Bushnell Tower’s stark concrete looks particularly textured and entrancing as it dries after a rain storm
Tag: photography
Resilient Dahl/Miyazaki House
The steep-roofed Belgian structure in the distance (now T’ile Maines) is a relaxing venue on a Belgian island in Mechelen, but a foggy winter evening makes it look more like the sorts of charming/mysterious structures that populate the works of Roald Dahl and Hayao Miyazaki.
Madrid Obligatorio
In December, our transatlantic flight to New York turning back near Greenland, spending hours in the air with an unknown mechanical error for returning us to the Madrid-Barajas Airport. After an all-too-brief but restless night in a mediocre Spanish hotel, we were back at the airport early the next morning for a second (and ultimately successful) attempt at an Atlantic crossing. Several hundred people waited to board. I looked out at the horizon; the landscape was strange, alien, surreal, but ultimately a lot more welcoming than the cold dark of the North Atlantic. The image will stay with me.
Canal Gossip
Relaxing with in the shade by the canal on a summer afternoon is excellent, but zoom in and you’ll see that this young woman is laughing along with her friend who is almost perfectly hidden behind her.
Amsterdam Aquaculture
The impression of plantlife in every edge of the Netherlands was one I expected to drop away as we entered more urban areas, but the canals of Amsterdam, too, were lined with green.
Water Outside the Opera
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.
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.
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.
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.”
