As a photographer, I love to find new locations or new areas to photograph. I recently visited the wonderful and busy city of Amsterdam with my partner, which meant it was the perfect opportunity to take my camera along and do some exploring.
I have been to Amsterdam before as a child, but I can’t really remember going, so it was really nice to go again as an adult and have a long weekend away in a city that had so much life and culture to it. We stayed in a hotel in the financial district, roughly 20 minutes out of the city centre by public transport. On the lead up to the trip, I was looking through social media posts and google to find photographic inspiration; things that I wanted to take photos of and put up on social media.
When I got there I wasn’t feeling very inspired and I thought I was doing my usual thought trail of thought I MUST shoot this! But this wasn’t the case. So instead I just carried on and when I took photos it wasn’t planned or anything, just completely random using the place and the surroundings to help me.
This sign caught my eye due to the funny little stickers and makes the sign different and interesting. I thought I would make this landscpae and blur out the background as the buildings seem to make the photo.
Throughout my time in Amsterdam I had one image I wanted to create, which was of bikes looking beautiful by the riverside, but the right opportunity didn’t arise. Walking around one of districts I stumbled upon the above and it made for a really great photo. Sometimes when you stop looking you find something interesting! The thing I love about this image is the background – a tiled area covered in graffiti and dutch posters, then you have this very simple bicycle in the middle forground chained and alone.
My last two photos are from the last day of our trip when we went to Artis – Amsterdam’s Zoo. It is situated in a beautiful area. I didn’t know how big the zoo would be, but it was a lot bigger than I thought, wonderfully set out and we had such a great time wandering about the place and seeing all the animals. There was something new to see around every corner.
The first one is of a cute Red Panda (although it doesn’t look like your typical panda!) also known as the lesser panda. I thought it looked like a member of the raccoon family at first, this little cute thing running through the trees in its cage; quick, cute and small.
The second image is of one of the three giraffe’s at the zoo. The giraffe pen is quite small which is a shame. As we walked around the zoo I felt that a lot of the cages / pen area’s were quite small.
I took 3 shots of the giraffes – both landscape and portrait to see which was best and I chose this one to showcase due to the great bold colours that stand out against the blurred background – drawing your attention to the giraffe.