One need not go very far to catch a glimpse of the beauty of the Netherlands.
Take these photos, for instance. They’re photos of a river that can be found just behind Amsterdam’s RAI International Exhibition and Congress Center. [NB: 'RAI' is pronounced as 'rye', i.e. rhyming with 'my'.]
Please click on each photo to see a larger version.
The river waters were quite murky and did not stir my interest at first glance. As I took in the entire scene, however, I gasped and forgot to breathe for a moment. For the river waters provided the perfect mirror to reflect the azure skies and puffy white clouds, as well as the cascading leaves of the trees along the riverbank. And I was just blown away.
It was a magical moment for me — the spring air was crisp and cool to the skin; the mallard ducks swam silently along the river waters, as though afraid to break the stillness of the morning; the sun was shining brightly, as though in apology for the dull, grey, rainy gloom that pervaded the previous day.
And the light — the magical Dutch light as explained in an article in a 2008 issue of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines’ inflight magazine, the Holland Herald — provided everything that I needed to capture that moment forever with my trusty old Nikon D40, without need for any editing afterwards. For it is light that makes a photograph sublime, with composition only a distant second.
Call me simple, if you will, but I found beauty in these seemingly mundane, everyday scenes.
It’s a universal fact that your mobile phone almost always rings when you’re in the bathroom or busy with something or another.
