Study Abroad Amsterdam
Hello, World!
Week Zero: Packing
The next few photographs you see might not be the most exciting visually. However, they inspire a spark within me because they represent the start of my next great chapter in life. In less than five days I will be flying out to Amsterdam, Netherlands, to study at the Amsterdam University of Applied Science in a six-month semester abroad program.
Without a doubt packing for a trip is the least exciting aspect of the trip, but it is also one of the most important. I had to reduce an entire closet down to a single suitcase, choose the camera gear that I believed was absolutely necessary, and tried to remember all those important documents, like my housing contract, plane ticket, and what was the other one...oh, yeah, my US passport—don’t want to forget that. Believe me, it's harder than it looks. Even with COVID-19 still ravaging the world I have great hopes that the next six months will be some of the most memorable in my life.
Week One: Arrival
My first post about packing for my trip abroad may not have been the most exciting, but let’s hope the future ones are more lively because, after a 22-hour flight, I have now arrived in Amsterdam. I did not waste one second getting my camera out. In fact, I had my camera in hand before the plane even landed, taking shots out the plane’s window of the city and landscape below me.
Once I got through customs and collected my luggage, I took the train direct from the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol to Amsterdam Central. It was either a very expensive trip or I messed up buying the ticket because I paid $20 for a 25-minute trip. I decided to walk from Amsterdam Central to my apartment, and I had my camera out for the entire 2 miles. Photographing a new city, and dragging my six months’ worth of luggage around certainly slowed the trip, turning it into a four-hour self-guided photography tour of Central and East Amsterdam. Finally, I arrived at my apartment and was able to check-in, get the keys, and go to bed. Hint: walking around lost for 4 hours after a 22-hour flight makes one very tired.
I am still trying to get my bearings here in Amsterdam, but the start of my great journey abroad has begun.
The rest of my first week in Amsterdam wasn’t the most exciting in terms of storytelling. It was mostly walking around my neighborhood trying to get a good sense of the city and getting over my jet lag. Finding the best cafe, grocery store, and getting a bike was not even on my mind. Instead, I was just trying to pull myself out of bed and do something to keep me awake. So I simply walked around with my camera, taking photos of anything interesting I came across. Then I would try to find my way back to my apartment without the use of Google Maps to convince myself that I was becoming more familiar with the layout of Amsterdam. Let’s hope that my second week in Amsterdam leads to something more productive and to some even greater photographs.
Week 2: Settling In
At the start of my second week here in Amsterdam, I have finally gotten over my jet lag. Now that I am not falling asleep at 8 pm every night, I can finally go out and do some evening and night photography. Like most major cities Amsterdam is much more photogenic at night when the sun goes down; when the city lights turn on the entire atmosphere changes. Photography at night certainly has its challenges especially when the tripod you have is only about 8 inches tall. This forces one to really consider how to frame a photograph, and the limitations it places can lead to some very unique perspectives. It forced me to get down on my hands and knees to photograph under the railings or set up on top of a trashcan to achieve the height I wanted. While a challenge, I am much happier with the result of this week’s photographs than with my first week’s. I hope that they only keep getting better.
During my second week in the Netherlands, I met with one of my father’s old contacts, Toon. We traveled to the small Dutch town of Dalen. This was the town my father lived in and studied at while he was in the Netherlands 40 odd years ago. Toon and I biked around the small town hitting all the major landmarks including the church and windmill, then visited his old house, the house my father lived in while he was abroad.
All in all, it was a nice trip outside the city, and it gave me a stronger connection to the people who live here
Week 3: Getting Started
At the very end of the second week and the start of the third week, I made another trip out of Amsterdam to meet with Toon and his family, and we explored the city of Utrecht. Utrecht, known as the medieval center of the Netherlands, holds plenty of sights—the biggest being the old churches. I had a great time walking the city photographing the churches inside and out. After Toon and his wife, Jacqueline, let me come to their hometown, Cothen. Cohen is a small little country town that holds a lot more natural beauty than large cities like Amsterdam. There I was able to explore the countryside on a bike and capture a few nice photographs of the town and the old medieval ruins.
Den Haag(The Hague)
My study abroad program has finally started, and the first official meeting isn’t even in Amsterdam. Instead, it is in The Hague, home of the Dutch parliament. This historic city holds many beautiful sites, new and old, and it is where I met my fellow students, and where we kick-started our five months together. This next set of photographs shows my time meeting and hanging out with my new friends exploring the city, museums, and the beach together, and all-around having a great time learning more about each other.
Our time in The Hague was not only about getting to know each other, we also had a few assignments to get us started as visual storytellers. We had to create a diptych or two photographs that are presented together, each one complementing the other. We were also tasked with getting out of our comfort zone and we had to take a portrait of a stranger we met somewhere in The Hague. Finally, we also had to create an About Me video, and go into what makes us visual storytellers.
Portraits in the Park
Diptych Photography
About Me Video
Week 4: The ClassRoom
The second week of classes is here and we are actually doing class lectures, or at least we start in the classroom before we head out to the park to put what we learned into practice. This week was all about shutter speed and capturing movement in different ways. From left to right we have a freeze motion shot, blurred motion, panning, and multi-exposure photograph to show all the different ways one can capture motion in a 2-dimensional plane.
Towards the end of week 4, I went for a long walk and after a ferry crossing I ended up in Amsterdam-Noord. Amsterdam-Noord was a very different and beautiful part of Amsterdam, with lots of forests and parks. I wandered around with my camera for about 2 hours following the different paths and roads through the forest, and just enjoying myself.
Week 5: HumDrum of Class
Another week has come and gone here in Amsterdam, time is certainly flying by. I’ve already been here for over a month, yet I feel that I have done very little. This past week was all about trying to find a good rhythm between classwork, exploration, and getting to know my fellow students better.
Creating a sense of depth in a photograph is one of the most powerful skills, and it was this week’s subject for the photography half of my classes. Depth of field in photography is controlled by aperture, relative distance from the subjects, and focal length. Here are two examples of taking similar photographs with two different apertures.
Taking photographs is not the only thing I have studied here in Amsterdam, I also have classes in graphic skills and brand identity, two subjects I am unfamiliar with. This week we headed off to the local grocery store and found a product we wanted to rebrand. I chose a QTee Pear and did these sketches of how I wanted to rebrand and package them. I’ll admit my drawing skills are pretty bad, certainly worse than my photography, and you probably have no idea what you’re looking at, but that’s alright because next week we will be switching products randomly in class so that we can go from client to designer.
Week 6: Go Big or Go Home
This past week has been similar to the past few humdrum weeks in many ways, except for one big change. After weeks of brainstorming, planning, and preparation I now have the approval to start my two-month Photography Story Project. This is a long-term photography project, where each of us gets to choose our own theme and subjects, as long as it gets approval from the professors. My project’s theme will be on overcoming one’s disability and will focus on athletes with disabilities. With the help of the Only Friends Sports Club, an organization that provides a safe environment for anyone with a disability, to come and play sports of all kinds, I have finally been able to get started.
Thanks to the Only Friends Sports Center allowing me to take photographs of their athletes for the next two months, I finally got started and spent about 10 hours last week, meeting new people, and photographing them playing and practicing sports. I was able to watch and photograph all types of sports from soccer, tennis, and handball to wheelchair basketball, cycling, and dance. I captured over 3,000 photographs, and, in truth, there are only about 100 or so that are good.
Sadly this week I will only be posting photographs of Wheelchair Basketball, and Soccer/Football, because the majority of the athletes are children and I am uncomfortable posting their photographs online without written consent from their parents. Luckily Wheelchair Basketball is a small team made up of adults, and on Saturday during the Soccer/Football games I was able to get signed consent forms from the coaches to post the games photographs online. I certainly had a fun time photographing these sports and am looking forward to going back over the upcoming weeks.
Week 7: CityScapes, Portraits, and FootBall
The past week was great for photography because after 2 weeks of almost constant rain, the clouds cleared and I finally saw some blue skies. The clear skies encouraged me to go out and take some more photographs of Amsterdam. This time instead of walking through the city I tried for an outside view that would give me an overview of Amsterdam. I travel out to the bridges at Zeeburg, which I had been crossing to get to Amsterdam Noord and the Only Friends Sports Center, hoping to get a great view of the city. Sadly the bridge was still a bit too close to the city, and too far away from the historic downtown to get any amazing cityscape photographs, but that is not to say that I didn’t get any good photographs. I was still able to photograph the bridge itself and the surrounding area, capturing some great photographs of a somewhat hidden area of Amsterdam.
For class this week we focused on Portraiture, and after a brief and somewhat meaningless lecture, we wandered around the building in groups of 4 trying to capture some good portraits of each other. While not a very organized or professional session like I am used to I was still able to capture some solid portraits of my classmates; I even ran across a room labeled photo studio, however, it was locked, and not even my professor had a key to open it, so it remains a mystery as to what is inside.
This past week ended in the same way as last week, on the Football Fields taking photographs of the games taking place over the course of the day. I saw and photographed a total of 3 matches, including a full field 11 vs 11 game which I missed last week. After some tips from my professor, I was able to capture the games more successfully and I am much happier with the final photographs this week. All the photographs are black and white this week, in an effort to emphasize the emotion that can be seen within these players’ faces.
I started this week trying to capture the beautiful cityscapes of Amsterdam and while I was able to create some great photographs, they failed to meet my goals and expectations. So Sunday night I went out with the goal to fix that. I traveled by fairy across one of the major canals and went to Amsterdam Tower also known as A'DAM Tower. A’DAM Tower sits right across from Amsterdam Central Station, and the historic center of Amsterdam, 22 floors tall, gives you a great view of the city. The clouds were rolling back into Amsterdam while I was up there taking photographs but I was still able to capture some great views of the city. The next few photographs show my walk over to the tower, the views from the bar/restaurant, and of course photographs from the observation deck.
Week 8: Graphic Design
The end of the first quarter is creeping up quickly, and classes are getting much more intense. This past week I focused on Graphic design and Brand Identity, where I rebranded a low-end coffee company, “Caffe Gondolier”. To rebrand the company I decided to create a new logo, do away with the old plastic bag packaging, and replace it with recycled cardboard cylinders, to emphasize that this is an environmentally friendly company. In order to put it all together, I had to learn two new Adobe Programs, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Dimensions. I am certainly no expert on either program after just one week of experimenting, but I am rather pleased with the results in the end. Is this not a coffee you would buy?
This past week also had a large focus on my Photography Story Project, where I am working with the Only Friends Sports Center to photograph disabled athletes. My professor has encouraged me to focus on just one sport, because of the time retraction of the project, it would be impossible to do an in-depth photo story of all 28 sports offered. The sport I decided to focus on was WheelChair Basketball, a great game, played by extraordinary people. This week all I captured were action shots during practice. Hopefully, next week I’ll be able to photograph their first home game, and if I’m lucky, do a few private portrait shoots with those who are up for it.
Week 9: Baskets, Ball and Sunsets
A week with no class does not mean a week with no work, for even without having a single class all week, I found it hard to find time to go out and do photography that wasn’t related to school. For the majority of this week, I photographed the Only Friends Sports Center Wheelchair Basketball Team. This week they had their first home game, so I rented some Profoto B1X 500 AirTTL and captured team photos and headshots of all the players. The game itself was simply an internal game with the First Team against the Second Team, but it was still fun to watch and it gave me an opportunity to photograph the players on and off the court with their uniforms on.
Only Friends Sports Center WheelChair BasketBall Team 1
Only Friends Sports Center WheelChair BasketBall Team 2
I have been here in Amsterdam for over 3 months, yet I haven’t seen a decent sunset, at least that was till this past week. This Sunday was a rare blue-sky day, so when sunset was approaching I headed out to the Eastern Docklands, an area I heard had some great views and wow, there were some truly awe-inspiring views from down on the docks. Stationed right in the middle of one of the major canals you are given great views of downtown Amsterdam to your left, and Amsterdam Noord to your right. But the position isn’t everything for photography you also need great lighting and luckily for me, this sunset was as spectacular as they get. Without a doubt, these next few photographs are some of the best cityscapes I have captured thus far in Amsterdam.
Week 10: Balls, Baskets, and Wheels
Week ten has come and gone, and it was a busy busy week, trying to complete my two final projects for the first quarter. The first project I finished at least digitally was my Photography Story Project, now tilted: Balls, Baskets, and Wheels. The project focused on the Only Friends Wheelchair Basketball Team and the work they do in order to become better basketball players despite their disabilities. The effort they put in really is extraordinary, and hopefully, the next 13 photographs show that. For some fun on my part, I placed the photographs in digital frames and photoshopped them onto a gallery wall, to give the perspective of attending an art gallery to view my work.
The second main project was for my Brand Identity Class, and this week we had to take the graphic designs for our products and make them into physical mock-ups. The product I have been working with over the last few weeks is Caffe Gondoliere, a low-end Coffee Company from the Netherlands. While the physical redesign might not be perfect, I believe they convey the theoretical redesign well. The new Caffe Gondoliere is a green environmentally friendly company from farm to roasting to packaging. The whole process supports our environment. The graphics on the products have been simplified, and a strong logo has finally been made, so the products are easily spotted in stores. Not sure if it’s true but my Professor claims that we will continue working with our current products through next quarter, and the next final will be presenting our redesign and advertising campaign directly to the companies, to get their feedback and maybe make some money.
Week 11: Fog Over Water
The photographs I have taken here in Amsterdam have been mostly cityscapes or class-related so this past week I went out and did some nature photography. My bike ride to and from the Only Friends Sports Center takes me past some of the most beautiful canals I’ve seen here in Amsterdam lined with grass and trees, instead of concrete and houses, a place I had been looking forward to photographing. So one cold foggy night I grabbed my camera gear and biked the 5 kilometers over, wearing only a lightweight sweatshirt. The cold heavy fog led me to catch a cold, however, it also led to some great photographs.
Week 12: Haarlem
This past week I had a lot of free time, so I decided to do a little bit more exploring of the Netherlands. This time I headed over to the city of Haarlem, and after meeting up with Toon and Jacqueline explored the city. As we explored the city Toon and Jacqueline lead me to some of the major sites with the help of a self-guided tour app. Haarlem is filled with old Medieval Buildings full of history, beautiful courtyards that hold a lot of natural beauty, and public art both ancient and modern which can be seen everywhere.
One of the main attractions we visited in Haarlem was the Great Church of St. Bravo, one of the oldest churches in the Netherlands. Built from 1370-1538, the church is 108 meters in length and reaches 76 meters in height at its tallest point. Thanks to my friends Jacqueline and Toon I was able to get an exclusive tour of the church and see some areas that aren’t typically available for the public and learned many interesting facts. The Bravo Church has many interesting details including the fact that the entire floor is made out of Gravestones, there are almost 1500 altogether, including one for the famous 17th-century painter Frans Hals. The Bravo church also holds the Christian Muller Organ which stands 30 meters high and consists of over 5000 pipes, and in 1766 was played by a 10-year-old Mozart. The Bravo’s Church and the rest of Haarlem was a great site to see and photograph, and hopefully, these next few photographs show that.
Towards the end of the week my roommate Nicklas and I went out for a late-night walk, so of course, I had to bring my camera along. To make things more interesting for both of us, I let Nicklas lead the way and choose all the spots and subjects to photograph. Some of the subjects were a bit odd, while others were very nice and turned into great photographs.
Week 13: TimeLapse
Another week has come and passed here in Amsterdam yet I still find myself drawn out into the city to document my surroundings and my time here in this beautiful city. With another wave of COVID coming through Europe Amsterdam is back on another lockdown limiting my ability to go out and take photographs. In school, we have transitioned from photography to videography, a subject that I have very little experience with; making it both existing and terrifying all at once. So this week I spent most of my time working and thinking about the theories of video, mostly short videos for that is what I will be creating in the next few weeks.
A quick time lapse video of the neighborhood I currently reside in here in East Amsterdam. I went around all my favorite places within walking distance of my apartment and photographed them all for the second or third time to create this timelapse video. At the moment the video is still very crude and has no sound, hopefully as I learn more the future videos will only keep getting better.
Week 14: What is Light?
It has been a hard and somewhat unproductive week for me due to my epilepsy acting up, leading to me having to take it easy and recover this past week. So instead of showing off photographs I took this past week, I am posting photographs for my long-term project; “What is Light?” a series of abstract cityscapes. Without a doubt, this is the most neglected series I have been shooting over the years, but when I traveled here to Amsterdam I knew I couldn’t leave without capturing the next shot for the series. These next photographs are all the different attempts, taken from various locations around the city. Only one can make it into the final series, which one is your favorite?
Week 15: Holiday Lights
December is here, and along with cold weather and short days, the streets of Amsterdam are lighting up with Christmas lighting being put up all around central areas and parks. So this past week I took my camera out and tried my best to photograph them. Sadly the COVID restrictions are making it a challenge to go out and do anything including photographing the lights because all shops and activities including these light shows are shut down at 8 pm, limiting the amount of time I have to capture these photographs. Luckily for me, the lights are truly a beautiful sight and are easily photographed, and I am happy to share them with you.
Week 16: Evening In Amsterdam
Another week has come and gone here in Amsterdam, and once again I hit the street camera in hand looking for the best locations to photograph. While I often have a subject in mind before I head out, this week I just wandered the streets waiting for inspiration to find me. It’s amazing how we perceive the world. I've been walking the streets of downtown Amsterdam for 4 months now and still I am finding new locations to photograph or new methods to photograph old locations, and this week was no different. I headed out towards central Amsterdam, camera in hand, and like always I managed to find a new unique route to the central areas, giving me new sights, and new perspectives of the city. It’s great to photograph the front and center of the main attraction as you’ll see, but it’s often more fun to photograph them from a distance or from a small side alley.
Week 17: Video Portrait
These past few weeks here in Amsterdam my classes have focused more on video than on photography. For practice, we did small interviews with each other so we could learn the basics of film, both in-camera techniques, and editing. For my video, I interviewed my classmate Harry from Newcastle, England, about his graphic design talents, while he interviewed me about my photography talents. Both of us have zero videography experience and the classes teach more theory than practical skills, believing the best way to learn is to try it ourselves. In my case shooting the actual video clips wasn’t that challenging. I am used to a camera in my hand, the problems came when I was stitching it all together in Adobe Premiere, a program we are expected to use but never shown how to use. Luckily YouTube is a real thing and after a few hours, I was able to create this video here.
Hopefully one day soon, I will stop taking the same exact nightly walk, so that I will have some new views and buildings to photograph, but that day has not come yet. So do not be too surprised when you see the same buildings and locations photographed this week as you have seen posted to this blog many times before. After doing a video shoot with Harry at OBA Library earlier in the week, I passed a great location to photograph downtown Amsterdam, a small dock that I never knew existed. So of course I headed back there at night, to take more photographs, and of course, I had to stop and photograph all my favorite locations along the way.
Week 18: Final Week
I have had a great time here in Amsterdam, learning more about photography and visual storytelling, but sadly all great things must come to an end. My last week in Amsterdam wasn’t the best, because of the COVID lockdown and the fact that I had to return my rental laptop, I was unable to do much. Luckily I still had my camera, and as always I went out looking for something unique to photograph. So at the beginning of my final week, I met up with Toon and Jacqueline and we headed out to Oostvaardersplassen Wetlands, a wildlife sanctuary, where I saw some great landscapes, lots of birds, and even some wild horses.
News Year's Eve is here and where do I spend it, not celebrating but out on the streets of Amsterdam trying to capture some more photographs of the city. I came across this unique pedestrian bridge and was fascinated by its shape and the views from the top. I managed to cross the bridge right at sunset, giving me great lighting and some color in the sky to create some exceptional cityscapes. After crossing the bridge I followed some of the major canals back down towards the Eastern Docklands photographing all the sights I saw as unique or interesting.
