Ever since my first trip to Rotterdam i was planning on returning to the awesome architecture of this beautiful metropolitan. After the initial trip i found more locations angles and inspirations and was eager to try them out.

Me and a friend set out to capture a Classic shot of the ‘Kop van Zuid’ the modern tall high rise buildings. It is surrounded by water and the centered view with the leading lines from the Rijnhavenbrug pedestrian bridge are pleasing on the eyes.

Within five minutes we were chilled to the bones. There was hardly any wind but that little breeze that was there was arctic cold!

I got to really try out my new tripod and boy did it feel sturdy and solid! Really happy with it.

After this we of course had to visit the iconic Erasmus bridge. Last time I came here I could not go for the ultimate classic view so we did that first. After grabbing the shot I wanted I set out to experiment with different angles and a smaller depth of field. Normally I try to get everything perfectly sharp but now I was playing with foreground and subject sharpness. Then we headed to the stairway next to the bridge. I can still remember the images from last time and that I liked the composition with the stairs in it. When we were walking up the bridge I pointed to my friend and said look there’s a puddle!!! you can get a great reflection shot while using that! Maybe we can grab one of those on the way back. At the stairs I kept experimenting with dept of field and for me it worked I got some different shots than I normally would and because of that I liked them better than the iconic hero images I have seen so much.

It’s hard to be original at such a famous place.

In the end we walked down the stairs and got ‘the’ shot of the bridge from below. finally it was running late, we were getting colder and colder and called it a day even though we had some more locations to visit. We packed up and headed back to the car that was parked at ‘boompjes’. Then we passed that puddle again. It was the only one I had seen that day and it has not rained all day. I quickly grabbed a shot of the reflection with my phone and liked its much I just had to unpack again and go for it! I put my camera on the ground just outside the puddle and set it to aperture 2.8 focussed on the bridge using live view and pressed the shutter ever so gently not to disturb the camera. I picked up the camera and could not believe how good it worked. The foreground bokeh together with the reflection really made a different image! I took about 25 more shots portrait and landscape before I was satisfied with the results and ended up having a different image than I would normally get. Maybe even the image of the year for me!

Let me know what you think would love to hear your thoughts!

see ya!

Martijn