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Pictures from a visit to Prague

prague

It’s becoming more and more of a visual diary, but so what? I was in Prague for a conference. Of course, I took pictures; here are a few from that trip.

prague
prague
prague

Plastic lens in Rotterdam

I have this cheap plastic lens mounted on my old Olympus camera. For some reason, the Olympus does not work with autofocus lenses anymore, but I like the pictures that come out with the manual plastic lens.

On Looking

In ‘On Looking’ (‘Met andere ogen’ in het Nederlands) by Alexandra Horowitz, I read, paraphrasing: if you look closely, there is always something interesting to see.

As a photographer, I was already convinced of this. You should be able to stand anywhere and take good pictures. This principle is also one of the starting points of my Noord-Holland grid project: every block can bring interesting pictures.

Some photographers suffer from the opposite: looking for the most amazing image; Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment. BS. Recognizing a good image is then based on the images in your head. And thus, touching on Horowitz, you look over the other interesting things around you.

A third way of photographing is fantasizing about an image and making it. That is more or less how Jeff Wall works. He drives around the city, recognizes an image, remembers it, and later reconstructs it to make a photograph of it. Or Viviane Sassen, Andreas Gursky, Gregory Crewdson. The freedom of the mind is your only limitation.

Jeff Wall - The Thinker