Posts Tagged: photography

Amsterdam

On August 21, 2026 2 Comments - Photography, Travel

***please try to look at these photos on a bigger screen. Your phone will crush all the details***

Bicycle Kingdom

The first thing you learn as a tourist in Amsterdam is to watch out for bicycles. Bicycles have first right of way followed by public transportation then pedestrians and lastly, cars. There is long-established bike infrastructure here with separate bike roads running along every street, bridge and park. There are bikes everywhere. Everyone rides. And FAST! So, if you walk across a bike road without having a good look both ways, you might cause an accident. In the two days I have been here, I have seen near accidents a few times already. Usually it is a pedestrian unknowingly drifting into a bike lane, getting yelled at if they are lucky or run over if not. With locals, it is understood that bikes go first and they seem to have a second sense about how to get around through all the pedal traffic.

Canals and Bridges

Amsterdam has around 165 canals with a total length of around 75km. And, there are over 1500 bridges crossing the canal systems.

Typical tall, narrow house. Canals, bikes and bridges.
Houseboats along the banks of a canal. Many are permanent homes with electricity and sewage lines direct to shore.
Bikes, boats, bridges…
All the bridges have names. This is”Staalmeesterbrug”.
Storm clouds building over the river.

Central Amsterdam Buildings

Although all of the buildings have unique details and no two look exactly alike, they all share a few similarities. Most are narrow and tall with big windows and steep staircases. There are no skyscrapers here. The tallest of the houses is probably four stories plus a small attic.

Shutters are used to keep the weather out and, in the past, to keep goods safe. Most of these old buildings were once warehouses for goods (like spices) during the golden years of the Dutch East India Company. Because of flooding, the expensive product was kept on the top floors while the bottom floors were for offices and storefronts. A local we met told us that, at one time, pepper was worth more than gold and that the Dutch still have a saying “pepper expensive” for anything that commands a very high price.
Central Amsterdam is now a Unesco Heritage Site. The buildings cannot be altered in any way unless approved and absolutely necessary. Also, it is law that they must be kept in good condition. Most of the houses are beautifully maintained with pretty details and tiny gardens wherever there is space.
Some of the houses across this canal are crooked. You can see this in a few spots where they were originally built on swampy land and are now starting to lean over.
More crooked houses in the distance. There are tour boats running all day long along the canal system. We took one and it was a lot of fun. I learned so much about the city. The boat captain’s name was Frodo..no kidding.
People also have private boats docked all along the edges of every canal.
Big windows and beautiful details.
Typical street view. All the houses are different but also very much the same. At the top of every house, there is a protruding beam with a hook on it. Because the staircases are so steep and narrow it is next to impossible to move large items by that route. Instead, the Dutch devised a pulley system where things are hoisted up using the hook and brought in and out through the huge windows. This was used in the past to move goods in and out of the warehouses and today, people who are moving in to apartments use the same system to get furniture to the upper floors.

Old and New

With it’s narrow streets and bridges, tight corners and swarms of bicycles, there is no room for large cars. Instead there are lots of interesting tiny vehicles (many electric) that you do not typically see in North America.

This is a tiny electric Fiat. It is so small that you can park it sideways instead of parallel to the curb. It is so symmetrical that it is hard to tell the front from the back from a distance.
VW Bug….a tiny car from last century.

Travelling Partners:

I am lucky to be travelling around the city with my good friend and his parents (who have no issues with walking non-stop 20km/day) …as long as there is a coffee and snack break here and there : )

Tour Guide
Family meeting.
Snack break. This is the best thing I have eaten here: Netherlands style cured herring. It is not pickled like the more common herring you may have eaten. This herring is raw but…not exactly: it has the texture of a nice fatty sashimi fish.

I asked one of the fish merchants how it is made. The herring season lasts for only a month in late spring/early summer. The fish are gutted and put whole into buckets of salt water and then frozen to -40 Celsius. Before serving, they are thawed extremely slowly and then hand filleted one at a time. Here they are served with raw onion and pickle. It is a unique and delicious fish preparation. I would recommend it to anyone visiting here.

Rain, Sun, Rain

The weather here changes fast. It can be roasting and sunny for 10 minutes and then it clouds over and pours rain for 10 minutes and then back to blue skies just as fast.

This might be my favourite picture of this set. Milosz’s mom is looking up at a building from across the street while Milosz is inside buying stroopwafels with his dad. We ate them fresh and hot while standing under an awning in the pouring rain.
Rainy Amsterdam.

Our Apartment

Some nice Polish tourists walking alongside the building where we are staying. These buildings, although more modern, still have steep narrow staircases and lots of huge windows. There is never any shortage of sunshine or fresh air inside the apartments.
The house we are staying in has big bright windows on all sides. The apartment has so many nice details but, for some reason, I like this stairway the best. Like all other Amsterdam houses, this one is tall and narrow. You have to climb a total of 57 steps to get from the entrance to the bedrooms on the top floor!
Egyptian Geese beside the canal near our apartment. Not a European native, this bird was commonly depicted in ancient Egyptian art. It was first introduced to the Netherlands in 1967 and you can see them around all the canals and rivers of Amsterdam.

Public Transportation

Subways, trains, trams and busses run between every point you can imagine. Amsterdam is a very easy city to explore on foot or by train.

Subway headed to Centraal Station. Trains are quiet and clean.
There are a few trains that get tagged and they look pretty cool with some extra splashes of colour.

First Impressions of Amsterdam

Amsterdam is a highly functional city. There are people EVERYWHERE : pedestrians, cyclists and drivers but, even though there are almost no traffic lights, it all seems to work. The Dutch like to hustle along and they are good at it. Cyclists, pedestrians, cars, and trams all weave in and around each other through intersections at top speed and the natives understand and respect the system. As a visitor, it is all a little dizzying but also awesome to watch during the rush hour.

Even though it is so busy, it is relatively quiet compared to other big cities I have visited. There are very few private cars in the city centre with bicycles outnumbering cars by a huge margin. The air is noticeably fresh and clean. Many cars are electric and the government has mandated that all boats using the canal system must have electric engines within the next 2 years. Blasting music out of your store or boat is against the law. Police boats on the canal make sure that everyone complies with the rules and noise levels stay in check.

The overall effect is that central Amsterdam is a city where people can enjoy being outdoors together with almost zero noise or air pollution. I can spend hours walking through crowds on busy streets in the centre of the city and still come home feeling relaxed and refreshed.

Cyclists riding along the canal wall in the afternoon sun. This is a city built around people (and bicycles) instead of cars and you can definitely feel the difference.

More Amsterdam to come….

To see the next post in this series CLICK HERE.

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Natural Spotlighting

On July 28, 2026 2 Comments - Photography

***your phone will crush all the details in these photos. It is better to view this on a bigger screen***

Facing East

Every morning I make coffee and then sit at an old table to study or write. My cat hops up, curls into a ball, and sleeps beside me while I work and listen to chill music. This is my favourite time of day. At the opposite end of the room there are a few tall and narrow windows that let in the bright morning sun. This warm light filters in through the trees, slowly circles the room, and then gradually disappears. This scene changes a little bit every day and every season brings a new variation. I never get tired of looking at it. In the picture below, you can see what I see on a summer morning…

Natural Spotlighting

I began to notice moments when a ray of morning sun would pass through gaps between leaves and illuminate some small part of the room as if to say: “look at this!”. Whatever it touched would glow in this focused light. It reminded me of a spotlight on a dark stage, but made of sunlight. It was kind of a natural spotlight. I wondered if there was some way to capture this in a photograph. I was pretty sure that it wouldn’t be easy.

Technical Difficulties

When I set out to make these photos, I decided that I wouldn’t move things into a spot of light. The scenes would just have to happen on their own and it was my job to notice them and to try to capture them with my camera.

One problem was that the weather had to provide hard contrast between areas of light and shade. All of the photos below had to be taken from a shady area pierced by a strong beam of bright sunlight. Less than a big-blue-sky sunny day wouldn’t work for any of these pictures.

The bigger problem was getting my camera to see what I was seeing in my imagination. It took hundreds of photos and nearly two months to figure it out. The main subject is intensely lit, but because the photos are shot on very bright days, even the shade is full of light, So, if I exposed the spotlit subject accurately, the background would still creep into the photo.

Most of the problem was solved when I experimented with severely underexposing all of the shots (like 2 to 3 stops of underexposure!). This caused the shadows to fade to black and, as a bonus, added rich colour saturation to the main subject. This underexposure usually worked to produce the photos that I was imagining.

The Photographs

One of the first things I noticed lighting up in the morning sun was this classical guitar head stock.
This piece of Korean baekja pottery earns it’s popular name “moon jar” in this shot.
Zizkov is the neighbourhood in Praha where my family is originally from. This is an old cap or lapel pin probably worn by a streetcar operator.
Another angle on the moon jar. This simple shape changes so much in different light.
This is the corner of a massive solid red pine table (you can see it in the first photo above). The little pin holes are from cat claws poking through the tung oil finish. The wood is incredibly dense and heavy. I think it would take 100 cats 100 years to do any permanent damage. The intense sunlight brings out great texture here.
Moody photo of a dark book.
This is taken in another room that has a single north facing window. In the summer, a tiny sliver of sunlight creeps in for a short time early in the morning. This is a black and white press photo from the film Fallen Angels.
Chinese Money Plant in clay pot. The bright sun brings out the texture in the clay.
Money Plant taken from the underside of the leaves.
Unknown plant at the edge of a forest. A single sunbeam caught the top of it.
From a garden at the University of Toronto.
Ginko tree at U of T.
Lily on a lawn in Rosedale. The garden was in shade with only this flower reaching the sun.
In the forest understory. Not sure what the name of this plant is…
Red berries at the forest edge. Maybe currants?
Green seed heads. These were very small.
These tiny flowers were on long wiry stems. Because it was so windy, I had to hold the stem to keep the flowers from swaying in and out of the frame. I didn’t really want my hand in the picture but after seeing it, I like the little shadow on my finger.
Grape vine reaching for the sun.

What John Irving said…

I once read an interview with the novelist John Irving where he said that his approach to writing is to start with the ending and then figure out how to get there. That’s where the hard work is. My approach to some photography projects is similar. I start with a specific mental image of a finished photograph and then figure out how to work with natural light and the camera to get there. This is never easy but I usually end of with something unique, something I haven’t seen before. If you are interested in seeing a couple of older photo projects that came about in the same spirit as this one, have a look here and here.

The images above are simple but making them was a challenge and I am happy with the way they turned out. I don’t do any photo editing other than some slight cropping sometimes. I try to get the photos that I want directly out of the camera. It’s not that i think that there is anything wrong with post-processing. It is just a different kind of photography and I don’t enjoy doing it.

I hope you liked these photos. If you have any questions or comments or if you know the names of any of the plants up above, please feel free to leave a message in the space below. I always look forward to hearing from you.

If you enjoy the content and would like to contribute towards website maintenance and development, you can make a donation here. Thank you for reading TigerSalad.

Late Winter / Early Spring in Toronto

On May 3, 2026 3 Comments - Photography, Toronto

***your phone will crush these photos-this will look much better on a laptop***

It’s been a long time….

…since I have put up any pictures. I have been taking pictures but very few seem worth sharing.

Day to day, I walk the same familiar paths and see the same things over and over. I pass by the same trees, the same houses and the same streets with the same stores. Walks through nature become routine as well, especially during winter when almost nothing changes. When you experience the same things over and over, they lose their impact and you kind of stop seeing them altogether.

This makes me think of my last trip to Tokyo where everything was new and everything that I saw was interesting and beautiful in some way. It was so easy to take pictures and the pictures themselves were so absorbing. When it came time to post up the days’ travel diary, I had a hard time choosing between the photos.

The Tokyo natives must have thought i was insane, photographing every vending machine and bicycle and sewer cover! But, I think the same thing when I see tourists in Toronto taking pictures of black squirrels and pigeons and geese. Why are they taking pictures of such ordinary things?

The normal Tokyo things were interesting to me because they were unexpected. And so, they sparked that wonder and excitement that only new things can. Like hearing a new song or meeting a new love.

I haven’t travelled in well over a year and I think that partially explains my lack of inspiration. I have been too lazy to put in the effort to look at my own environment from a new perspective. Just like relationships with people, your relationship to your home environment takes effort and imagination to keep it fresh and engaging. Comfort and familiarity are important but almost never inspire creativity and passion. You need to find a balance by looking at your familiar home with fresh eyes and an open mind, experience it in some new way. This article is an exploration of that idea.

Photographer as witness…

Sometimes things just happen in the environment and they are so unusual and striking that no effort is needed to get a good image. This winter, some weird weather made for good pictures. I was happy that, for a change, we had a little more snow than usual and a couple of really powerful snowstorms. The first one was such a white-out that I didn’t even take my camera with me when I went out in it.

This was the big one…it was even hard to walk. iPhone video… University of Toronto campus.

Sometime towards the end of winter, there was one unusually hot day. Suddenly, the temperature was close to 20c while there was still deep snow everywhere. This hot, wet air crept over the cold snow and set a thick layer of fog low to the ground. In the cemetery, where the snow never gets cleared, the fog was especially thick and eerie.

St James Cemetery in the winter fog.
This pathway down a hill disappears into cloud
Simultaneously very pretty and a little creepy

The last big snow…

This shot, taken during the last snowfall of winter makes me a little sad. Recently, Canada Post announced that home delivery will be cancelled and replaced with mega-mailboxes in parking lots and on street corners. No more mailman.

Spring arrives in full colour….

This spring has been mostly cool and wet with a few big blue sky sunny days. Toronto is a city that can go from winter to summer in a very short time: one week you are shovelling snow and the next week you are sweating buckets while stuffing the air conditioner back into the window. So it has been nice to see a cold and snowy winter followed by the slow and steady warm-up of spring.

Brand new Mourning Cloak butterfly drying it’s fresh wings on a sunny post.
Taking in the first warm days.
Tamarack (or Larch) tree budding out. This is a deciduous tree with needles instead of leaves. Spring brings little pineapple shaped pink flowers that turn into pinecones later on.
Spring blue sky and red brick at Brickworks park.
This is an owl climbing structure at the new Biidaasige Park in the port-lands just south of the Distillery District. It is huge…you can go inside and sit in its head and look out the eyeballs at the city skyline. The colours and the shape of the panels make me think that it would not look out of place in a Star Wars movie. It has a kind of Deathstar vibe.
Death Star death stare.
Blue blue sky of of the spring evening. These are the buildings that are eating St James Town. None of them were here when I moved to this neighbourhood less than 10 years ago. Many more are on the way.
Corner store owner arranging spring bouquets.
Tulips…
Cherry blossoms at University of Toronto.
Forsythia: first colours of spring start with these yellow branches. I have tried to take pictures of these many times but this is the first one I have liked. The red of the stop sign and the people underneath give it some contrast and anchor it in it’s urban environment. Better than just a picture of some pretty yellow flowers.

Spring trip to Leslie Spit

Tommy Thompson Park on the Leslie Spit is a natural wonder of Toronto and an urban wildlife sanctuary. It is made entirely of rubble, cement, brick, tile, metal rebar and other construction/destruction detritus from Toronto’s development. Nature has gradually taken over and thrived along this area of the lakeshore. I won’t go into it too deeply here but, if you are interested in reading more about this area, I wrote about it in this article last year.

Red Osier Dogwood line the lonely road.
The southern tip of the spit under the lighthouse. This shoreline is a good place to find bits of antique coloured tile from kitchen and bathrooms of Toronto’s past. Some very cool stuff.
This is a crushed and bent piece of rusty steel. I thought it looked a lot like a pencil skirt with a row of buttons up the side.
This is Lake Ontario from the lighthouse point. You get a sense of the vastness of the lake in this picture. There is only sky and water as far as you can see. I think it looks better on its side.
Cyclist at the end of the world.
A distant Toronto from the lighthouse point.
Swans: there is not much to give them scale in this photo but they are huge birds.
Complexity of branches.

About looking at familiar things from a different perspective…

Yesterday was a grey, cloudy and cool day. I set my mind to going out and making some spring photos around Evergreen Brickworks park, a place that I have walked around and photographed hundreds of times. Everyone thinks of spring as a time of renewed colour with trees and bushes flowering out and halo of bright green in the forest canopy. After seeing the above pictures, I thought it would be an interesting challenge to try to capture spring in black and white.

I love going to Brickworks often but I really felt like I had photographed everything I wanted to. So…I knew that this would be difficult and I would have to try hard to look at things with a fresh perspective. Here is what I got…

White tree blossoms. I also did a colour photo of this exact scene but the black and white was so much more striking. The absence of colour draws your eye to shape and texture in the image.
Trees die too…from drought, disease, parasites. This one folded from the unusual weight of the snow this winter. Older bones are stripped of bark and exposed underneath. Spring reveals the aftermath of winters destructive force.
New growth against the central trunk. All parts of the same living giant.
There is some threat of violence in this photo. New buds are protected by razor sharp spikes. F@#$ with nature and find out!
A towering giant pushing out a few new leaves under the grey sky. Black and white silhouette and the blurred top make it feel massive. It is dark and ominous but it still shows signs of spring. This would be a throw-away picture in colour.
Brickworks boardwalk in high-contrast black and white.

The idea for the next photos came to me in the moment and they are a perfect example of trying to see ordinary and familiar things from a new perspective:

I am not going to say anything about them other than they are some of the best photos I have taken recently.

There are people under the trees in this one…
Here too…people under the trees.

When I got home to look at these, I wasn’t sure what I would find. So often, I go out and capture what I think will be good images only to be disappointed in the result. Not this time. This last handful of pictures make me really happy. I thought really hard about how to take a dreary day by the water and turn it into some compelling shots.

I came to the realization that while sometimes the world just hands over great images to capture, other times, you have to turn the world on it’s head to find them. In these photos, I consciously tried to see things in a different way, photograph things that I would normally pass by and photograph them in a way that I have never done before.

If you think you know how the last group of photos were made, please leave a comment below. There are definitely hints in the photos (and text). If you guess right, I will buy you a Pocari Sweat next time I see you.

If you enjoy the content and would like to contribute towards website maintenance and development, you can make a donation here. As always, thank you for reading TigerSalad.

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