Going for a walk

I haven’t been hiking for ages. Part of that was because I was busy with work; and on top of that, I tore a muscle in my left calf right after the last job. Scary business, because I did not know what was wrong. I wasn’t really feeling pain, I just could not fully develop my leg, and everytime I walked more than fifty meters (for instance if I went shopping), I’d break out in a sweat and start to limp.

The doctor didn’t sound like he was sure either, but he thought I probably had torn torn a muscle, and he said the condition could take up to six weeks to heal. In my case after four weeks everything already felt fine. So this weekend I decided to take a short walk to the nearby Beatrixpark and back.

The people of Amsterdam have locked up their boats for the winter. When it’s warm you can see boats full of bottles of rosé being sailed through the canals by half-drunk locals, but sailing truly is a summer sport here.

I am such a slow student of photography. Part of that is undoubtedly because I have no taste. It has taken me a while to realize that unsharp originals are just not acceptable. And part of the reason I have been taking so many unsharp photos is because this camera really needs a lot of light. Next time I am going to experiment some with using (improvised) camera stands and shorter exposure times. Today I used the flash. I hate the flash, but for the next photo I think it worked quite well, because it pulled the subject into the foreground.

Going home I came across this flower stand on the Olympiaplein. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a flower stand with a see-through door before. It looks a bit like somebody left a teenage boy’s bedroom in the street. It reminded me of the large glass display cases a furniture store had out on the pavement in my city of birth. I used to fantasize about living in one of these.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 21st, 2007 at 8:55 pm and is filed under Life blog, Lightsmithing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.