Assignment 6: Blur on Purpose

I read the assignment notes for this on Flickr before the notes went up on the Souvenir Foto website; and I had a little panic.

Blur on purpose? It was like a return to the dark days of childhood photography. Handshake, cutting off people's heads - not good. How on earth would I blur on purpose without it looking like I gave the camera to a small child?

So I hit the internet, ah google, my old friend.

What I discovered was that there is a whole movement of photography dedicated to blurring on purpose. While the photographs I found were stunning, details on technique were not very forthcoming.

I did discover that it was all to do with playing around with shutter speed and aperture. Which meant I had to learn about shutter speed and aperture. Which meant that, three months after getting the camera I was finally going to have to break out the instruction manual.

Dammit.

The instruction manual was informative. It certainly told me how to set shutter speed and apperture but I still didn't understand what I was doing.

Next stop, the Digital Photography School . I read up on Shutter Speed and Appertures. Then moved on to Aperture and Shutter Priority Modes.

Now we were getting somewhere.

I had been particularly taken with a Blur on Purpose photo I had seen during my research, (now regretably lost in the internet) a black and white shot taken in Japan which showed blurred movement on a crisp background. I knew I wanted to do something like that, which would mean playing with the shutter priority mode, which blurs movement.

I took myself into the centre of Amsterdam and positioned myself on a busy cross roads. Then I just started clicking. I aimed for dense crowds and bikes. I shot at eye level and from the hip to see which came out best. I varied my shuttter speed until I found one that let in just enough light while still giving a good blur of movement, 1/20 on a very bright day.

In post-processing the black and white wasn't quite working for me though. It looked good but the bike wasn't quite right. When I had looked at the photo, the bike had seemed ethereal, almost ghostly and I wanted to play that up. So I cropped it down and layed the holga-ish effect from Picnik over the top. And it worked.

I am particularly pleased with the crispness of the shadow on the ground against the blur of the people above.

The original of the photo is in my photostream.

It has to be said that Amsterdam is not a city that lunches. Obviously, people eat lunch but if you are trekking around time and want something other than soup, salad or a sandwich but you don't want a full meal then your options are going to be a little more limited.

Step in La Place eateries. La Place have quite the coverage in Amsterdam. Not only do they run the catering in two major department stores (V & D and De Bijenkorf), but they also service several major workplaces. Lucky workplaces.

It is self service, but certainly not the self service I recognise from British department stores. At La Place everything is divided into zones. A salad bar zone, and what salads! Grilled veggies as far as the eye can see. huge bowls of leaves and wedges of tomato. A grilled meat bar, a grilled fish bar. Some locations have a pizza oven, some a stir fry bar. A soup station, juice bar and drinks bar are all within striking distance. Just pick up a tray and load up. The best thing is that everything is prepared right in front of you - fresh, fresh, fresh.

Once you have paid and collected your cuttlery then you can choose your seating. Today I was in the V&D on Kalverstraat and scored an outside table in the glorious sunshine so that I could watch the world go by beneath me. If the balcony is full or the weather a little less clement then sitting inside is no hardship underneath the glass roof (pictured above). If you are meeting someone there then there are rooms named after nearby streets, "I'll meet you in Damrak..."

Over at De Bijenkorf, following last year's major facelift you can sit in differently themed areas all showcasing designer furniture from the furniture department below. Eames chairs, Tom Dixon lighting. Or sit out on the new roof terrace secluded from the busy streets below, snacking on sushi before heading back down into the chaos of central Amsterdam.

I attended a book club last night as part of my "need to get out more" plan. I had only attended a book club once before, in England, where I turned out to be the youngest there by a good few decades. It was not a success. But, nothing ventured etc. So I signed up for the first available book club (there are a few running for expats in Amsterdam) on the grounds that I had already read the book and therefore there was a good chance that I would be able to contribute to a discussion.

Last night's book was The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid. I admit, I was slightly nervous going into the discussion. I found the book utterly brilliant but it deals with difficult and challenging issues which can provoke and polarise people. Generally, my two conversational rules with strangers are to avoid religion and politics. This walked into the bear pit of both. Fortunately, the book group consisted of smart, intelligent women with a lot to say. I needn't have worried. Not that I agreed with everything everyone said, nor they with me, I'm sure. However, it felt as though everyone in a group of 15 or so chipped in an opinion at some point. Opinions which made me think, or made me reavaluate, or made me say "oh, I never thought of it that way, I wonder if that means...". In short, I loved it. Today, I am still rolling around the following questions:

- Did the protagonist's relationship with Erica reflect his relationship with America?
- The protagonist changed his personality to fit into the role required of him by others, boyfriend, employee etc. When he returns to Pakistan, does he change his personality again to fit in or are we seeing his true personality?
- The concept of fundamentalism is not given a structured definition in the book, is it referring to religious fundamentalism or something else and if so what?

I am a book hound, reading one to two books a week (it is my most expensive vice). I did English literature to degree level and have a real passion for books, all books, any books. What I realised last night is that since we moved to Amsterdam I had got out of the habit of discussing books. The lovely husband doesn't read fiction (he loves non-fiction, history, political biography), whereas I used to discuss books all the time with friends and we would swap them amongst ourselves I don't have that network here and so my book discussions have somewhat dried up.

Next month the group are reading The Shack by WM Paul Young and the following month we will be reading The Other Hand by Chris Cleave. I'll let you know how it goes.

With just 37 days until I get my hands on those keys things have stepped up a notch in the preparations. You may remember that we had already survived round one of the sofa delivery debacle, which gave us a grand total of 3 pieces of furniture (we already own a guest bed). We needed, and indeed still need, more. So at the weekend we ramped up the purchasing. Our tally so far:

• One sofa and armchair - already ordered for delivery the week after we get the keys... hopefully.
• One bed, boxspring - ordered to be delivered the day after we get the keys.
• One quilt, we already have pillows
• One DVD player - which may or may not be on its way to the UK depending on whether the Company sent it to my delivery address or my billing address. Their confirmation e-mail was unclear on this point and they have been incredibly silent since I asked for confirmation and provided them with a copy of the order. Am I to be cursed by deliveries?
• One desk chair with a E50 discount as it is the end of the line (hurrah, I would have bought it full price anyway).
• One set of Bemz covers for the, as yet, unbought dining chairs.

Which, I am sure you will agree, is progress. We have also:

• decided on a coffee table. An "opium table" rather like this one, but in natural wood, unless I change my mind and go for the dark stained wood, or the natural...

We have also chosen a television. And when did televisions get so expensive? I mean, really? We are not a tv watching household, more of a dvd boxset sort of a watching household. It galls me to spend this much money on something we don't use that much, but I have aesthetic issues. I simply cannot have a large lump of black plastic and glass as the focus of the room, so the television had to be as unobtrusive as possible while still being of a decent size to watch (which for the lovely husband seemed to mean 32 inch). The most unobtrusive I could find was a Samsung with a white surround, rather than black, however, it was way over my tentative budget. I just couldn't go there. Rather than bitch and whine about it (as I usually would), I took matters into my own hands and hit the internet. Having discovered it relatively cheaply in the UK and Germany I quickly worked out that no company would ship it due to size. Which meant hunting around the internet in Dutch.

I don't know what your experiences of buying online from Dutch companies have been like but my limited experience has left me frustrated and vowing never to do it ever again. It may be just my impression but online shopping has not really advanced here the way it has in the UK. The process is slow and complicated. One order required a bank transfer as a payment system rather than the more simple, plug in your credit card and away we go. Still, the lure of a cheaper product was too much for me and I hit the internet with a vengance. I started off with www.kelkoo.nl, a pricing website, to familiarise myself with the stores which stocked the tv I wanted. That worked well and I found it much cheaper at www.bestekeus.nl. It was still quite a lot though, so I pondered on it for 24 hours and tried again. This time I went to a dutch pricing site, www.beslist.nl who had a greater range of shops. The cheapest option on there was www.plasmadiscounter.nl. Joy of joys, they accept cards, no bank transfer hassle and they also promise to match the cheapest price you can find the product at. Hurrah. I am a happy bunny (well, as happy as a bunny still spending too much on a television can be). I'll let you know how the delivery goes. Maybe third time's the charm.

It is a holiday today in the Netherlands, Pinksterdag (officially today is tweede - 2e - pinksterdag) or Pentecost. I just couldn't resist the pink flowers for Pinksterdag.