I’ve had this idea for a project for some time now, a project about Amstelveen, the town in which I have lived since moving from Ireland. It’s not a desperately nice town, it doesn’t have the amazing architecture of it’s big neighbour, Amsterdam. It’s one of those towns that by sheer luck of location has been subsumed into Amsterdam, with house prices to match. It’s fine though - we live in a nice part of town, far to the south where the houses end and the miles of Polder being and stretch as far as the eye can see. It has a lot of diverse neighbourhoods, most built since the 50s, that have grown up alongside the Beneluxbaan, the road that takes you north to Amsterdam, or south to the airport.

One of those is Uilenstede, where I’ve never really been before. You pass it on your way to somewhere else. But yesterday I had to go there to drop off a UPS parcel and noticed that for a photographer like me, who likes his urban misery served local, there were a lot of good photos to be had. Or taken. So this afternoon I took a drive back in 28c temperatures.

It’s essentially a big residential campus for the Vrije Universiteit a bit further up the road, interspersed with offices, car parks, a squatters camp, and some cheap hotels. And for a Sunday it was very quiet, not too many people around, so for an anxious photographer like me, it was great to be able to just go around taking pictures without drawing too much attention to myself. I’ll post a few in a collection later on, but it was a nice afternoon, and the Nikon Zf is a fun camera to use. Not too sure about the SOOC shots, I just can’t quite get that right. But no matter, I always edit the RAW files, I never bother with JPG’s.