May 28, 2013

Retro handheld consoles to be featured in photo book

Filed under: Design,Photography by Orangemaster @ 9:21 am

From the guy who made a series of bright yellow video game consoles, a 21st century reworking of the very first arcade console, Martijn Koch plans to crowdfund a book entitled ‘2kB of Fun’ featuring his large collection of handheld electronic games.

Koch, an architect, started his collection by first using old eighties game consoles while redesigning an old bank building set to house 40 small gaming firms. “To give the floors their own identity, I bought a couple of bright coloured handhelds from the early eighties and photographed them. They ended up being too retro for the interior, but they asked for a nice treatment! I was missing a true celebration of these magnificent toys from 1976-1985.”

Feel free to like his Facebook page and of course, sign up to buy a book, which will hopefully be ready by December 2013, in time for the gift-giving season. Oh, and check out his personal pitch.

(Links and Photo: www.indiegogo.com, www.retrospace.nl)

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May 25, 2013

Photo essay of botanical garden in Haren

Filed under: Dutch first,History,Photography by Branko Collin @ 2:56 pm

Jip Moors and his father Holly went to the volunteer-run botanical garden in Haren and asked each volunteer what their favourite spot was. This led to an album of 16 photos by Jip Moors. Father Holly interviewed the volunteers and wrote the accompanying text.

The hortus botanica features amongst others a Chinese garden, a rock garden, an apple orchard and a bamboo forest.

The Hortus Haren was founded in 1626 in Groningen by pharmacist Henry Munting out of necessity—colleagues sent him plants from all over Europe and he needed a place to put them. Munting’s knowledge of plants grew enormously and at 1654 at age 71 he even became the first botany professor of the republic. Later, the Muntings had to sell the garden to the state because they couldn’t afford the upkeep, but they were hired for generations to tend the garden.

In 1917 the garden was moved to the nearby town of Haren because it was getting too big. The owners wanted to add new greenhouses for which there was no room at the inner city location. Currently the garden occupies 200,000 square metres.

(Photo: Jip Moors)

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March 17, 2013

Photos of an abandoned public pool in Rotterdam by Frank Hanswijk

Filed under: Architecture,Photography by Branko Collin @ 8:52 pm

Public swimming pool Tropicana was built in 1988 on the Maasboulevard in the heart of Rotterdam and closed its doors again in 2010.

The Vers Beton blog asked photographer Frank Hanswijk to go and take a peek, which he did. He created a short photo report in which he documents the rapid deterioration of an abandoned public pool. In as short a time as three years the water has receded and most of the plants have died, and in their stead rust and dirt are conquering every inch.

In the 1980s tropical themed public pools became popular in the Netherlands—at least in my recollection. These pools focussed less on lap swimming and more on other types of recreation. They were typically equipped with water slides, whirl pools, wave pools and so on, and were nicknamed subtropische zwemparadijzen.

(Link: Trendbeheer, Photo: Frank Hanswijk)

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February 2, 2013

Aerial photos of tulip fields by Normann Szkop

Filed under: Nature,Photography by Branko Collin @ 6:52 pm

Normann Szkop is a French photographer living in Brussels. Two years ago he convinced an Irish pilot living in the Netherlands, Claython Pender, to fly him over the tulip fields of Anna Paulowna (a place, not a person) near the tip of North Holland.

The colourful results can be admired at Szkop’s Flickr page. Szkop took almost 100 photos from the air and several from the ground.

Although Anna Paulowna is a town, it is named after a person, namely the wife of king Willem II and daughter of tsar Paul I of Russia, Анна Павловна.

(Link: The Verge. Photo: Normann Szkop)

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December 19, 2012

Many Amsterdam museums open on 1 January 2013

Filed under: Art,Film,Photography by Orangemaster @ 11:32 am

Everybody has some sort of party on New Year’s Eve, but what to do on New Year’s Day when you live in the capital and the town gets too quiet? Make going to a museum with friends and family a New Year’s resolution. Or there’s also the zoo, catching a film and some other tourist attractions.

The year 2013 will be a special year for Amsterdam as the city celebrates several milestones. The refurbished Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum will reopen, the Artis Royal Zoo will celebrate its 175th anniversary and the Amsterdam Canal Ring will celebrate its 400th jubilee.

Rijksmuseum (11 am – 5 pm)
Hermitage Amsterdam (including Van Gogh Museum exhibition) (11 am – 5 pm)
Foam (noon – 6 pm)
Stedelijk Museum (11 am – 5 pm)
Museum of the Canals (10 am – 5 pm)
Anne Frank House (noon – 7 pm)
Jewish Historical Museum (opens at noon)
EYE Film Institute Netherlands (opens at 1 pm)
Artis Royal Zoo (10 am – 8 pm)
Madame Tussauds (opens at noon)

(Link: www.dutchdailynews.com, Illustration: the Van Gogh that was ‘discovered’ last year)

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December 2, 2012

Robert-Paul Jansen, iPhone landscape photographer

Filed under: Photography by Branko Collin @ 3:38 pm

Gemonde is a small, cosy village in Noord-Brabant, just South of Maaskantje*, and bordered by the Dommel river**, which is where landscape photographer Robert-Paul Jansen takes his pictures.

Landscape photographers often want to bring along the biggest cameras they can find just to capture all that detail, but Jansen likes to use his Apple iPhone 4. Last week he told DPReview: “Smartphones typically have the largest viewfinders of all cameras, and this is ideal for taking landscape photos. Composition is key in landscape photography and a large viewfinder helps me to compose the shot easily. There are some limitations, like a lack of a true wide angle lens and zoom, but these things can be compensated for by using the right apps [for stitching photos together].”

I guess that the weight and size of the iPhone are also a consideration.

Besides an iPhone Jansen also uses more ‘serious’ cameras, as you can see on his blog.

*) Of the TV series.
**) Of the beer.

(Photo: Robert-Paul Jansen)

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October 4, 2012

Dutch photographer snaps couples who dress the same

Filed under: Photography by Orangemaster @ 2:59 pm

I learnt somewhere during my university years that children are seen as a generic group of humans. Then boys and girls and men and women are defined separately because they are sexually active. Eventually when women become infertile (they are the benchmark), both men and women are referred to as the elderly, going back to being a generic group of humans.

This set of photographs of mainly elderly people seems to back up my story. Dutch photographer George Maas took pictures of couples, men and women who are dressed almost alike. The last five years he managed to photograph 56 couples of all kinds.

I wonder if elderly gays and lesbians are inclined to follow suit (ha, pun).

(Link: www.jut-en-jul.nl, via www.iamexpat.nl)

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September 29, 2012

How Iran censors a Dutch newspaper

Filed under: Photography by Branko Collin @ 11:15 am

Jan-Dirk van der Burg curated an exhibition called Censorship Daily which is on display now at the Persmuseum.

It shows the handiwork of Iran’s censors with regards to Dutch newspapers. NRC has a selection at their Inbeeld website.

Van der Burg is a photographer whom we wrote about before.

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September 14, 2012

Cute blonde princesses on children’s charity stamps

Filed under: General,Photography by Orangemaster @ 9:49 am

A new series of charity stamps (‘kinderpostzegels’), which are sold door to door by school children raising money for poor kids in poor countries , will feature the ‘Triple AAA’, aka Princesses Amalia, Alexia and Ariane, the daughters of Prince Willem Alexander and Princess Máxima. The Triple AAA joke was said by the Prince himself once, we can’t take credit for that.

Starting 26 September, one of the 200,000 school children who sell these stamps will ring my neighbour’s door bell and sell him pics of the young blonde Dutch royals. In November, the stamps will be available for purchase at the post office.

(Link and photo: binnenland.nieuws.nl)

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August 15, 2012

Rotterdames, 3 times 52 odes to the women of Rotterdam

Filed under: Art,Photography by Branko Collin @ 11:11 pm

The name may be a bit unfortunate—rot means the same thing in Dutch as it does in English—but what were they to do?

They being three artists who post their own odes to the women of Rotterdam each week at Rotterdames.net, creating a vivid cross section of the second-largest city of the Netherlands in the process. Baschz is the sketch artist, Milan Boonstra the photographer and Janjoost Jullens the writer of the website.

According to De Weekkrant, the artists have already published more than 100 odes and are well on their way to their goal of 156 odes.

The news site quotes Janjoost Jullens about what makes the women of Rotterdam so special: “They are real, more real than anywhere else. They do not need to be pretty in a model kind of way. In Amsterdam the ladies look beautiful from a distance, but when you get closer you see it is all fake. In Rotteram what you see is what you get. We would like to thank the women of Rotterdam for that. Our odes are really a sort of ‘thank you’.”

And in that spirit I would like to tip my hat to Rotterdame Astrid Oosenburg for telling me about this initiative.

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