Bruges: The People
I love photographing people, obviously, or else I wouldn’t be doing photoshoots as often as I do! Even greater still is the candid shot of a person, of a couple, of a group of friends…doing whatever it is they are doing. Yesterday I posted a slideshow focused solely on Bruges: The City…but today I’m showing you the other pictures I took…the pictures of the people. They may not be people who live there, although some are, but they are just people walking down those medieval streets, gazing in windows, snapping their own photos, taking a break by sitting down in [...]
Hotel de Colse Hoeve
When I was in Holland recently for work, we stayed at the Hotel de Colse Hoeve. The rooms were a little sketchy…the hotel is built on old farm land, with farms on either side, so there are numerous bugs around, in the hallways and in the first room I was assigned to. I eventually moved and the next one was perfect. But as a stuck-up, pompous, city dude, fighting the bugs wasn’t my idea of a fun time at a hotel. However, everything else was awesome. The staff was amazing, the restaurant right out of Top Chef and the location [...]
A little ode to the beach
We’re headed to San Diego tomorrow for a nice four-day weekend with friends in a giant vacation house that sits a couple hundred feet from the beach. It’s going to be awesome and it’s unbelievable to think I actually have to work today when all I want to do is get in the car and start driving. In honor of the sand, surf and relaxation, I figured I would post a few shots from a beach near Den Haag in Holland. We were headed back to Amsterdam to leave the next day for the States, and decided to swing by [...]
A canal near Damme, Belgium
Just as Bryan was responsible for my photo from yesterday, a goofy GPS in our car we rented in Holland may have been responsible for this photo. We were headed to Bruges, Belgium and the route was fairly direct, but somehow we found ourselves down a small farm road in the middle of nowhere and had at some point veered off towards the north. The GPS was leading us down some winding road for no apparent reason. Perhaps our driver turned right when he should have gone straight, but regardless, we were pretty happy where we ended up. As we [...]
The Beguinage Convent in Bruges, Belgium
This is the Beguinage Convent located in the middle of Bruges, Belgium. We saw this place on the little tourist map we grabbed and figured it would be an interesting contrast to the cobblestone streets and alleyways we had seen so far. The first thing you see before entering is that no commercial photography was allowed and no tripods. Which would mean this photo of mine is not for sale. The convent is actually still functioning, which we kind of discovered when we entered into the old church that was on the grounds here. The nuns inside were all praying [...]
The Red Light Bar Coffee Shop in Amsterdam
Wandering the streets of Amsterdam early in the morning really allowed for picture taking without thousands of people in the frame. I loved this scene because of all the different colors there were to capture. From the orange flags for supporting the Dutch soccer team, to the neon signs, the Heineken sign, the graffiti in the alleyway, the red bricks, the awnings, the dirty black stairs…they just played so well together to create an explosion of color in an old town. The door was closed to the coffee shop, but if it was anything like the other ones I passed [...]
A few moments captured in Amsterdam
Sometimes you can get too attached to one kind of shot, one kind of lens and you forget that the world can be seen in a wide variety of ways. My first instinct when I landed in Holland was to capture EVERYTHING, hence my 17-35mm was the lens of choice. I wanted architecture, wide plazas, canals, cars, anything and everything…but in a wide scope. For the first half of the trip, my 50mm 1.4 sat in the bag. But while I was in Bruges, I switched about halfway through and was thrilled at the shots I was getting. Tight shots, [...]
The Harley Davidson in Bruges, Belgium
You may find after I eventually post most of my Holland-Belgium photos, that I have a serious love of cool alleyways. Everytime I walked past one on this trip, I was craning my neck and peering down them to see if it was interesting enough to shoot. I loved this one in particular. Cobblestone, brick walls, the blur doors, the archway at the end…plus a Harley Davidson parked in the foreground and a sports car out in the distance. I actually love the balance the car creates, even if it was part of the “Smart Car” family. This is a [...]
A windmill near Buitenkaag, Holland
On my bucket list of things to shoot whilst in Holland was a nice looking windmill. Actually, come to think of it, that was probably the only thing I really wanted to come back with. Ironically, it wasn’t until about 24 hours before I had to get on a plane home that I finally was in position to snap a few photographs of these beautiful structures. Even more lucky is that we just turned off the freeway to look for a place to eat in a small town and ended up next to a place with about 30 windmills scattered [...]
Postcard from Bruges, Belgium
By far…by far the place I loved the most on my trip over to the Netherlands, was the drive we took to see Bruges (or Brugge), Belgium. I had heard about it from the movie “In Bruges”, a fantastic, funny, dark comedy that came out a few years ago…and then had some friends tell me I needed to see it if I went there. The town is old and has medieval architecture. The canals twist around, little bridges go here and there and old trees, paths and stone can be seen everywhere. This particular shot was taken around 9pm as [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.