Three Pictures
Alright, I guess you could say that canals or tulips scream “Dutch” more than windmills, or maybe even wooden clogs, but it’s a close race. Perhaps they all do. However, there aren’t many (read: any that I know of) canals around Didam and, given that it’s February, the rows and rows of tulips in the next-door farm field are still bulbs in the ground. And as for wooden clogs, I’ve only seen them in gift stores, and usually it’s only one clog, often with a knick-knack or some flowers in it - they are not a Dutch fashion statement. Which gets us back to windmills because, indeed, there are plenty of windmills to be seen. Now, if you take out the new, modern windmills, then windmills are harder to come across. But I’m truly impressed about how often we’re driving around somewhere and, all of a sudden, there’s an old windmill. And apparently, a lot of them are still in use making flour. So windmills it is.
Which gets us to our story. I wish I could call it a photographic outing, but it wasn’t. It was actually a couple of weekends ago when I hit a mental brick wall, trying to catch up on everything that I’d gotten behind on when I took off for Portugal a week after moving in. In-between unpacking, trying to put finishing touches on our new place, dealing with Dutch immigration and business matters, and work I was . . . way behind. It’s either I’m getting old or it was just a whole lot of stuff to get accomplished (maybe both), but after a task-packed Saturday and a productive Sunday morning, my brain shut down.
So Ann suggested we go visit a near-by natural area. After the momentary fear that it would mean I wouldn’t get my “stuff” done, and the realization that with my mental state it wasn’t going to get done anyway (or it would get done poorly if not simply done wrong), I said sure (then again, maybe it was my lazy side getting the better of me). I looked on a map and it looked very do-able in a half-day. So I plotted a route, entered it into the car’s GPS and started driving there.
I immediately noticed something that I’ve begun to notice here quite a bit. The distance there. It was 7.2 kilometers away. On a map it looked really far away; it isn’t. As we drove there I also noticed that along the whole way, there was a bike path (except for inside Didam, where bikes share the road). We could have biked there. Well, not yet at least because we don’t have bikes, but . . . you know what I’m saying.
There are two roads that cut through the forest, and my plan was to drive through one to the other side, go down and take the other road back home. As we crossed through the first, there were a couple of pull-outs that we stopped at to scope out; both were trailheads. As we drove past a larger parking area, we realized that in one direction, the trail led to a windmill. We promptly turned around and parked.
Now, one reason this wasn’t really a photo shoot was, despite the fact that both Ann and I had worn heavier coats, we have not quite adjusted to the colder temperatures we’re experiencing in The Netherlands. We’re definitely used to the gray skies from both Braga and Oregon, but we are definitely not used to the cold. So the walk was a short one - up the hill and back to look at a windmill.
Yes, you read that right. A windmill, singular. Call it false advertising if you want, but despite the fact there are three photographs here, they’re all of the same windmill.
We’d brought along cameras (in my case the point-and-shoot Lumix, in Ann’s case her X100V) more to practice image making than to actually make any real photographs. It’s been so long since we’ve been out actually photographing (nonetheless doing landscape photography) that we’ve both talked about getting out to just make more images to start re-honing our skills so that when we’re out in the right conditions, we don’t feel totallylost. Of course, I always have an excuse to make an image (it might get used in a blog post), and to not get too frustrated that the conditions are not ideal, that too can get folded into a story.
Still, despite the wind and the cold, and the fact that conditions were not ideal, we both took great pleasure in slowly making our way up the low, short hill to get a better view of the windmill. Slowly, because we were both scouting the wooded areas to see if they might be worth returning to later (not really, but the other direction (into the woods) might have potential).
Eventually we got to the top and had a good look-see of the windmill.
We spent a bit of time wandering around, me looking for better windmill images, Ann scouting out a couple of paths that diverted from the main path at the top of the hill. I found a quaint composition not far down one of those paths. It was a good exercise in framing elements and seeing what can be had from a location.
And, after reviewing the images on my computer, they were a good reminder of how out of practice I am. The more you exercise your eye not only the more potential images you see in the world, but the more you see potential weaknesses immediately in camera and can correct so that the image is better. For the image above, I’m not too pleased with the merger of the church steeple and the small growth on the side of the tree trunk. That’s why we practice.
I guess I can’t complain our little excursion. Despite the cold and how that truncated our short walk, I got out, cleared my head a bit and worked my eye. Plus, we continued our trip and returned via the other road through the forest that’s farther south. Now that one seemed to have some better locations to explore! Although I suspect we’ll wait until it warms up a bit before we start exploring.