Some more sand

Just like the assignment on sidewalks from the first day of the workshop 'Making Contact', I have a lot of extra sandy photos that couldn't make part of the selection. You have to choose, right? This is basically done by the following criteria: the freshest moment and the moment when you were definitely stopped. That doesn't mean that the other photos were not good, they were maybe just not that strong enough. And I noticed quite some photos with other stuff on it than just sand. I'll show a few examples here below.

carrot shape in sand

dog's footsteps in sand

footstep in sand with shadow 

hole and wood in sand

hole in sand

little holes in sand

pattern of truck tire in sand

red stone in sand

squares in sand

pattern of tire prints in sand

waves in sand 

wooden poles in sand

Yellow street curbs and handrails

There were a lot of pictures that didn't make it to the top 10 in the past few days. Looking back at them there are a lot of wonderful pictures amongst them and I saw a theme from the first day: yellow street curbs, handrails and such.

chipped yellow street curb

faded yellow street curb

round yellow street curb 

single yellow street curb

yellow triangle

yellow handrail I

yellow handrail II

yellow handrail III

lego like yellow street curb

yellow street curb and foam

joining street curb pieces

yellow table with glasses

Contemplative workshop, day III: people and cars

On the third day we started photographing each other. There is nothing like behaving as paparazzi amongst friends. We walked around the room, looked at each other and then when we saw something that hit us we said: "Stop, don't move." And we took a picture. After that we 'released' the person.

fellow participant on iPhone

man's forehead

my friend C. looking down

our teacher's hair

R' hand on her waist

The second assignment that day was to observe a car, observe it for half an hour and see what happened. Most of us got bored with the subject after a while, which was the whole point of the assignment. You then had to either give yourself a little rest or keep on looking until you saw something again. Very difficult, as the human spirit is sort of programmed to move on to something else when it's bored. Especially in this time of high speed internet and all the entertainments of social media.

double doors of a dirty car

side door mirror

tail light

After the assignments we could walk around in our own pace and direction. Here are two pictures of what I saw.

patterned moss in sidewalk 

piled up wood

Contemplative workshop, day II: sand

Day II was all about sand, the sandiness of sand, the qualities of sand. No story, nothing on the sand, just sand itself.

cracked sand

diagonal line in sand

drops of sand

long fingers of sand

patterns in sand

spiked sand

different colors of sand

trees in sand

triangles in sand

Contemplative workshop, day I: sidewalk

Today was day I of the workshop level II Contemplative photography, 'Making Contact'. After relaxing 'this' (inside of you) you start to make contact with 'that' (outside of you). Meeting fully, before our thoughts and without afterthoughts, in the moment. We experienced the totality of 'that' instead of going into elements (color, texture, pattern in level I). 

On the first day of the workshop we met sidewalks, we were looking at the sidewalkness of sidewalks, the essence of sidewalks. See below some of the examples of Zandvoort aan Zee.

It was a very grey day, so not a lot of 'contrast' and no vibrant colors. Instead there were a lot of soft tones. 

sidewalk with pattern

steps in striped sidewalk

street and sidewalk 

shapes in the street

triangles in the street 

triangles in sidewalk 

long yellow street curb