I really must get another laptop, the fan on this one sounds like a 747 taking off in a headwind.
microposts
To the Japan Festival in Amstelveen yesterday. I would have loved to stay longer but it was so hot, and so busy. Last year it was 35c on the same day 🥵
This is the best I came away with.
Some light reading for the holidays!
This is one of my favourite photographs.
Taken by Robert Adams, it exemplifies his masterful black-and-white photography, which over the past forty years has chronicled the changing landscapes of the American West. His images, often sparse or entirely absent of people, nonetheless speak volumes about human presence—revealing it through littered roadsides, razed forests, and unfinished homes.
A quiet tension runs through Adams’s work: the stark contrast between the beauty of natural light and land as captured by his lens, and the visible scars left by human interference.
His photographs subtly undermine the romanticised myth of Manifest Destiny, exposing its emptiness. They offer a quiet but powerful critique of the enduring belief that the American West is an inexhaustible resource, free to be claimed and consumed.
Another one from my walk-about in Uilenstede. Very much enjoying the new Nikon Zf!
Alanis Morissette fairly rocking it out at Glastonbury. Think I’ll put on Jagged Little Pill later on - such a great album.
What’s the best way to find people to follow on micro.blog? I’m into photography, 80s and 90s culture (with a particular slant on UK culture as this is where I grew up), GenX, football (this »⚽ variety). I’m really liking this place and want to make it my home 😎
Getting my Henry Wessel on 📸
I’ve just realised why it’s taking so long to load the images I posted recently to my micro.blog - they’re all around 5mb in size bwahaha. Must check this in future, Lightroom creates enormous jpg’s.
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.
Some photos from Uilenstede, a neighborhood here in Amstelveen. Mainly office blocks and student accommodation, there are now also cheap hotels around making for a strange mix of people and vibes.
Taken with the Nikon Zf, a simply fabulous camera.
I tried to watch the press conference from the Pentagon on last night’s illegal attacks on Iran but just couldn’t stick it beyond the first three minutes. The glorification of military might, of destruction, of war, of death from the skies, and the continued elevation into sainthood of Tr•mp, a dangerous, senile simpleton, and a convicted fellon, by all his minions is frankly sickening.
“Peace through strength” is what the schoolyard bully or the nightclub bouncer would say.
I can never understand why I still get new followers even though I haven’t posted anything on Instagram since April. Twelve this week alone. I mean, thanks and all that, but yeah. Don’t expect too much from me.
Just heard this one go by. Forgotten how good it is.
Somewhere Only We Know Keane ‧ 2004
Well, discovered a site which streams two of my favourite films of all time, Diner, but also Paris, Texas. Can’t decide which one to watch first 🤔
I’m embarrassed by all the games I’ve ever bought on Steam and now never play. I reckon with the amount spent i could have bought a second-hand Leica. My currently most played games: Victoria 3, EU4, Grim Dawn, and, ehm, Farming Simulator 17 … I’m 55.
Some images from our trip to Austria last year, that I’ve just gotten around to editing :-)
Looking forward to the weekend. Nothing special going on, it’s just not work 😝
Sometimes I wonder if I have any talent for photography at all. After yesterday’s walk around the marathon that was taking place in the town, going in with a plan (“a documentary look at a marathon”) and coming back with two SD cards of crap images, I can’t help wondering if photography is for me…
I took a picture.
I wrote a thing
So much for exporting Instagram data in JSON format. It just doesn’t work. Now I’m left with this 600mb archive full of WEBP files that are about as useful for what I want to do as a chocolate fireguard. Why can’t things just work as it’s supposed to {shakes fists at clouds} …
Just discovered Pixelfed. Let’s see if that’s a decent alternative to Instagram. Anyone on here use it? I see you can link micro.blog up to Pixelfed.
An extraordinarily boring day. My wife is sick with the flue and in bed, and the kids are home but stuck in their rooms. Alone in a full house. Might go for a walk and listen to the football on the wireless.
Watching the Netflix documentary about the Yorkshire Ripper. Mid-70’s Britain looked so miserable (or they only filmed stock footage in the rain in January) but for anyone who lived through that time, and that place, was it really that miserable? Was there no colour, or was everything just brown?
I know Joni Mitchell is a legend and all that, but ‘Woodstock’ is a hard listen.
With everyone out, or at work, or asleep I went out for a short walk around the polder behind the house. I didn’t bother taking the camera, instead relying on the mobile phone. Listening to The Photowalk, a brilliant podcast about, well, photography…
Bloody hell, Aberdeen⚽️lose again, this time to Dundee United. After a bright start we’ve not won a game since the start of november. We’re slipping down the table. Celtic first, Rangers second. Natural order has been restored in Scottish football.
That’s the last of the food shopping done. I say last, but I’m already doubting if the 10kg’s of potatoes are enough. Ach, I’ll send the kids out for more later. I managed to clear out a load of gone-off vegetables (possibly from last Xmas) to make room for the turkey. Time to make the stuffing.
Bought Medieval Horizons by Ian Mortimer today with a gift voucher from two years ago that I found in the drawers when I was cleaning out the office before my holidays. 📚