Monkey Blog

when you grab and miss the branch

Fotozondagavond #10: Red

May 30th, 2007

DIY Red

Reflector Red

Ahhhh… Red

Ya, I was late this week.

More red stuff at:

Fotozondagavond #9: Industry

May 21st, 2007

Theme this week was “Industry”. As it happens, I picked exactly the same site to photograph as F.J.! It’s the NUON power plant in the North of Amsterdam.

NUON Power Plant

NUON Power Plant Reflected

NUON Power Plant

I also tried to get a little artistic with the reflections.

More Industry at:

Fotozondagavond #8: Black & White

May 14th, 2007

Nothing would’ve been easier than to hit the “Black & White” button on my camera and take a random shot. But even that proved to be a challenge, as I caught a nasty cold this weekend. So, today I resorted to my archive, where I found this nice picture taken at the Kröller Müller museum.

Jardin d’émail by Jean Dubuffet

It’s called “Jarding d’émail” from 1974, by Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985), made from concrete, polyester resin and polyurethane.

More Black’n’White:

Fotozondagavond #7: dream

May 7th, 2007

Harhar. A subject I picked. The idea came up the previous week and I thought it was such a good idea that I’d have no trouble coming up with something. Quite often I find myself looking at an everyday scene when I suddenly get a weird feeling; not so much deja vu as a vague feeling I have dreamt this at one point or another. Sometimes there is also an unreality to what I see. Difficult to explain, but as I said, I figured I could easily capture it.

Ha, the hubris. I’m not a professional photographer, not even a particularly skilled one, so what the heck was I thinking?

Until, suddenly, on Saturday I was driving around Westwoud and I noticed this view over some grassland. When viewed from a certain angle, it seemed as if the world ended just at the edge of a group of houses. Unheimlich. It hit just the right note as I hit the brakes of the car.

To many of you this may seem quite ordinary, but it somehow touches me on a deeper level. The world looked very fragile and lonely under that big sky.

More dreams at:

Fotomaandagavond special: Koninginnedag 2007

May 1st, 2007

Ah, Queen’s Day. 30 April. The day on which the Dutch nation uses the Queen’s birthday (who, incidentally, was born on 31 January) as an excuse to switch off the higher brain functions through the use of copious amounts of alcohol. sigh Never mind the huge piles of junk left around the city, or the gallons of alcohol spiked urine expelled into the canals.

For perl lovers:


$state = 'monarchy';
if ($date eq '30-April') {
    $state =~ s/^mo/a/;
}

Anyway, the special photo theme was “Queen’s day 2007”. So here’s a shot of the things I’ve been seeing on that day:

Yep, you guessed it. I didn’t join the fun this year (or the year before that, for that matter). Thing is, in Amsterdam the streets tend to quickly become too crowded. Slow walking, half drunk people bring out the dormant maniac in me. When faced with fleshy obstacles I get this great, big urge to kick people. Hard. Does that make me a sociopath? Dunno, doancare.

Outside of Amsterdam, things are a lot more “gezellig”, I admit. But then, I have a very nice park near my house, a lovely garden and a couple of comfortable chairs. So why bother? Let other people trade their hard-earned money for small pieces of junk that will end up on the street within a year (albeit amongs the other bags of trash).