its highest point, the Amerongse Berg (Mount Amerongen), only 70 meters… Read More

Work in progress by the author on a digital graffiti world map on a wall of ten by five metres

Cartography

13. October 2017

Graffiti and Coffee Beans: Two New World Maps

What do graffiti and coffee have in common? Not much, I suspect, except that the average street artist will occasionally drink an espresso or latte. And that they both formed the inspiration for a world map. Cartograffiti More or less at the same time, I finished the work on the World Map Graffiti and the World Map Coffee Beans. They’re two maps with a totally different look and feel, and created in rather different ways. They have, however, one thing in common: when I started, I expected to finish them in one or two days, but it took weeks before… Read More

Artist impression of the High Line Baan, a park on the roof of Lijnbaan shopping center in Rotterdam

Visualisation

15. September 2017

From Tweet to Rooftop Park: the High Line Baan

Couldn’t those flat roofs of the shops on Lijnbaan, the pedestrian street in downtown Rotterdam, be turned into a roofpark? I made an artist impression and investigated the pros and cons of such a High Line Baan. Rooftop Days It started with a tweet. At 11 July, I placed a photo on my Twitter account, made during the Rotterdam Rooftop Days. It showed the city’s main shopping street, Lijnbaan, seen in southern direction from one of the adjacent apartment buidings. A remarkable strip of low-rise buildings in a city that’s proud to be the Netherlands’ highrise capital. With a roofscape… Read More

Stained glass windows in the front facade of Steiger Church in Rotterdam during Open Monuments Day

Photography

12. September 2017

Open Monuments Day 2017 in Rotterdam: Churches, Shelters and Other Heritage

On 9 and 10 September, doors opened that usually stay closed. It was Nationale Heritage Day, or as we call it in the Netherlands: Open Monuments Day. Although the name is still singular, the event now covers the entire second weekend of September. Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of Rotterdam heritage during those days. But fortunately, the program offers new surprises every year. And sometimes it’s fun to revisit a monument as well. Schielandshuis I had been in the Schielandshuis, the only 17th century building in the city center , when it was still Museum Rotterdam. These days,… Read More