Happy (belated) new week and....

...welcoming you to Photography... Through Ivy's eyes.

Dear all, I must firstly apologise for my...disappearing act, as I meant to wish you all here a delightful weekend, by posting this collage of Various Forms of Love.

 Obligations though on Friday morning, plus preparing for a short trip on this long weekend allowed for no time to do it.

I hope you all had a nice weekend and the beginning of this week has already found you refreshed and positive!

In this post, I'm sharing bits of yesterday's favorite moments, which marked both the beginning of the week and the last day of our almost four day trip to the Netherlands. By doing this, I'm also introducing and welcoming you to Photography...Through Ivy's eyes, which is exactly what it says it is: pictures taken by me, expressing the way I see the world. I have already being doing so since quite a long time, but this time it is official, therefore the addition of my label.

...just a few words about that:

Being mostly an amateur photographer, who uses at the moment a 5 megapixel Konica Minolta camera and has modest skills on processing, my pictures attemp to moslty represent reality, as seen of course through my perspective. 

The main focus is on composition, depending on the way a capture is made, as it is naturally found in the environment. I do love to style also, but am moslty amazed by the beauty that exists out there in the world.

I think that when I'm surrounded by beauty, I'm in a constant natural high!

So, to go back to the pictures of my photography series, they are hardly processed, with the exception of a usual increase in contrast, rarely in brightness and a slight emphasis on colours by increasing saturation. I use no filters either on the camera lens or during processing.

All the importance lies in the way the world is percieved and captured, through creating a pictrure. Cropping is a very important factor, which works well with my natural love for geometry!

But mostly the pictures are framed when clicking.

So, after all these introductional blah, blah, which I sincerely wish has not put you to sleep, how about some details of our trip to the Netherlands and more of them connected to pictures of this post?....such as this one?

Yes?...that's nice :)....cause I'm all in the mood for - selective - sharing!

So, our road trip to the Netherlands begun on late Friday afternoon, destination Amsterdam. Eventhough this was the third time I visit this city in a year, since last spring, it never, ever bores me!

As far as I'm concerned, I could be living there permanently, for reasons  that will be stated in a different post, accompanied by pictures of course!

 As the weather was dreamy sunny and pleasantly warm, all the time was spent strolling around the incredible streets by the canals, being breathtaken by the beauty of the old houses, the architectural elements, the incredible interior design - as people are totally relaxed and hardly hung curtains or blinds on  their windows, plus they leave their front doors open quite often, while they are enjoying a coffee & reading their newspapers on the little balconies or even the road's pavement!

After two nights and two days, on Sunday evening, we drove direction Rotterdam, just about 60 km away, in order to take a quick look at the more industrial & modern architecture, but mostly in order to spend the night in a spacious and retro furnitured cabin of "De Rotterdam", an old 50's ship, renovated and transformed into a hotel.

An evening walk to the Erasmus Bridge offered a spectacular view of the architecure by night, captured by my partner's patient skill - and qualified camera -  on night photography.

As the city doesn't exactly offer lovely corners to explore while walking, next morning, after a quick tour by car, we headed to The Hague, for breakfast and a walk in a park, where deers lived, having it as their residence.

And now we come to the highlight of the day, presented through the pictures of this post,

Katwijk!

...or a coastal suburb a few kilometers from The Hague, situated in the south  of  The Netherlands, with small beautiful brick houses, lined by the beach, all with verandas and decorated with wonderful taste. An alternative summer destination for us - other than Greece of course, where I originate from.

Except from walking around, feeling the lovely breeze on our skin, while the sun was kissing us and smelling this incredible sea freshness and while of course taking pictures, relaxed time was spent at one of the cafes situated exaclty on the beach, where and around which the pictures of this post were taken.

I can still taste the warm brownie with the soft, white ice cream on top (sorry no pictures!) and the tea of red fruit....Having been brought up in a coastal suburb of Athens and having spent some 33 years of my life living by the sea, whenever I get near it, it is as if all worries just vanish and all thoughts can be effortlessly organised....and then just simply actions take place.

So, I hope you have enjoyed this small trip with me and should you have done so, thank you very much for being a visitor and taking the ride.

There are quite a few things running at the moment, one of which is a give away organised in cooperation with Dionne from City of  Dionne - details are to come later today - and the continuation of it, another give away, which will take place here and on flickr, in order to celebrate the 100.000 of my stream, achieved some two weeks ago.

I'll be posting pictures of this trip to the Netherlands organised in groups throughout the week. I hope to achieve a satisfying level until next week, when we fly direction Greece for almost two weeks of summer vacation.

So, this is again a period that the title of this blog supports iteslf, as I'm a currently a rather busy bee!

Enjoy a great day! I'll be back later with detalis about the give away...see you then :)

When nature decides...

A dinner in Paris...it should have been...to celebrate my partner's birthday, wearing most probably this outfit...and a breakfast to begin the day (delicious croissants instead of humble bread), that would have most probably taken place in one of our favorite cafes in Montmarte ( instead of our tiny Penthouse), like we did the same period last year, when I first visited this magical city.

  Well, it seems that nature had other plans, which resulted in flight cancelations, and ours to Paris on early Friday morning was one of them. There was disappointment of course....and tension...but it is one of those cases, that one must accept what is happening, be thankful for positive aspects - in our case, living a 15' drive to Frankfurt airport, therefore the cancelation simply finding us home and receiving confirmation that there will be a full refund for the flight and hotel bookings - and then proceed to a new plan should that be wished.

And so it happened. The weather forecast promising lovely, Spring, warm and sunny weather, a  short weekend escape by car to Strasbourg, the lovely, reasonably sized for a weekend visit city, just by the southern borders  to Germany, seemed like and was a good alternative.

On the way there, a 2 hour stop to the beautiful German city of Karlsruhe was made, so as to visit the wonderful castle and gardens.

On the way back from Strasbourg, the green line was taken through France and southern Germany until eventually taking the high way back home. It's more or less a 2 to 2 1/2 hour drive.

   We returned both with 2000 pictures added up together, of which many are worth to be shared. Due to time restrictions though, just a few chosen will be for the time being. It's nice material to work on though...beautiful  scenery all around!

So, one more time life and nature became great teachers, reminding us who has the power and showing us, that should we not be able to adjust in life's changes and master our ambitions, happiness might be always close, but somewhere round the corner...not really manifesting in our lives and living in our hearts.

Now is all we have, the present is where we live and here is where happiness lies.

Dreams are lovely and we all do so much enjoy to daydream and escape sometimes...and that is o.k, so long as we do not lie to ourselves and become identified with our dreams in an unhealthy manner, believing that we are who we wished to be.

We are who we are, and should we want to evolve as existences and our dreams to manifest in our lives, we need to work on many levels equally....the practical, the emotional, the spiritual, the bodily...

All are important and need to be taken care of....and now that these have been said and written and shared....movement is what I need and wish for...other than the typing performed by my fingers....

Wish you all to be spending a lovely day, despite its possible cancelations and disappointments and find the pleasure in simple things....

This Easter I'm loving....

1. That we let ourselves free and simply ended up
staying at home, with no special preparations
made, but still enjoying daily three nice meals and tea time in between.

2. The vintage, wooden bunnies from East Germany,
found in the attic and donated by my partner's father, which
serve as our Easter, understated decoration.

3. The inexpensive white - golden, porcelain tea set for two, recently purchased at a local store,
reminding me of my mother's Bavarian set I grew
up with.

4. The trip I made to Munich a few days ago and
enjoyed to its fullest extend, mostly because
after a long time, I travelled on my own again.

5. That photgraphy has developed into a true
passion affecting every domain of my life in
multiple ways.

6. One of which being, the ability to keep a
journal of pretty decent pictures of the places
visited, especially architecture that so much
fancinates me and I adore.

7. Another being making, posting & sharing pictures
of my everyday life here, the place where I 've
met a lot of people that inspire me, I admire
and have grown true friendship feelings for.

8. That through flickr, my mother no longer feels
away from me, as through the pictures, she sees
the world I experience through my eyes and has a
regular visual connection to me. Telling her
that I'm happy, cannot be compared with the fact
that she can see a smile up on my face!

9. Among the mails I get from dear friends, flickr
friends and contacts, the ones from my mother saying 
how much she loved what she saw, carry special 
meaning and importance.

10. That it's the 3rd Easter I'm spending in this
beloved little Penthouse with my partner and it feels so right!

11. That after a period of adjustment in this
country, I have really started to enjoy my life
here and appreciate it for all its benefits,
being able to bare the disadvantages and the
difficult parts.

12. That after more than two years that I'm gone
from Greece, the friendship field has cleared
out. I am very, very pleased for the few, true
friendships with a couple of wonderful people!

13. That I am as close as I have ever been to making
some of my dreams come true and the fact that I
am prepared for all the work that this involves.

14. That I'm in relative peace with myself, having
grown a deep understanding of why and how I've
reached where I am, even when it seemed that I
was taking the wrong direction or choosing a
rather long way. My vision always seems to
prevail and be clear, even in between storms.
I suspect the reason being that it comes from the depths of my existence and it
is trully connected to the heart.

15. That I'm in relative peace with others, even
when that involves saying a firm "no",
especially when I feel that I'm not being
honestly appreciated for who I am and the parts
of myself that I generously offer.

16. I've finally grown and learned to have
some patience when things are difficult and
accepted the fact that those moments simply
need to be bared, like the happy moments in
life and that they always reflect the need for
undealt issues to be taken care of.

Thank you for reading through this post, in case you did, it means a lot to me to communicate such thoughts and am pretty certain that the ones to read are the right ones...

Should you wish to share here in the comment section what you are loving or are pleased about this Easter, please do so!