Dear all, I must firstly apologise for my...disappearing act, as I meant to wish you all here a delightful weekend, by posting this collage of Various Forms of Love. Obligations though on Friday morning, plus preparing for a short trip on this long weekend allowed for no time to do it.
I hope you all had a nice weekend and the beginning of this week has already found you refreshed and positive!
In this post, I'm sharing bits of yesterday's favorite moments, which marked both the beginning of the week and the last day of our almost four day trip to the Netherlands. By doing this, I'm also introducing and welcoming you to Photography...Through Ivy's eyes, which is exactly what it says it is: pictures taken by me, expressing the way I see the world. I have already being doing so since quite a long time, but this time it is official, therefore the addition of my label.
...just a few words about that:
Being mostly an amateur photographer, who uses at the moment a 5 megapixel Konica Minolta camera and has modest skills on processing, my pictures attemp to moslty represent reality, as seen of course through my perspective.
The main focus is on composition, depending on the way a capture is made, as it is naturally found in the environment. I do love to style also, but am moslty amazed by the beauty that exists out there in the world. I think that when I'm surrounded by beauty, I'm in a constant natural high!
So, to go back to the pictures of my photography series, they are hardly processed, with the exception of a usual increase in contrast, rarely in brightness and a slight emphasis on colours by increasing saturation. I use no filters either on the camera lens or during processing.
All the importance lies in the way the world is percieved and captured, through creating a pictrure. Cropping is a very important factor, which works well with my natural love for geometry!
But mostly the pictures are framed when clicking.
So, after all these introductional blah, blah, which I sincerely wish has not put you to sleep, how about some details of our trip to the Netherlands and more of them connected to pictures of this post?....such as this one?
Yes?...that's nice :)....cause I'm all in the mood for - selective - sharing!
So, our road trip to the Netherlands begun on late Friday afternoon, destination Amsterdam. Eventhough this was the third time I visit this city in a year, since last spring, it never, ever bores me!
As far as I'm concerned, I could be living there permanently, for reasons that will be stated in a different post, accompanied by pictures of course!
As the weather was dreamy sunny and pleasantly warm, all the time was spent strolling around the incredible streets by the canals, being breathtaken by the beauty of the old houses, the architectural elements, the incredible interior design - as people are totally relaxed and hardly hung curtains or blinds on their windows, plus they leave their front doors open quite often, while they are enjoying a coffee & reading their newspapers on the little balconies or even the road's pavement!
After two nights and two days, on Sunday evening, we drove direction Rotterdam, just about 60 km away, in order to take a quick look at the more industrial & modern architecture, but mostly in order to spend the night in a spacious and retro furnitured cabin of "De Rotterdam", an old 50's ship, renovated and transformed into a hotel. An evening walk to the Erasmus Bridge offered a spectacular view of the architecure by night, captured by my partner's patient skill - and qualified camera - on night photography. As the city doesn't exactly offer lovely corners to explore while walking, next morning, after a quick tour by car, we headed to The Hague, for breakfast and a walk in a park, where deers lived, having it as their residence.
And now we come to the highlight of the day, presented through the pictures of this post,
...or a coastal suburb a few kilometers from The Hague, situated in the south of The Netherlands, with small beautiful brick houses, lined by the beach, all with verandas and decorated with wonderful taste. An alternative summer destination for us - other than Greece of course, where I originate from.
Except from walking around, feeling the lovely breeze on our skin, while the sun was kissing us and smelling this incredible sea freshness and while of course taking pictures, relaxed time was spent at one of the cafes situated exaclty on the beach, where and around which the pictures of this post were taken.
I can still taste the warm brownie with the soft, white ice cream on top (sorry no pictures!) and the tea of red fruit....Having been brought up in a coastal suburb of Athens and having spent some 33 years of my life living by the sea, whenever I get near it, it is as if all worries just vanish and all thoughts can be effortlessly organised....and then just simply actions take place.
So, I hope you have enjoyed this small trip with me and should you have done so, thank you very much for being a visitor and taking the ride.
There are quite a few things running at the moment, one of which is a give away organised in cooperation with Dionne from City of Dionne - details are to come later today - and the continuation of it, another give away, which will take place here and on flickr, in order to celebrate the 100.000 of my stream, achieved some two weeks ago.
I'll be posting pictures of this trip to the Netherlands organised in groups throughout the week. I hope to achieve a satisfying level until next week, when we fly direction Greece for almost two weeks of summer vacation.
So, this is again a period that the title of this blog supports iteslf, as I'm a currently a rather busy bee!
Enjoy a great day! I'll be back later with detalis about the give away...see you then :)
