This here’s a bit of an abstract image of a hill in the south of the province of Limburg in the Netherlands and was taken some 20 km from where I was born. Since I’ve moved a grand total of 21 times, including to exotic places like Lagos, Nigeria and Paris, France, only to find myself within an hour’s drive of my home country. So much for being a world citizen…
Winter’s back with a vengeance: it could have easily been the title of a movie and walking outside in the evil cold I do indeed feel like hero John McClane at the end of Die Hard 58. I only vaguely remember feeling the joy of spring. When was that? Ah, right… less than a week ago. On the plus side: being stuck indoors, I’ve finally found the time to add some images to the wedding portfolio gallery.
Slowly but surely the thick layer of snow that has covered Brussels the past week is yielding to warmer temperatures, so I’m afraid we’ll have to stick to dreamin’ this year. The image shown above is from last Saturday and as usual I couldn’t choose so here’s another one, and here, here and here too. While I love the heat of the tropics, there is a certain magic in the frosty brilliance of a snow-covered forest in bleak wintry sunlight. Anyway, merry Christmas to all of you!
The first snow of the season arrived today around noon and it arrived in vast quantities. Especially the forest, where the falling flakes drown out all sound except the occasional happy twittering of a bird that hasn’t yet discovered it’s bad news for her, becomes a place of magic. One almost feels as if one’s the first to ever walk underneath its lofty canopy, trodding through centimeters of a snowy white blanket where no tracks yet exist, while mere minutes later the evidence of one’s own existence has vanished under a fresh layer. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…
One year ago today I got the news a friend had decided he was better off not living this life anymore and so I posted the simple things on this blog. All I said in that entry is still valid and so I present you with another simple thing: the branches of a bare tree. I took it a while back for a private client who wanted to have an image of a particular tree in a particular park as a constant reminder of the tranquility she’d felt just lying underneath it while looking up.
Lately I’m charmed more and more by old-fashioned black and white photography. I don’t know what it is. Nostalgia? Influenced by too many books by Ansel Adams or Cartier-Bresson? The fact that real life never is black and white but always a subtle shade of grey? Who knows. All I know is this image looks much better now than during its original colorful life (shot in January on my Alice in Winterland trip).
Yes, I know it’s still winter and I do vividly remember March 2005 when I went hunting in Friesland, the north of the Netherlands, and we had a metre of snow and it was freezing close to -20°C. So I know it’s wishful thinking but it sure looked like spring to me and so it did to everyone in Paris today with the sun shining and temperatures reaching almost 15°C. Should the world end tomorrow: today was wonderful. I love spring in Paris.
Alice in winterland: that’s how I felt when driving around the snowy countryside north of Paris today. That and cold: -11°C. Now I’ve finally warmed up and instead of feeling cold I feel bruised as my behind is showing all kinds of purple: besides cold it was extremely slippery, I found out the hard way. It seems I’m better suited for warmer climates.
It’s been kept secret for quite a while, but last weekend I discovered that the barcode system actually originated in the forest of Compiègne; the accompanying image serves as proof. By the way and totally unconnected to the origin of barcodes, proof that I was published in Dutch daily Trouw can be found by clicking here.
Big news: I kept my promise and went walking! This here would be today’s sun setting on the iron frame of the Paserelle Debilly near the Eiffel Tower. It was constructed in 1899 to manage the flow of visitors during the Universal Exposition of 1900.
