Back to the Future

Father and son

Paris

Will be posting some shots I took in Paris in the next few days

Worship Paris

Going to visit Paris again soon. And I'm really looking forward to it.
It's always so nice to travel to where the locals worship tourists.

Kickstart

I know this is not a kickstarter but a bikepedal

I need to kickstart this blog thing up again. 

If you bear'd with me, thanks for  patience shown. Good things will come to those who wait. But not yet.

I'm currently in the process of getting used to my new job, finding a new house and building a portfolio site. That said don't write Hou Koers off completely yet. The sun is out here in Holland and so I'm gonna be solarpowered on a roll and racing, juggling the various tasks at hand ánd still shooting more shots of more stuff ánd displaying some of them as well here on Hou Koers. 

Promise.

More Cuban decay

Every time I tried to take a picture the man would get out of the shot. I explained that I would like a picture of him with the trains, but he told me he was not the thing of importance, the trains were. Eventually he posed for the shot, but with his head bowed. Out of respect for the trains?  

For some reason I'm incredibly intrigued by decay. You know those arial photo's of plain graveyards in the desert? Or those stacks of cars waiting at car graveyards.. Or pictures of Tjernobyl, a whole city that's slowly falling apart.. You might argue that there's not much to like about those places but I always feel very atracted to them. Maybe it's related to the inclination to melancholy that's rooted in me, but on another level it's caused by the visual aspect of decay. I just really like the nice matte colors, the rust and the cracks in paint and walls, and all their different textures.
It's safe to say that for somebody who likes this kind off stuff, Cuba was a treat. Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of the more mainstream beauty there as well, it's not that the whole country is in a poignant state. But luckily for guys like me there is quite a bit of deacy to be found.

Right next to the famous Partagas cigar factory I spotted this train graveyard. The old man in the above picture took me on a guided mini-trip around the grounds. He told me he was the son of a brakeman and lived his whole life among these trains. He was born and raised in the town of Santa Clara, but when the trains moved to Havana, he went with his trains.
Although I barely speak Spanish, I could notice that the man was quite emotional when talking about the trains. I tried to get to kow what would happen with the trains, but all I could understand was that the old man was going to stay there as long as the trains were there.

Smoky Eyes

At least my take on them.

Joost has quitted smoking for over a year but was willing to lit up a nice Cuban just for the photo. Thanks man!

Flickering lights

Had a fun evening last weekend with Simon and my new flashgun. 

There's treasure everywhere!

This must be one of the coolest stories I have ever found on the interwebs (thanks manilacamerastyle.com).
It's an incredible story about a guy who buys a box full of negatives at an auction to find out he stumbled on one of the greatest street photographers from the past, who also happened to be a nanny.

You can see more of here pictures and some more background on the story on http://vivianmaier.blogspot.com


Now where are those boxes of negatives that my father shot with his Rolleiflex?

Surfwax

Ow how I can't wait to feel this under my feet again. 

And then I mean feeeel it, so sans the rubber booties. 

Mugshots

The sequence of the pics had us a bit puzzled at first. 1st pic ends up in bottom right corner?

My good friend Joost and I had a blast shooting some weird portraits Friday night.  We shot them with a Cambo pasportrait I got my hands on a while ago. It's a specialised camera for ID portraits which takes Polaroid film. It had been lying around for a while, cause it doesn't really work in low light, but this week I finally was able to hook it up with my new flashgun and do some shooting with it. So much fun, we were through the ten-pack of film before we knew it.

The camera has a fixed focus for standard passport photographs, 

but we decided to ignore that for some more up close and personal fuzz.

Under wraps

Ok, so updates have been lacking. 

Maybe that's because I decided to keep up all the good stuff under wraps for now... ...Or maybe I should just get out more and shoot some new stuff.

I guess winter got to me a little. But I hear spring is coming, so I might leave this hibernatious state soon.

Lists

So late 2010 I saw this movie The Bucket List.
I didn't think the movie to be really spectacular, but by now I'm quite happy I saw it.

I was watching the film together with a friend and what the movie did was trigger us into talking about what would be on our bucket lists. This combined with the sentiments of another year almost over had us thinking about setting goals for the future, and it wasn't long before all my thinking was done in lists.

Which goals to achieve before I turn thirty? Which in the next five years? And the next ten?

In the end I find myself with lists I made for this new year which has only just began. I realize the lists not only serve the purpose of getting my head clear about what I want to achieve, but also they are already pushing me to go and try to achieve as many of the goals I have set.
I hope that twelve months from now I'm holding a bunch of lists that have all the goals crossed off, and that I am  liking The Bucket list even more.

Some of the lists:

Books to read:
1. The Subterreneans by Jack Kerouac
2. Visions of Codey by Jack Kerouac
3. Die leiden des Jungens W. by Goethe
4. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (reread)
5. A novel by Bukowski

Films to see:
1. Easy Rider (review)
2. The Thin Red Line
3. A Clockwork Orange (review)
4. L' Herisson
5. Taxi Driver

Places to go:
1. California
2. Madness Festival (Dutch surffestival)
3. Paris
4. Domburg (Dutch surfspot that I haven't surfed yet)
5. Hoge Veluwe/Kroller Muller (Dutch nature reserve and museum)

I've got lists. Now let's see what 2011 will throw at me.
Bring it on!

Muscle

This guy was searching for seafood of some kind in Varadero, Cuba. Even he was told to leave the water because of the hazardous conditions

Atypical tropics

Night time transportation

Even more Cuba cars

And a horse...

Che don't surf

Now, I know it's not much, but there are some waves out there on that photo. I took the shot on or second day in Cuba in Varadero. I was told that although Cuba isn't the best destination for waves, you could score some waves there when the conditions are right and I should go to Varadero cause that is the only place where you can rent a board.

Lucky us! We we happened to land in Cuba when tropical storm Tomas just crossed the island. I was thinking tropical storm, thats bound to move some water, not?!
Well it did move some water... However not that much was moving in the direction of Varadero. Kneehigh choppy waves wasn't exactly what I was expecting thinking about tropical storms, but nevertheless I was happy. I only had to find me a surfboard and I would be getting some surfing done in nice water temperatures sans all the rubber!

Then as I walked along the beach I began to wonder why all the beach-chairs where empty, and why there wasn't anybody in the water? Sure it was a somewhat cloudy day, but somebody would want to go for a swim anyway right?!

Turns out that it was prohibited to enter the water! There were waves and because of that there was some currents and that off-course is way too dangerous for people to go in the water!!! And renting any water sport equipment was out of the question for sure. Just look at the picture! We are talking about some kneehigh choppy waves here!. What a deception!

This just really left me wondering why the resorts in Varadero rent out surfboards at all. Considering the water is prohibited when there's swell. Is it for floating around sipping a Cuba Libre?

Lesson learned. Always bring your own board or just stick to cigars and rum when visiting Cuba.

More Cuba Cars, less color

Cuba Cars

I like old cars. Cuba was a treat.

 

Cuba

Is great!
First of all, Cubans are unbelievable friendly people. It is somewhat sad that this should be the biggest culture shock when visiting a country, but it was. I realized how absurd it was, when I spoke to several other 'western' tourists who realized they had to get used to people trying to be genuinely friendly to them.
For some reason we seem to expect that when strangers are being friendly, they are trying to get money from you or are trying to distract you so that their partners can rob you.
Off-course there where a lot of people trying to make some money in Cuba as well, but it was in a decent way.
For example: we were checking out an old building in Havana. A couple stopped to tell us about the history of the building and why it was in such a bad state now. After the explanation they asked us to buy some milk for their baby. They wouldn't accept any money, they really wanted us to come to the shop and buy them milk. Sure, this is also a form of hassling (especially with the prices of baby milk nowadays, but it's the most sympathetic form of hassling I personally ever experienced.

Now if anybody feels the need to inform me that Cubans are known to mix crystal meth with baby milk for consumption, please do so I can restore my pessimistic world view.

Thanks for the concerns

But luckily we weren't on the flight that crashed in Cuba.
Our flight is delayed until tomorrow.

Thanks for all the text messages etc.

Arjan

Lo-fi

Lo-fi camera shot of my lo-fi frankenstein board

paddle out

Friday I'm off to Cuba for 2 weeks. So after friday no updates for a while. 

But I'm sure I will shoot a bunch of stuff over there which will end up here after the trip.

For now I'm just really psyched to be able to paddle out in warmer waters soon!

paint and pens

A fish I saw at the Dutch shapersmeeting earlier this year. 

The guy didn't only shape the board himself, but went pretty crazy on the board with graphics and colors as well. Very cool lookin' self build.