Sunday 29 June 2014

Addicted to Colour

my niece Katie
my niece Katie
My niece Katie of almost 16 spent the weekend with me in Amsterdam. The first day she wanted to go shopping (what else does a teenager want to do in Amsterdam?) so we went to the Leidsestraat, a major shopping street and meandered our way through all the shops. Surprisingly, I bought more stuff than she did! I hadn't been shopping for clothes in ages and the sales were on everywhere. We ended our shopping spree having tea and apple pie at a lovely coffeeshop in the old centre of Amsterdam. We started dreaming about starting a place like that of our own in Zwolle, the town where she lives.
Katie and I in 'Toastable'
Katie and I in 'Toastable'
Today we went out to photograph: she wants to go to a vocational school for imagination and she asked me if I could teach her a thing or two about photography. We started with colour and pattern: just looking for colour or pattern without making stories or adding too much to the image. Here are my colour images:
colourful ropes
colourful ropes
blue car with red taillight
blue car with red taillight
blue and green container
blue and green container 
colourful flowers
colourful flowers
eyes of Vincent van Gogh
eyes of Vincent van Gogh
Katie in action
Katie in action
Nespresso window
Nespresso window
orange flower on iron sheet
orange flower on iron sheet
red pair of scissors
red pair of scissors
pink fence
pink fence
red bicycle basket
red bicycle basket
red bicycle lock
red bicycle lock
ashtray on red table
ashtray on red table
Katie in full swing
Katie in full swing
yellow motorcycle
yellow motorcycle 
banana-mango smoothie
banana-mango smoothie
Back at home we looked at her pictures and I was pleasantly surprised: she quite got the hang of it and understood what it was all about. Let's see what she is going to do later on in life. In the mean time: we had a great weekend!

Friday 27 June 2014

Motiv

The past few days I started working on another motiv and I wonder now why I haven't seen it before. Everyday at work I look out of the window and see a piece of sky between the concrete buildings of our university. Everyday that sky the light, clouds and colours are different. Below are some first examples, probably many more are to come.
motiv sky I

motiv sky II

motiv sky III

motiv sky IV

motiv sky V

motiv sky VI
I posted my last motiv in the Summer of 2013: the pictures were taken in downtown Amsterdam.

Wednesday 25 June 2014

Flowers

Yesterday I went for a little walk to the Botanical Gardens of my university. Here are a few images of the flowers in the garden.
flower buds of the marsh-marigold
flower buds of the marsh-marigold
yellow marsh-marigold
yellow marsh-marigold
pink hydrangea
pink hydrangea
pink hibiscus?
pink hibiscus?
papegaaibloem
papegaaibloem (sorry, couldn't find English translation)


Sunday 22 June 2014

Miksang Contemplative Photography Practice Day: Yoga and Meditation

Last Saturday Hèlen A. Vink of Miksang Contemplatieve fotografie organized another Miksang Contemplative Photography Practice Day in Zandvoort aan Zee. Practice days are open for anyone who has followed at least one workshop with her, otherwise you have no idea what it is all about. Last Saturday she combined yoga and meditation with the practice of contemplative photography for the first time.
red slippers in the grass
It was a small group of three practitioners that had gathered and we all knew each other from former contemplative photography workshops. We each had our own goal to come that day: two of us were curious about the effects of meditation and yoga on our contemplative practice and the third (Henneke van de Wateringen) was actually teaching the yoga part. For her it was the first time to teach yoga in combination with Miksang contemplative photography. So we had a lot of firsts today.
rainbow toenails
We started off the day by talking about where we were on our contemplative photography path: do we practice it daily, do we have our camera on us a lot, are we available to our world, do we see a lot and if so/not what do we see? We could freely share where we were, without judgements or negative thoughts. We were also aware that the current was the longest day of the year, the summer solstice, and that felt kind of special. We took a moment to celebrate that.
We also shared 15 of our photos of the last weeks that we had selected previously to arrival.
bicycle hooks
After sharing our experiences we had a meditation for 30 minutes in the Shambhala tradition led by Hėlen: eyes cast downwards but not entirely closed and focus on our breathing. Continuing the meditation we remained seated on our mats and did some easy yoga excercises to slowly start up our bodies. After about 10 minutes of those excercises we went outside to a little patch of grass where we practiced some simple standing yoga postures. It was more like tai chi: easy movements that could also be done by people without any yoga experience to warm up our bodies and to get the energy flowing.
colourful pillows
With the presentation of our photos, mediation and yoga the morning had passed away for the most part and we became hungry so we slowly walked our Miksang walk to one of the beach restaurants for lunch. The photo above and the one directly below are taken during that little walk.
pink poppies
Lunch was great: we all ordered fish and chips and had lots of fun with Hèlen trying to capture a selfie with the four of us (photos not shown). Of course that is not all about contemplative photography, but it was all about capturing a moment and all the fun we had while doing that.
At the end of the day I was wondering how I could keep my equanimity in discourse with others, because that is the whole point of meditation isn't it? That is a question which will probably take a while to figure out.
wrist with bracelets

purple slippers

Hėlen checking the selfies on her iPhone
Hėlen checking the selfies on her iPhone
Hėlen encouraged us to keep on photographing during the whole day, including in moments like lunch and dinner. In this way we'd learn to keep our awareness open all the time.
Like I said, the restaurant was on the beach. After lunch I hung around the boulevard for a while to see what was going on. The three pictures below I took from that area.
empty chairs

empty chairs

little girl on the beach
The rest of the pictures I took on the way back home. Hėlen gave us about an hour to roam around freely and an hour to select 20 pictures, 20 of our freshest moments. Below are the rest of my pictures of that day.
colourful spades
colourful spades
empty flower buckets
empty flower buckets
bright purple lavender
bright purple lavender
love padlocks
love padlocks
reflection of a white grid in a red car
reflection of a white grid in a red car
shiny curtain
shiny curtain
three brooms in a row
three brooms in a row
two flowers and the street
two flowers and the street
I hope you appreciate my images of the practice day. I had an amazing day filled with lots of tranquil, fun, fresh perceptions, love and friendship.

Saturday 21 June 2014

A walk on the beach: Water and Sand

The last post in this series of last weekend's beach walk is about Water and Sand. Obviously there is lots of both around on a beach, but I was looking more at the qualities of both or the essence: the sandness of sand and the waterness of water so to speak. Apart from that, when we came onto the beach the tide was low and the beach seemed endless, so we also experienced a feeling of space. That feeling of space is captured in the photos below, too.
half a circle of running water
half a circle of running water 
meandering water
meandering water
reflection of a man in the sea
reflection of a man in the sea
wetlands
wetlands
shimmering water
shimmering water
flowing water
flowing water
tide coming in
tide coming in
bubbly sand and water
bubbly sand and water
Hopefully you enjoyed what I saw.
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