Photo of the day challenge
Why not take 365 photos, one photo at a time, spread over a whole year? Well, sounds easy right?
Reality is slightly different, and a daily photochallenge isn’t called a challenge for no reason. Heck, give me the icebucketchallenge, planking challenge or even the Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge… but no this one is actually even for a photographer pretty difficult.
Why it’s a challenge
Time
Everyday you need to find some time to capture something, edit it and post it. Trust me, in the beginning it’s nice, but there are some days where it’s just really difficult. Especially when you get home around 23:30, want to sleep and you feel you múst post a photo.
Daily routine
Everything you do on a daily basis is boring and normal to you. If you go to work five days a week using the same route, you won’t see anything interesting. To you, that is. Doing a daily challenge forces you to look around like a tourist again, but it’s hard.
Internet
What if you go abroad and you don’t have an internet connection? You actually need your (heavy) camera, laptop/computer to edit your stuff and an internetconnection to actually post your pixels.
Either way, you can check out my Photo of the Day album on my personal Facebook account. I guess you have to add me to see ‘m all. That’s fine tho.
Old dynamite factory im tal
Took the car for a spin. Picked up a friend Veghel and drove off to Germany. We went to this awesome abandoned valley where we saw the ruïns of an old dynamite factory.
After that, we went up a hill to enjoy the view. We ended the day eating pizza in Wuppertal where we also saw the “Wuppertaler Schwebebahn”. It’s like a tram, but hanging under the rails. Cool stuff!
300km photography roadtrip
Went for a 2km ride, got back, ignored the street I lived in, carried on and ended up completely unplanned 150km away from home. This is the result.
This is actually something I want to do on a more regular basis. Probably invite friends along and just check out Europe. Anyway, in this case I drove around 300km and found some really cool places. Nothing was planned and I didn’t know the area beforehand.
CLASSIFIED – A Germany Poland Czech roadtrip short series
So, Herman Bluemink, Victor Eekhof and me (Steven van de Staak) went on a roadtrip. How did it all go? Well…
To sum it all up, we rented a car and went East. Blasted through Germany, hit Poland, touched Czech and raced back. Some things were planned as in, we had some “waypoints” but the actual route and time schedule was quite a tombola. Besides taking a ton of photo’s I ended up capturing hours on my GoPro. Here are 7 episodes or roughly 10 minutes each for you to enjoy. Enjoy.
Classified – TheSeries [S01E01] – The First day
Classified – TheSeries [S01E02] – SAUERKRAUT
Classified – TheSeries [S01E03] – A steamy museum
Classified – TheSeries [S01E04] – Hotel Lidl
Classified – TheSeries [S01E05] – Looking for abandoned stuff.
Classified – TheSeries [S01E06] – Old stuff and mountains
Classified – TheSeries [S01E07] – Goin’ home
Quick roadtrip to Germany, again
Just a quick ride in my car to Germany. Was bored so.. whadda ya do, right?
I actually found this old city-center by accident, took a wrong turn and all of a sudden I saw this old building with a gate (first photo). Parked the car and went in. There, I found this awesome castle. What random traveling can give you, right?
Summer 2016 trip: Normandy, France
Just a 1600km roadtrip through Normandy, France. What a beautiful place… and such a rich and important history.
All the photos can be seen at the full Normandy page.
Abandoned military facility in Germany
Went on a roadtrip in my new car. Visited an abandoned factory and military base in Germany.
Bikeride into Germany with Victor
Victor has been a buddy of mine for a long time now. We’ve studied, worked traveled and even lived together for a while in the UK. So it wasn’t surprising that he started working as a colleague 9 months ago.
But all good things must also end, so he had his last day of work last tuesday. Since I had a day off the next day, we decided to do a one day bicycle trip into Germany. We ended doing about 170km, and it was awesome. Here are some of the pics.
This was already in Germany, about 10km after Emmerich. We had a small stop since I wanted to check the map. A little bit further and…. we’d be at this beautiful castle.
For me, this is a typical German town. Some larger houses, a wheat field and the townsname on a yellow sign. As German as it could be.
Close to Rees is an abandoned building. I’m not sure what it was, but there were coal-carts, rails, ovens and boilerrooms. I’ve been here a couple of years ago, but things have changed. People actually turned it into a “Chill-Lounge” as they called it themselves. Looks kinda relaxed! Click on the image of a larger version of the panorama.
These are actually 3 photo’s merged together since I didn’t bring any fisheye lens.
A photo for our dear friends Sjoerd Bisselink and Clair Bissell.
This was in Wesel, and was a bit typical for our trip. Often you find yourself cycling in a dull place, and all of a sudden something huge/old like this appears. We’ve seen castles like Hogwarts, or this in the middle of a boring neighbourhood. Cool stuff.
This is actually only 10% of the whole image. And, it was taken while cycling on my bicycle. Didn’t stand still.
Here, we’re back in the Netherlands. The sun was setting, it was finally getting a bit cooler, and we had a final 20km to go through forrest and open fields. But we managed to get to Boxmeer and take the train home.
It was an awesome journey, lot’s of fun and with some lessons learned.
- Don’t underestimate the sun, use sunlotion. I’ve been called “tomato” and “lobster boy” all day the next day at the office…
- Do a LOT of regular long trips to get used to your bicycle saddle. Even while using a bicycle-short with a pad, my ass hurt like hell.
- Have some extra space for bottles/food. I had a small bag on my steer, but it wasn’t big enough.
- Bring a small toolkit.
That was it, hope you enjoyed the pics. Can’t wait for my next adventure!
55km bicycle trip to Doesburg
It was perhaps a bit late, but I wanted to do a bicycle trip yesterday. So at 17:00 I got on my bike and started moving.
I’ve been on the road from Arnhem to Zutphen/Brummen quite often, but I never went to Doesburg, which is close to the road. It’s a famous little town, so I had to visit it. I must say, it was quite nice.
After visiting the town, I decided not to go back the same route. I never like seeing the same road twice, so I just kept on going in the direction of Didam. There I cought up with my regular route to Germany, and went home.
Here are some pics of the journey, all taken with my Canon EOS M and it’s kitlens.
Last but not least, here’s the route I did.
80km bike ride Arnhem Kleve Emmerich and back
So, I didn’t need to work last Wednesday. What did I do? Well, I felt like going for a bike trip.
I left home pretty late, around 2PM, but ended doing a 80km trip. Had lot’s of wind, which wasn’t helping. And even a bit of rain inbetween Kleve and Emmerich. But in the end, I made it back home. I also got some groceries in Kleve, so my backpack was top-heavy. Wasn’t helping but it’s always fun doing groceries in a different country with different products.
A small experiment: took my EOS M Systemcamera along and shot all pics in RAW format. I never did that before with this camera, but I feel I should’ve used that feature a long long time ago.
Anyway, here are the pics. Enjoy!
Some nature, and a parrot
Today, the Dutch have been celebrating Kingsday. For me it went a ride on my bicycle to two friends.
They live about 20km away and ended up, with a detour, making it a nice 50km ride. Took some photos along the route, and also capture my friends parrot, Senna. What great name!
Tuna, beans and a ride to the top of the Posbank
The weather became sunny again, and since I love to ride my bicycle I thought it was time to grab my bike and see what was out there.
Here in the Netherlands, we often have rain and cold weather. But not today. No, the sun was shining. I felt good, and in a very healthy mood so I decided to eat some beans and tuna in the morning. After that I went for a quick tour on my bike. Eventhough the Netherlands is famous for being as flat as a pancake, there’s a nasty little hill in our area which is still higher than the average speedbump; the Posbank. (not to be confused with Postbank, an old Dutch bank which is now known as ING).
After hearing many people talking about this horrific mountain, I decided to challenge it myself. Well I have to say, the view is quite nice, but the Posbank itself isn’t much of a challenge. It was fun tho! Here are some pics I took.
München, Dachau en Salzburg: vakantie 2014
Emma and me like to travel a lot. Especially she likes Germany, and I like to go to new places. So it became München since it was also close to the Alps.
We’ve seen a lot of stuff and we experienced a lot of diversity. I mean, we stayed at a 4 star hotel in a shady neighbourhood, and used Couchsurfing to crash at an awesome guy’s place. We saw the horrific Dachau, and cheered at the finals of the World Cup. Saw nature in the Alps, and enjoyed the exciting city center of München. Here’s some pics, but be sure to check out the whole gallery for your enjoyment.
A happy 2014 from Roma / Rome!
First of all, I’d like to wish you all a very happy and healthy 2014! It’s been a while since I posted something, and I actually still have to post some America photo’s.
Anyway, my girlfriend and me went to Rome for New Years Eve. I fixed my website and uploaded the gallery. Since it was a LOT of photo’s, I decided to devote a page to it. Enjoy!
The Coloseum
Paris photography III
And, here we have some more.
More Paris stuff!
As promised, and trust me.. more amazing stuff is coming. I was surprised myself!
Catacombes de Paris
Last week My gf and I were in Paris, and what a trip that was. We’ve seen the most beautiful people, tasted the finest wines and cheeses. Met many interesting people, talked to artists, enjoyed the many romantic views and we’ve visited the well known touristic spots.
Of course we’ve visited the Champs Elysee, seen the Arc du Triomf, Basilique du Sacré Coeur de Montmartre, Eiffel tower, Notre Dame and many more famous places. But we’ve also visited a more infamous place: the Catacombes de Paris.
Underneath the romantic city with hints to a long gone past, there is a 290 km long network of tunnels. Initially these were made to mine chalk. However, from 1786 till the 19th century, these tunnels were used to store the bones of about 6 million French people. Nowadays you can visit the final resting place of these poor souls. Here are some of the pics I’ve taken.
Some happy stuff soon, no worries.
More Berlin.
And here’s some more Berlin shots I did last weekend.
Well that was a really large post with lot’s of photo’s. But hey it’s a photo-blog, what’d you expect?
Good day!
Berlin 1/5
So, we went on a new trip… to the amazing capital of Germany; Berlin!
Hoped you like these!
Greece 4/7
And there was more from that trip…
ABOUT ME
I'm a blogger who likes to travel, take photos, write stories about my adventures, do bicycle trips, model and print 3D, create websites, create video's, play airsoft, watch Formula 1 and much more.
Got any questions? Then simply contact me.
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