Tagged: winter

View across the partly snow-covered fields towards the village on the Icelandic island of Flatey

23. May 2022

A quick visit to Flatey island

Flatey is an island in Breiðafjörður in northwestern Iceland. The name means Flat Island, and that’s what it is, by Icelandic standards. It’s not very large: two kilometers long and a few hundred meters wide. And yet Flatey has been inhabited for well over a thousand years, due to its favorable position close to fishing grounds and trade routes. Around 1900, 400 people lived here; today there are only five permanent residents. But many houses are used as holiday homes, so in the short Icelandic summer the population multiplies. Rain Traveling companion A. had been to Flatey before and had… Read More

Kruisplein square in Rotterdam, covered with compact snow and in the background the Central Station on a sunny day in the winter of 2021

Photography

16. February 2021

The brief harsh beautiful winter of 2021 ★★★★

For a few years now, I have made it a habit, some time mid-March, to look back on the past winter, and especially on the photographic aspects of it. Unfortunately, since I started doing that, there has hardly been any real winter weather in the Netherlands. In 2014/2015, the winter lasted only two days. In 2016/2017 I had to go to the far east of the country to take beautiful pictures. And in 2017/2018 there was some cold at the beginning and the end, but the rest of the winter was grey and rainy. For the winter of 2018/2019 I… 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

Westersingel canal in Rotterdam in the blue hour before sunset with a very thin layer of snow on the grassy banks

Photography

31. March 2019

The Lousy Winter of ’18/’19

Now that the magnolias are in bloom, it’s about time for my traditional photographic review of last winter. And what a lousy winter it was … One snowflake on a scale of one to five! And a position in the mild winter top 10 of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute I know, weather and climate are not quite the same and you cannot automatically blame global warming for every mild winter day. But still it makes you wonder if snow photography has a future. However, the winter of 2018/2019 also had a few photogenic moments. But one had to act… Read More

A rainbow behind Hallgrimskirkja, the iconic church in downtown Reykjavik, Iceland

Photography / Various

12. March 2019

Reykjavik in Winter

While Western Europe enjoyed a very early spring, travel companion A. and I spent a winter week in the capital of Iceland capital, Reykjavik. It was definitely not spring there yet, but unfortunately just not wintry enough either. There was ice on lakes, snow on the mountains, and here and there there were large heaps of snow in the street, but no fresh snow fell. Well, that means we’ll have to go back there once more. Metropolis There is something strange about Reykjavik. The city, including suburbs, has only 240,000 inhabitants, just as much as a town like Swansea. Which,… Read More

The floating pontoon bridge across Leuvehaven harbour near the Maritime Museum in Rotterdam during the blue hour before sunrise

Photography

3. February 2019

January Mornings

In a previous blog, I told you that the earliest sunset, the first milestone on the way to spring, already happens on December 12. The latest sunrise is two and a half weeks later, on December 30th. The graph below makes it clear: on that day in Rotterdam – and it won’t be much different elsewhere in the Netherlands – the sun won’t appear untill 8.50. Expeditions Sunrise at (almost) 9 AM ; that means that in January you do not have to get up extremely early to experience the blue and the golden hours. So every year I set… Read More

Wooden walkways across the frozen and snow-covered Lake Kralingen in Rotterdam

Photography

1. April 2018

Looking Back at the Sandwich Winter of 2017/2018

Let’s review the winter of 2017/2018. After all, spring has already started: March 20 at a quarter past five in the afternoon according to the astronomers and on March 1 according to the meteorologists. So: what kind of winter did we have and especially: were there some winterwonderland photo opportunities? Sandwich The winter of ’17 / ’18 was a sort of sandwich: a grey and boring middle section with some wintery scenes at the beginning and end. It all started promising on Sunday 10 December with a snow front that slowly moved across the Netherlands from the south. Code Red… Read More

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

Cartography

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

Snow-covered reed in the Hitland near Capelle aan den IJssel, The Netherlands

Photography

20. March 2017

Looking Back at the Winter of 2017

On Monday, March 20th, 2017 at 10:28 AM, GMT, spring begins in the northern hemisphere of planet Earth. It is the day of the vernal equinox, when day and night, anywhere on the globe, have more or less the same length. The beginning of spring, that’s a good time to look back at the winter of 2017. I know: it ain’t over till it’s over and also late March and April can have cold periods. But something tells me we’re not going te see a lot of wintry weather in the coming weeks. And should I be wrong, I will simply update this blog.… Read More

The Forest Planetarium of Arnhem: eight stainless steel spheres in the Cold Pond in Sonsbeek Park

Space art / Various

18. January 2017

The Arnhem Forest Planetarium and the Lost Planets

A few years ago I had a brilliant idea: a scale model of the solar system with the size of the municipality of Rotterdam. Just because it’s important to see the bigger picture, to know which larger system we’re a part of. And because it’s fun to be amazed about how big everything is. And how small we are ourselves. Streetplanetarium The city of Rotterdam is a very suitable place for such a streetpanetarium because there is a long trail of port areas attached to the city. Therefore, the distance between the center and the extreme outer regions is so… Read More