A dance III

About a month ago, I was on my way from home to a meeting in Amsterdam. I had decided to walk from the station to my meeting, knowing that a demonstration against nuclear energy was held on Dam Square, in the middle of the city, which I wanted to give a quick look.
When I arrived the speakers had already spoken, and now there was music coming from the podium. There was a serene atmosphere, completely unlike the militant rallies against nuclear power that were held in the eighties, the years between Harrisburg and Chernobyl. After Chernobyl, the reservations about nuclear energy became much more common, and the active movement more or less dissolved into the communis opinio. But the climate debate came, and slowly nuclear power became fashionable again. And then a wave overran the Fukushima reactors, and created a momentum for a new movement.

I don't know the cause of the serenity. It may have been the music, or a feeling of homecoming after so many years. My agenda left me no time to investigate.
But in the middle of this serenity was this woman, dancing slowly. Everytime I see this photo I feel jealous of her. Dancing slowly in the middle of a crowd, in the middle of the city - I don't think I could ever do that. But look at her eyes. She seems perfectly happy. I would love to stay there, come home, maybe even dance.
But I had my agenda.



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(More pictures of the demonstration here, at the blog of my friend and colleague Michiel Wijnbergh, who had a different agenda)

A dance II

A few weeks ago I photographed a military exercise in Dokkum, a beautiful town in Fryslân. At the end of the day a company of young marines had to storm a builders' yard occupied by 'insurgents'. There I came across this young dancer.

The yellow stop on the barrel of his Diemaco C7 assault rifle indicates the thing can only shoot blanks now. The expression on this young marine's face indicates he is loving his job. As an 'insurgent' he is allowed to frolic around instead of being a disciplined soldier. 

If it were all for real, this dance would probably not have looked so elegant. Or there would be 5 dead marines by now. And one photographer.

What men want...

Last month at the bi-annual Amsterdam AutoRAI car show:

What do men want? Big trunks...

A dance

The bare facts about this photo:

We are on the tarmac of Eindhoven Airbase in The Netherlands.

We are looking into the hull of a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III military transport aircraft, a plane that is capable of performing both strategic and tactical airlift operations. It can transport a payload of 170,900 lb or 77,500 kg over a distance of 2400 nautical miles or 4400 kilometers without refueling.
The C-17 is operated by Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC), a multinational organization consisting of several NATO members plus Sweden and Finland, to provide for heavy airlift capability that should otherwise be out of reach for these smaller countries.

The white trails on the tarmac are made by a 55.3 tons (121,914 lb) heavy, self-propelled armored howitzer, type PzH 2000, that just drove off the ramp out of the C-17. This heavy artillery piece can deliver 10 high explosive 155mm shells per minute as far as 40 kilometers away. It can even perform Multiple Rounds Simultaneous Impact, which means it can quickly fire five rounds with different amounts of propellant, at a different angle, so that they will all arrive at the same target at the same time. How about that.
The howitzer was brought back from Afghanistan, and was the last piece of heavy equipment coming home after the redeployment (= withdrawal) of the Dutch forces in the Afghan province of Uruzgan.

These are the bare facts about this photo, and thank you, Wikipedia.

What we are looking at has, however, nothing to do with all this.
We are looking at a dance. The kind of dance that only last a second or so. The kind of dance that even the dancers themselves are not aware of. The kind of dance only photography can reveal. How about that!



Photo @ Hollandse Hoogte