Tag: photography

The strange things you see in Amsterdam

Here we are! Oooh, and a giant sign to tell us so.

And here is the sign in its entirety. The sign/sculpture is at Museumplein (Museum Square) near the Van Gogh museum. There is an ‘I amsterdam‘ tourism campaign. I like the small pun.

I am Joan!

Here are the most Amsterdamish modes of transport — canal boats and bicycles.

And tiny putt-putt cars. These Canta LX cars are everywhere.

Amsterdam is Bicycle Capital. Cambridge and Oxford have NOTHING on Amsterdam. I have never seen so many bicycles. There were lots of strange ones but I only got a picture of this one. I saw one rider with a child in front, a baby at the back and a dog in the pouch.

Obviously, bicycle theft is rife so there is a roaring trade in bicycle locks.

And, apparently, a similar crime spree for outdoor furniture theft, too.

I found this little clog at Albert Cuypmarkt, where my parents and I went to by fruit and nuts.

I learned something at the Jewish flea market in Amsterdam.

Other things you can buy at the market — hash pops.

And cannabis lollies. The signs made me giggle. I like puns, remember. Why is the sign in English? It must be for the benefit of the tourists. Nearly all Dutch people under a certain age speak some level of English as well.

Speaking of clichés and stereotypes, what’s with this bar? Slanderous!

Amsterdam is home to some of the most famous art in the world by Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Vermeer. The whole time we were in Amsterdam, we didn’t step into a museum once. We did enjoy the free street art, though. This was just off a main road.

Someone or some people seem to have decided to use temporary construction fencing in Vondelpark for a modern art installation…

More ‘art’, this time the lights in our hotel room.

Amsterdam is full of really interesting buildings, old and new. You can see in this photo the hooks on the roof of each house. Lots of houses have them. The hooks are used to hoist things to the upper floors of a house. This is necessary because houses in Amsterdam are narrow and their staircases are narrower. In fact, Amsterdam claims to have the narrowest house in the world. A curious by-product of this hoist system is that many Amsterdam houses have a distinct forward lean so that things being hoisted up don’t bang against the walls.

I have no idea what ‘BELT U EVEN’ means. It might be English or it might not be.

…Ah! I’ve just put ‘belt u even’ into Babel Fish. The translation from Dutch to English is ‘you ring just as’.

More soon

I’m back from Amsterdam and Paris but am very bogged down with work. I will entertain with just one photo. I took this one near Thirlmere, a lake in the Lakes District. The ‘whoosh’ effect is because I zoomed during a long shutter speed.


I’ll have some things to write about visiting The Continent (red light districts, hash pops, more crêpes). It was a lot of fun and I was sad to see my parents go through the gate at the airport.

Stonehenge and Warwick Castle

I am in a bed-and-breakfast in Warwick, a small Tudor town in the middle of England. My parents and I have spent the last three days at Stonehenge, in Bath and at Warwick Castle. The castle was particularly enjoyable — we spent 5.5 hours there. It’s like a medieval theme park in a real historic setting. Stonehenge was less impressive; we made the mistake of going on a sunny Good Friday holiday so were stuck in a traffic jam for more than an hour, just two miles from the site. It wasn’t a waste of time, though. The audio tour makes all the difference.

Stonehenge on a beautiful spring day.

There were lots of tourists, all posing and taking photos. I’m kind of sad that every tourist seems to have a camera and is mindlessly snapping away. I can’t actually complain because I probably do it as well. It just feels like the way people hunt and take trophy animals; they’re taking trophy photos to prove that they were here.

Anyway, what I meant to write is that I like this little guy’s way of posing.

One of the younger tourists-with-cameras.

Warwick Castle is very impressive. I don’t have a photo of it in its entirety because I used a telephoto lens today (and was too lazy to change it). Hopefully, I will get some good photos of it from my parent’s camera. Here I am in front of the Castle Mound.

The Warwick Bowman was very funny. He was the highlight of the visit. If he was a rock star, I would be a groupie. Here he is, demonstrating to Alex (the boy) and the crowd how inadequate bowman armour is for protecting people against a sword strike to the neck.

We were lucky in that I accidentally arranged to be at Warwick Castle on the Easter weekend. Easter Sunday (today) is the anniversary of the death of the Earl of Warwick in the Battle of Barnet in 1471. Today, there was a full scale re-enactment of a siege battle. It’s actually less riveting than you might expect but I appreciate the effort the actors have gone to. The armour is really heavy and hot, especially on a warm day like today.

I am not sure why there were women on the battlefield. These women had come down from the ‘camp’. We visited earlier and the actors were lying around, cooking or making armour and shoes. They cook pheasant, rabbit and bread and eat it throughout the day! Imagine getting paid to do that! Dress up in costumes, relax in tents and eat!

The big WEEE Man


This sculpture was in the Outside Biome of the Eden Project. I really like it. It’s called ‘The WEEE Man‘. WEEE stands for ‘Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment’, one of the more amusing acronyms in the sustainability field. It comes from the European Union WEEE Directive, which puts the responsibility of collecting and disposing of WEEE on the manufacturers.

The WEEE Man is made up of the amound and types of waste electrical and electronic products that an average UK citizen throws away in his or her lifetime. The sculpture is seven metres tall and quite impressive ‘in person’.

I was pleased with the explantory notes on the car bonnet next to the WEEE man. The writer had correctly identified that the greatest environmental impact in the lifecycle of a car is when it is being driven around. The manufacturing and disposal impacts are relatively minor. If you have an old bomb, you would be doing the environment a favour by getting rid of it and buying a more efficient new car.

This gives rise to the counter-intuitive notion that car manufacturers should design for performance, and limit a car’s durability. We don’t really want to let people drive around a ten or twelve year old car.

Dancing on the beach

For the three mornings we were in Cornwall, I got up to go for a walk on the beach. On the final morning, I walked with Gráinne and Amanda. When we turned to go back, I looked at our incoming footprints.

The set furthest away from the ocean belonged to Amanda.

‘Your footprints are quite deep,’ I commented, surprised because Amanda is a smallish person.

‘I’m wearing boots,’ she explained.

Gráinne’s footprints were slimmer and lighter. I glanced at her feet and wondered how her white shoes had stayed white during the field trip.

‘Your footprints are deep at the toe,’ they pointed out to me.

I thought about this for a while. ‘It might be because of my dancing. I’m always getting told to push off from my toes.’ I felt pleased that my dance practicing had translated to my beach walking technique.

‘Hey! I’ve got an idea! People could dance on the beach to see if they’re getting their dance steps and footwork right!’

I immediately launched into a samba walk. ‘One. a-Two. One. a-Two…’

I stopped to look back at my trail. ‘Woohoo!’ I shouted. My footprints were properly turned out and deep in the toe. Success!

The most active members of my course got up for a 7 AM jog and swim in the cold Atlantic. Brrr!

We were more civilised and went clambering over the rocks.

A week in Cornwall

I’ve spent most of the week in Cornwall with my classmates, which is why I haven’t replied to my emails or updated my blog. I really enjoyed the field trip and will have some pictures and stories.

We stopped at Bath (my second visit now) and had lunch in front of the Royal Crescent.



Here are two photos I took from my early morning walks along a beach in Newquay, where we stayed.

These are some of the biomes at the Eden Project. They are giant glasshouses, which lead visitors through a tour of human dependence on plants.


Both these photos come from the Humid Tropics Biome. It really did feel like we were in Malaysia or Brazil.

This statue was one of many in the Warm Temperate Biome.

BBQ season

I have been missing BBQs. Back in Australia, it’s summer and we would have had two or three BBQs by now.

Cambridge weather is fickle. After a week of sunshine, the temperature plunged. We even got sleet.

Today, though, spring fought back. Brendan celebrated his birthday with the first real outdoor BBQ (we had an indoor one at Ian’s place on Australia Day in January). Mmm, roasting meat…

The party begins. This is Brendan’s backyard.

It was a generous BBQ, with sausages, hamburgers, chicken, veggie burgers…

We hovered between indoors and outdoors, depending on the temperature.

People had fun.

Food porn

A term that makes me giggle is ‘food porn’. You’ve seen it in recipe books: close up shots of glistening food, saturated colours, inviting textures… Touch me! Eat me! Love me! Mmmmm, drool.

Digital Photography School offers an introduction to becoming a food porn artist. Choice magazine exposes the amount of primping and styling needed to produce drool-worthy photos. Tips include:

  • If you’re not advertising the ice cream, you might decide to go fake — coloured mashed potato can make a reasonable substitute.
  • If your Swiss cheese isn’t looking photogenic enough, enhance its holes — use little round cutters or even straws for small holes.
  • Spray deodorant can give a nice frosting to grapes.

Hmm, I suspect my blog will now be flooded with visitors who have put ‘porn’ and maybe ‘coconut’ into some search engine. Nothing to see here, guys. Sorry to disappoint.

Damjan called this ‘Emperor Cake’. There were lots of walnuts in the recipe.

Kate, Damjan and I had breakfast in Bendigo a few years ago. Wow, has it really been that long?

You’ve seen this photo before. But in the spirit of food porn, I have increased the saturation and used a soft focus. One of my favourite things about hanging out with Damjan is his keenness for making (and eating) bread.

Natural history and gardens

Damjan and I wanted to go see a show in London but it seems like the theatres take a break on Sunday. The only shows on were Stomp and the Blue Man Group, both of which we have seen.

So instead, we visited the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and Kensington Gardens. Today was sunny, windy and cold.

The Natural History Museum is housed in a beautiful massive terracotta Victorian building, purpose-built to house the collection. I took this photo from in front of a cross-sectional cut of a 1300-year-old sequoia tree on the first floor landing.

We learned about how humans fit into the primate family and our evolutionary links.


This is Royal Albert Hall, the famous concert hall opposite Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens.

Damjan is looking at the Albert Memorial, which I thought was just a little too big and a little too gold to take seriously.

The statue of the man on the horse is called ‘Statue of Physical Energy’. The sun was shining on the statue-man’s face and I thought it was very neat, the way he was shading his eyes. I wonder if the alignment was deliberate?