Amsterdam was a city that I visited quite a lot a decade ago. Some of my friends live there, and my cousin lived there. Sometimes, I worked there as a private cocktail shaker for private parties. Or I had a few photography gigs in Amsterdam. For work or fun, it was always nice to be in Amsterdam. Whether it be by car or public transportation. I enjoyed the whole trip. While Amsterdam is usually a city people know because of the red light district or the number of weed shops. I usually was drawn to it because of the 'type' of people that live there, and the history the city holds.
The type of people who live in Amsterdam is pretty different from the people that I'm used to in the East part of the Netherlands. I'm not surprised by all the tourism. You got to have an open mind when you walk down the streets of Amsterdam as a local. In my own opinion, most people from Amsterdam are pretty open, chill, and are pretty quick at making connections with random strangers. At least, that's how I experience most of them. Where I'm from, we're often called "the farmers", and people are usually surprised that I'm one of those farmers living in the East part of the Netherlands. Well, yeah, I kind of get what they mean by that. Most people here are pretty much on their own, a bit closed, and super direct. But of course, like with any place, there is a variety of different people everywhere. You can't put all of these people under one umbrella, right?
Either way, Amsterdam reminds me of the golden age of the Netherlands, even though it may not be even true, I get the feeling that a lot of good shit started in Amsterdam, while I often forget my own city, which had plenty of stuff that started here.
In this blog post, I'm taking you back to 2016, quite some years ago, but it was a time for me when I was way more outgoing, and did all kinds of stuff every single day, whereas today, I'm having a hard time getting out of the house lol.
The red muscle car
There is this one shot that stuck on me, a red muscle car, passing by, completely unexpected. I bet you're getting quite some eyes if you drove one of these bad boys. I was just walking outside, not so far away from my cousin's place, and was testing out a panning technique.
If you're doing it right, it should look something like this below;
The Panning Technique
The panning technique is "easy" once you get the hang of it, but rarely do you get the shot you want in one go. This can be challenging, as you most of the time have one opportunity to shoot a panning object (as it moves away from you) unless you're on the move yourself.
The trick is trying to move your camera as fast as the object while having the object constantly in focus. This may sound challenging, but if you're used to your camera, you should be able to focus manually on auto-pilot. Not sure what law we can apply here, if one object is moving, and the other is not, it should be having some kind of leveraged calculation behind it. Like, if two vehicles crash into each other. The other trick is to have a shutter speed lower than you usually have, which makes it pretty tricky and precise. The slower the shutter speed, the blurrier the image, which means you have to pinpoint the speed of the object more precisely to get a sharp image.
It kind of started with drinking a cup of coffee at my cousin's place. Back in the day, he lives a few blocks away from the 'Albert Cuypmarkt', a street where the very first (or oldest) market of Amsterdam takes place. I'm not sure, but I think there is a market almost every day. I can't remember exactly why I was in Amsterdam, but in 2016, I frequently visited my cousin in Amsterdam. He's a busy guy and a smart one. I probably had to work, or was around and stayed over. I live on the other side of the country, so it's nice to see your family if you can.
They lived in a very nice house at Oud Zuid. Oud Zuid is pretty known among the locals. It is a beautiful part of Amsterdam with old big historical houses, and lots to do.
When you think of Amsterdam...
You most probably will think about weed, the Red Light District, all the canals, windmills, and tulips. If you have visited Amsterdam, and Venice, you might refer to Amsterdam as 'small Venice'. Back in 2016, we had these I <3 CITY letters, all across the globe. This was mostly the first thing you'd see if you took the train from Schiphol Airport to Amsterdam Centraal.
The 'I Amsterdam' was a huge success and a big tourist hot spot. Later, it was removed for some weird reason. It attracted too many people or something. Yeah... well... uhu. Isn't that what it was for? Of course, people wanna take pictures in front of it!
When I walk around Amsterdam
I often fail to see the beauty of Amsterdam, as I'm a Duch guy myself. The architecture is different from where I live, but not so much. It's pretty much eye-opening to see photographs that tourists took while visiting Amsterdam and share them online. I'm like... huh, is this Amsterdam? Or; that's captured in a pretty amazing way!
Amsterdam is nice
It's always packed with tourists, and whenever you visit Amsterdam, you have a big chance of bumping into one of the open-minded locals.
Almost 7 years
I took these photographs almost 7 years ago. I shared a few of them, but most of these images didn't make it. I've been making and hoarding memories on my HDD for a long time, probably 16 years. Most of my photographs are sitting idle on my HDD and I used to be so busy with work that I couldn't edit them. After COVID, things have become pretty silent and I'm not as busy as I used to be. It's a good opportunity to check, edit, and delete some photographs from my hard drive.
Just a stroll
This was just a midday stroll in Amsterdam. I hope to show you a bit of Amsterdam from a different perspective. I have seen photographs from those who have visited HiveFest7 in Amsterdam which was awesome to see. This shows the more ordinary side of Amsterdam I guess, haha! Looking back at all these photographs, I can end this blog by saying that it was a good stroll indeed!
Cheers,
Ruben
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