Houses at Night

For some time now I am working on a project to take pictures of houses at night. In first instance I focused at houses in Wijk aan Zee, a village at the sea - and recently I turned to my own neighborhood, Bosch en Vaart Kwartier in Haarlem.

Houses get a totally differrent atmosphere if you capture them in the dark. A hedge hiding the view onto the living room, a lonely illuminated window of an attic, a single room occupied in a deserted beach hotel – it evokes a feeling of intimacy, retreat and mystery. That is also why I take care not to include people. It makes the viewer feel being outside, in the cold - raising desiring for the warmth inside. It also incites curiosity - but at the same time it makes him feel uncomfortable too: as if any moment he could be trapped as being a voyeur. And, couldn't something be happening inside that maybe cannot tolerate daylight?

This flow of feelings is stimulated further by the colors of the night. The yellow glass of the leaded windows looks extra warm, the clouded sky above tends to orange, the pavement shines bluish under the street lights. Composition and post-processing feed these feelings and associations further. I find it a great subject - I hardly can wait for the extra touch the coming snow will add.

This will probably be my last blog entry this year - therefore this is the moment to wish you all a Merry Christmas and all the best in the New Year!

The Paper Mill

Paper mill “De Schoolmeester” (‘Schoolteacher’) is a very special place from a photography perspective. I have been there once before (check out here for the resulting pictures) – but enriched by new experiences since then I returned last weekend. And once again I was surprised by the ethereal, tender light that turns even the simplest things in little miracles. Outside watery sunshine, showers and greyness alternated – and as a result on the inside the soft light changed continuously as it caressing the interior. I took all time necessary to play with that light, and with the perspective: from the space in its entirety, with its almost mystical atmosphere, down to the smallest details and their ‘substance expression’.

Like the rough brush that looking through a macro lens seems to fade away in a mist of smoothness. Or this piled up bag of rags, raw material for the production of paper, covered under a thick layer of dust.

What does this light do to colors? Also they seem to be softer then everywhere else. This is reinforced by using a special capturing technique that confuses the eye, bringing sharpness and fuzziness of the very same together in a single image.

Please take a closer look here and let me know if you can guess what I did – clue: I wrote about it earlier below in this blog.

The Hague

A weekend ago I went out with the photo club for a shoot in The Hague. The objective was: practicing street photography. Now is that not really my cup of tea, but as you never know on beforehand what you get in front of your lens (besides the unavoidable St. Nicolas), and because it’s always fun going out with the club, I gladly joined.

And indeed, we did come across St. Nicolas, and indeed, street photography was not a particular success for me. Whether it’s my lack of fascination for scenery in the street or my diffidence to get closer is difficult to say – and probably it’s both.

Nevertheless, it was a perfect day. On one hand because it was indeed again utmost sociable and enjoyable together, but also because we discovered on our route a nice gallery where I discovered paintings of Esther Nienhuis being prepared for the opening next day, paintings made after photographs taken from behind wet windscreens – coincidentally a project I am working on too. Very coincidental, and inspiring too.

But besides that: after this photo (which you should actually see printed on baryta paper), taken in the first minutes after we left the parking upon arrival that morning, I knew this would be a great day.

Above a splendid patch of fog around the top of the futuristic ‘Hoftower’, dispersing the light of the rising sun. And below serene tranquillity, with a light that remembers of old pictures of Kertész.

Beemster Colours

A few weeks ago I was pointed at the American photographer Todd Hido. Hido is known from pictures that express a sense of being lost, displaced and excluded: images of homes at night with light behind just a single window; apparently random deserted landscapes in the rain from behind a dirty windshield; and models who seem to be left behind in anonymous motel rooms. It’s not just the subject but also the way the pictures are taken that convey that feeling – taken in a vague, grubby and alienating way. I was touched immediately. Not because the feeling resonates as such – although, who occasionally doesn’t feel himself as being a stranger? – but more by the immense tension the images convey so consistently.

Taking his remark seriously on how he learns from empathizing with the work of fellow photographers – “I have noticed within my own practice that adding a genre or another way of taking pictures, often adds an extra layer that complicates things more deeply.” – I chose to follow at least two of his trails (‘Landscapes’ and ‘Houses at Night’) to experience myself how image and imagination relate to each other with me taking the very same subjects. What kind of inner world would then shine through?

Last weekend we finally got the opportunity to make a trip in an everlasting drizzle – a wandering that took us to the Beemster. This earliest industrially reclaimed lake (‘droogmakerij’) in the Netherlands, which unique geometric landscape design is on UNESCO World Heritage Site list, I used to traverse often by bike in the past when I lived closer to it. The classical, symmetric grid of roads, trees, pastries and canals gives something endless to it, but not in a sense that makes you feel lost. Actually it has something very familiar, something that more represents like ‘home’ then as a deserted emptiness like how Hido represents the countryside.

And as a result I got, though taken under pretty similar conditions (from behind a sprinkled windshield), rather different images: water colors – how appropriate for a reclaimed lake in an autumnal rain. Dreamy pictures but with powerfully accentuated colors, in which lines are loosened and colors shift. Quasi the feet on the table and letting your mind go. Images that express more something of exploration than of drifting – where water gets fertile, emptiness space, and space gets home. That picture the tension between structure and creativity, dream and reality. And by doing so get closer to the prime reason why this polder was listed by the UNESCO: “The Beemster Polder is a masterpiece of creative planning, in which the ideals of antiquity and the Renaissance were applied to the design of a reclaimed landscape.”

On travel

Last weekend I and a few photo friends from Fotogroep Haarlem were guest of our sisterclub in Osnabrück, Germany. Between all the activities we had an hour to spend on photographing at a shunting-yard with old trains near the Pies Mountain. And being there you can choose many different points of view - of course without having had the opportunity to prepare yourself up-front, thinking about it. Still, after walking back and forth with the camera in your hand, you feel a 'story' emerging.

I got an association with ghost ships or space vessels that apparently are abandoned, but, after you climb onto one, suddenly sets in motion - steered by the invisible hand of an unknown life form that captures you to an obscure destination. Windows seem to invite you to take a look if you can detect the secret driver. Windows which reflections seem to mask what is behind it - or on the contrary, contain a clue about the destination. You start to feel the tension, and the curiosity where this might lead you. You look for more clues. Kneel down to see the switches and tracks, follow them to the next curve. You feel as if you are about to draw an important switch in your own course of life - beyond which there is no return.

In short, I felt reality shifting - felt the essence of what I want to achieve in photography: to experience reality beyond the visible, to capture it and to convey that shift to the observer too. Doesn't my photography want to be that ghost train that abducts the visitor - but possibly even more myself - to another, more-true reality behind what we can see?

Image and Language

I just put new photos, taken in Norway and Denmark, online on my website under the album name Trollheim - House of the Trolls. Please take a look. 

As I already described in my previous blog post, it wasn’t easy to find my photographic way in so much landscape, so much ‘emptiness and plainness’. Nevertheless, with hindsight, I am rather satisfied anyway – apparently I still was able to get my arms around it, I think - as this picture from the fjord at Odda might prove:

Usually you only know afterwards. In my experience, the development of photos happens in three steps. First while taking the picture. Things catch my eye, I make my choices, my composition – and usually that is done rather unconsciously, on automatic pilot. What did catch my eye, what my choices were, that is what I usually realize afterwards – at the moment itself I just feel an urge to press the release button.

The secondary process of re-discovery starts behind the computer, during post-processing, when I play with contrast and color, explore the possibilities (and meaning) of the image. Then things start to get their place – I get to see what moved me to take the picture, recognize the intent I (might) have (had) and bring that to the surface.

The third phase is when I oversee all of my selected and processed images and try to order them for placement on my website. They need to convey a common story together. Then the third instrument comes in: ‘beeldspraak’ (Dutch for: talking in metaphors, figurative language). People say often: "an image can tell more than a thousand words" – but I don’t agree on that. Language can be very figurative, and storytelling using figurative language can very well create its own images that are at least as powerful as the ‘beeldtaal’ (image-language) of the pictures.

Language gives context, enables to link, associate, and to put things in context. That is why I link on my website images with language – a language that besides conveying cognitive meaning (nouns) appeal on imagination by means of sound (e.g., alliteration) and figurative or physical associations. For example, in this latest album Trollheim I use images and sounds from Norwegian (mingling Dutch and Norsk to a kind of ‘Neersk’) and Norwegian mythology (the Edda) to ‘taste’ the images and (in the first place for myself) to give them context – which is also a kind of post-processing I wouldn’t want to miss.

Vice versa, this helps me to shift the emphasis in my post-processing where needed – and further back: to sharpen my unconsciousness to see things better next time, to better associate and capture better pictures.

I know, mixing words and images is rather controversial amongst photographers - but what do you think?

Trollheim

This holiday – we just returned last week – we traveled during three weeks through Norway. Beautiful country, breathtaking landscapes (Rondane, Dovrefjell, Jotunheimen, Hardangervidda en Ryfylkeheiene)! – an El Dorado for photographers. You would say. I had great difficulty with it.

How for God's sake do you make a picture that is as smashing as what you see in front of you? How simple isn't it then to fail, to just make a poor rendering, a travel guide illustration that doesn't give more than an impression, an encouragement to go there yourself? A doubtfulness that roots in the pleasure I had in the projects I did earlier this and last year, like citiZen and working with infrared, in which I layered a different way of seeing over 'reality' - which in the case of landscapes is just ‘a hell of a job’.

In the end I returned home with lots of these travel guide pictures and actually pretty neat ones too - but making them gave me hardly the fun that I tasted before. And so it became a struggle for me, though a learning experience too. I felt more than before that - at least for me - the challenge is not to capture what I see in the most beautiful way. It is my challenge to create an image that establishes a world in its own right that moves the imagination of the viewer

Luckily I achieved that a few times, I think - to layer my story over the landscape and to add a dimension to it. By choosing another perspective, making use of counter-light and strange weather conditions, and in post-processing for example by manipulating more explicitly the colors .

Two examples:

This image shows the fascinating landscape of Rondane - barren, deserted, covered with lichen as far as the eye reaches, with heavy clouds and drizzle You feel yourself laying on your belly, cold and left alone.

Hydro-power in one go: primary, energy, life giving - you feel it. Taking surprisingly at the side of the Trollstigen road.

In short, I need to reinvent my landscape photography (along these lines) - or quit with it. Difficult but I must - because landscape photography gives a lot of joy, not in the least because it gives me another reason to go out. The key? To experience the landscape even deeper and to capture it from within my emotion and my inner image – and to leave the travel guide-bias and photo competitions etc. for what they are. Recognizable?

Zonnestraal

Sunday - under an ever changing partially clouded sky - I went out taking pictures together with my photo-friend Nanda at Landgoed Zonnestraal (Sunbeam Estate) near Hilversum. The buildings, constructed in 1928 as sanatorium, establish the first example of concrete skeleton construction in the Netherlands, characterized by the enormous lightness of the architecture and experience, intended to let in sunlight as much as possible for the healing of tuberculosis patients.

As a photographer you must do something with this theme, this focus on light as therapy. So we experimented both with infrared and with double exposure. In the latter technique the same (digital) negative is exposed twice (or multiple times) in which two images are merged over each other in camera. Merely as in the old time you forgot to transport your film. Well, it was the first time I experimented with this and I quite puts a stress on your imagination, but I will certainly work with thing more often.

Take for example this image of the sight axis of the main building. It is comprised of two exposures, the first with a focus on the delicate rocket (regretfully not flowering anymore), the second with a focus on the building. The result required some post-processing - in particular making the overall image more bright - but the result displays a magical lightness, conveys the idea: 'there I will find healing'.

But also Nanda had to face up to it. I took two double exposure pictures of her just as a test, and I believe this one is the nicest of the two because of its composition of lines and the soft colors. Pay also attention to the subtle sky on the upper left reflected in the glass. Her smile prevents the impression of here being imprisoned behind glass - gives more the feeling of being healed.

Return of the citiZen

Last weekend I returned to the inner city of Amsterdam and to my mission of 'taking another few citiZen'. With the latter I mean a special kind of city photography, inspired by Saul Leiter, in which city images are captured in an intuitive, abstracting and esthetically way, in which alienation, reflections and multi-layering are important style elements. See for example also my earlier series citiZen and symphoNY on my website. And then now for the first time in Summer - meaning different light and more color! Evidently I had to get into it again - which was not easy. Nevertheless I returned with some nice pictures, like a portrait of this man, framed twice in multiple squares and surrounded by colors ands fellow citizens.

After lonely 'tigering around' for over three hours it was good to have a nice cup of coffee with my photo-friend Hester - accomplice in crime - in Café De Waag where our citiZen adventure started at the beginning of this year. We then moved on visit the EYE, the hyper-modern film museum across the IJ. Splendid building, perfectly apt to mixing Leiterian and good old-fashioned architecture photography. So, what to think of this peek through?

Within a colorful almost Mondrian frame we see two people, having a conversation at the water side, who, if you peek through your eyelashes, reduce to two (living) points that thanks to their sharpness immediately draw your attention. In both images I played locally with the vibrancy of the colors using hints of CEP3 Film Effects Fuji Superia 200.

Oradour-sur-Glâne

During our short break in June in the Corrèze region in France we visited the martyr village of Oradour-sur-Glâne. Martyr village as this once bustling village was massacred and burnt down by the German SS in June 1944. It was impressive to walk through the streets, between the burnt houses, looking through the open doors and windows and to imagine how the last hours of its inhabitants must have been.

I wanted to convey some of the oppression and dreadfulness with the images we took here. The low viewpoint and the hash contrast with which the pictures were converted in black & white conversion as well as adding grain in post-processing (all with Capture NX2 with CEP3) eliminate all that remembers of the nice summer weather - and make the images to an outcry against barbarity.