HDR Photography
At Connecticut’s oldest still-active polo grounds, two cozy teams of amateur polo players clashed on what was once a hay field. With the old barn in the background, the image almost feels like it could be happening at any moment in the past hundred years.
Continuing my recent display of discoveries from my college camera rolls, this picture of a friend reading in the open window of my dorm is fairly perfect. The motion blue of passing students outside further highlights her stillness and the open quad highlights the profile.
After the rain had passed over Madeira School, the view of the Potomac running through Mather Gorge opened up between the trees.
A muddy but vibrantly colored cafe space outside of the Moco Museum in Amsteram looks a bit like a matte painting for some Miyazaki-esque anime adventure.
Bright sky opens to reveal the sun between the spires of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Beneath the museum, a long tunnel reminds me of China Miéville’s “The City and the City” and its passages between overlapping worlds.
Peaking through the glass reveals an otherworldly modern interior that perhaps continues that Miéville theme in its own way.
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.
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.
A slice of life on an Amsterdam summer afternoon—café, busy streets, big clouds.
This modest iron drawbridge in Amsterdam has a mid-nineteenth-century-ness that fits charmingly among the tall buildings and trees neighboring it.
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.
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.
Snow hit Connecticut last night, but for today I’m looking back on street photography from a surprisingly cool summer day 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.
No idea how this standard Amsterdam bicycle came to rest in the middle of a canal bridge, but the combination of transportation modes speaks to the Dutch experience pretty effectively.
Does anything say “international intrigue” like a fancy hotel in a European capital?
Decaseconds 