De Efteling

De Efteling, in the Netherlands, claims to be one of the oldest theme parks in the world. Hard to resist a visit, when it’s a public holiday, the weather’s fine, and you have three children to entertain. The entrance hall is suitable spooky and impressive. Equally impressive is the interior of the construction. This “flying” [...]

Look around you

I took my son for a morning walk in the woods last weekend. He’s two, and so is more easily tired and distracted than most. Plus he had to stop at one point and sit on a tree trunk to eat his croissant. As he did so I started to look around me. I took [...]

B/W

I never really got into black and white photography. I can appreciate it when it’s done well, but I don’t think it’s for me. My photography, such as it is, is a reaction to what I see in the world around me, and I see the world in colour. I did experiment with black and [...]

Guest star

Quite often as I enter the building where I work I find myself walking in front of people taking photos of the sign outside (god knows why, it’s really nothing much to look at). I rarely if ever slow down or go out of my way, either because I figure it’s a digital camera so it [...]

Moon

Last night I went into town to see a film and as I had about 45 minutes to spare beforehand and the light was still good I wandered around with my camera. Look, we’re in the centre of Brussels. There’s a handy sign: In this kind of weather there are always plenty of people out [...]

Life in black and white

[Now updated with some extra info from Dad] I recently came across the My Parents Were Awesome blog, which features photos people send in of their parents before they were parents, back when they were young and fancy free and – who’d have thought? – maybe even a bit cool. I knew that my parents [...]

35mm

A few weeks ago I dug my old film camera (a Minolta X-300S, camera geeks) out of the basement. I hadn’t taken any photos on film for over five years, and I found half a dozen rolls of film sitting down there as well. Would they still be useable, or would the results be marred [...]

Old haunts

When travelling from one country to another I much prefer taking the train to flying.  The plane has its own pleasures, but travelling by rail, apart from offering (slightly) more legroom, also gives me the time to acclimatise to my destination. Passing through a country, rather than over it, you see the gradual changes in landscape, [...]

Travels with my camera

Taking photographs while travelling is something so apparently normal that most people probably don’t even think about it. I like to think I’ve got the balance just right between taking the time to take some good shots and not spending all my time with the thing glued to my face. I’ll always remember the couple [...]

Pictures at an exhibition

On Friday night we drove up to Borgerhout, just outside Antwerp, for the opening night of an art exhibition. Much as I’d love you all to believe that we’re the kind of culture vultures who attend gallery openings all the time, we had another reason for attending this one. Our friend Di was one of [...]