Up high

When I learned that an upcoming business meeting was to take place on the 20th floor of the Antwerp Tower business center (the third highest building in the city), I could not resist to take along my camera bag and make sure I arrived well before the agreed upon time…

Not a great day to shoot panoramic views, though. The city was covered by a dense smog, partly perhaps because of the unusual snowy weather. The sun doesn’t move high this time of the year, and in addition turned out to come from the ‘wrong’ side of our meeting room. And although the meeting facilities itself were impeccable, the least you could say is that the windows are up for a good outside cleaning job…

The view on downtown Antwerp was rather spectacular anyway, more so than the above images suggest. Amazing what a chaotic patchwork results from the myriad of rooftops. And how you can find pretty abstract compositions in the middle of that maze.
 Can you see what I was looking at?

Gear notes: D700, 24/2.8, 180/2.8D

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A fresh start

We couldn’t have wished a better beginning of 2010! Close friends are renting out a small apartment at the Belgian coast, and when it suddenly became available for a few days they invited us to come and stay to celebrate the New Year with them.

As we arrived on the evening of January 1, we were welcomed by magnificent fireworks right in our ‘front yard’. I should have known better than to stay out for half an hour on the freezing balcony!

The next morning greeted us with a thin coat of fresh snow on the sand. Just what I needed to get out again for a healthy long walk on the beach with a small camera bag (and hat and gloves).

Plenty of people out by mid day, enjoying the chilly but refreshing breeze. Funny to see how an area that normally thrives on baking sunshine takes on a very different atmosphere in colder weather.

Thanks, Lut and Hugo, for a great New Year’s present!

Gear notes: D700, 50/1.8, 16/2.8D, 24/2.8, 180/2.8D

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Happy new year!