The highly varied flotilla approaching the Dutch National Opera and Ballet speaks to a kind of imagined universality of classical art—where every citizen might gravitate to something high-minded.
An Amsterdam Streetcorner
A slice of life on an Amsterdam summer afternoon—café, busy streets, big clouds.
Travelers Tower at Peak Batman
Neither the neoclassical architecture nor the rain make this a “peak Batman” image—rather, it’s the interplay of spotlights with fog that creates what I would describe as “Batmanitude”.
Amsterdam Draw Bridge
This modest iron drawbridge in Amsterdam has a mid-nineteenth-century-ness that fits charmingly among the tall buildings and trees neighboring it.
Boats in Ommen
Though boats are an everyday part of Dutch life, the large fraction of these boats that were occupied by people living and traveling in them (thus not leisure-craft nor houseboats) leads me to believe that I observed the river-and-canal-going equivalent of the caravans also visible at the edges of the image.
Stopping Along the Ride
Travelers of all kinds pause for a moment in Amsterdam, and this long-distance bicyclist (see his touring rig hiding at the left side of the image) is no different. I like this moment apart, with a lone figure in the foreground but a massive crowd on the bridge and boat in the background.
Cold Dawn Nucleation
There’s some sang about the photographer, not the camera, mattering to a great shot; while I appreciate the value of having the right tools, this sunrise image captured in a quick moment with my phone on a 1ºF morning provides some evidence to support the theory. The low temperatures quickly nucleated ice crystals from towers across the city and produced this dramatic array of miniature clouds.
Amsterdam Street Scenes
Snow hit Connecticut last night, but for today I’m looking back on street photography from a surprisingly cool summer day in Amsterdam.
Perfect Summer in Amsterdam
The call of a perfect summer afternoon on a bike crossing Amsterdam—dodging crowds, slipping from old building to new building, under a blanket of white clouds and green trees—sounds utopian.
Convenient Transportation?
Race-prepped cars are famously inconvenient modes of transportation, but when you need to get somewhere (with a folding chair) quickly, hanging from the door has a certain practicality.
Drifting with a Camera Car
I previously captured this camera car preparing for the action, but seeing it trailing a drifting Mustang in its very forward-facing grip-driving mode makes for an effective demonstration of the differences between the driving styles.
Simon Stålenhag Snack Bar
The retro-futurist art of Simon Stålenhag places intimate, perhaps even old-fashioned scenes in the foreground of images with strange, alien machines in the distance. A lone pair of nighttime snackers waiting at a slab-sided friterie trailer in the environs of the authentically 1950s Atomium represented such a real-world manifestation of the phenomenon that I had to stop and capture the scene.
Jumping Action from the VIP
Though dramatic shots of jumping horses are ubiquitous in the equestrian world, I think ones that present them in the context of the setting, alongside the audience and with a real sense for the space, are somewhat rarer. Kim Thiry ring Quick Silver can het Farasohof was in the Jumping Mechelen CSI2* right next to the VIP audience who could have reached out and touched the last jump in the course.
Turn and Burn
This CSI5* speed class pushed riders to their limit; few managed the entire course with neither rail nor speed penalties. I was capturing photographs from the last turn in the course, where riders who were still jumping clean turning to blast down the final line to the finish. Watching them put on a final burst of massive speed was dramatic, as in this case with Hans-Dieter Dreher and his mount Jiniki.
The Atomium’s Cyberpunk Elevator
When the elevator at the core of The Atomium was first installed in the 1950s, it was the fastest in Europe. I can attest that even decades later, the effect of its speed while rocketing upwards 100 m is unsettling. The surrounding bundles of data and power cables that have accrued inside the elevator shaft over the intervening decades has subsequently added a strongly cyberpunk twist to the experience. Gibson would be proud of the repurposed space: “The street finds its own uses for things.”
Decaseconds 