Mellow Yellow

Looking for inspiration on t’interweb, the idea of picking a single colour as a photographic theme seemed to be a popular. I went for yellow as it was spring time (and I was off to Holland to spot some tulips and a windmill or two).

My first port of call was a Rotterdam. I can find no explanation as to why, but the city seems to use yellow as an accent colour on buildings - maybe as a nod to the Cube Houses (see below)? Answers on a postcard please.

Week 16: Yellow

Location 1 - The Luchtsingel, Rotterdam

Several areas of Rotterdam had effectively been cut off from the centre and so:

“Based on the idea of Permanent Temporality, the Luchtsingel introduces a new way of [city-making]. This means using the city's evolutionary character and existing forms as a starting point. .” — ZUS partner Elma van Boxel

That they did. The bridge was crowdfunded, 8,000 boards painted in a hard-to-ignore shade of yellow inscribed with the supporter's name. The Luchtsingel attracted even more attention after winning the first Rotterdam City Initiative competition in 2012, which awarded funds to the winning project for realization. Once complete, the formerly separated regions of Central Station, Rotterdam North, and the area between Rotterdam North and Binnenrotte were reconnected.

(https://archinect.com/news/article/131886682/follow-the-yellow-wooden-road-into-rotterdam-s-new-luchtsingel-pedestrian-park)

The bridge has become a tourist attraction too and despite the odd bit of graffiti, still looks great.

Location 2 - Kubuswoningen (Cube Houses), Rotterdam

In an attempt to liven up the city from much of the grey post war buildings, architect Piet Blom designed the 39 apartments each inclined at a 45 degree angle. According to re-thinkingthefuture.com, yellow was chosen for the façade due to the psychological effect that it creates - optimism and brightness. Each has a kitchen, bathroom, lounge and a couple of bedrooms set over 3 floors.

All are privately owned with one being a hotel and the other a museum which meant I could have a snoop. I was greeted with a narrow circular staircase leading up to the first floor (and more narrow stair cases within). The spaces are really strange and would definitely require bespoke furniture. The top floor resembles a conservatory (maybe bedroom 2?) and is really light with the lower spaces being quite dark. Definitely very interesting, but I'm not sure I'd want to live in one. There are strange angles everywhere and those stairs would require much concentration to not come a cropper.

Visually though, they are quite brilliant.

Location 3 - Keukenhof, Netherlands

Keukenhof is one of the world's largest flower gardens. According to the official website, [it] covers an area of 32 hectares (79 acres) and approximately 7 million flower bulbs are planted in the gardens annually. (Wikipedia). It is particularly famous for it's tulips and thousands of visitors come to see these each day (on average 26,000 in 2019) between mid-March and mid-May.

My Aunt and Uncle used to rave about this place and I had been meaning to visit for some years. It is staggeringly impressive and one of the manager's confirmed this was a particularly good year.

However, trying to get a 'clean' photo of some of the displays with that many tourists visiting is very difficult. Therefore the above shot is a made of 10 individual photos which were then loaded into Photoshop. The software analyses anything that is not static and (mostly) removes it. This shot required more editing post that (and probably more still), but the software does a really good job.

The same process was used in the shot below:

In Summary:

This was a really enjoyable challenge and once you start looking for a colour, you spot it everywhere. The season definitely helped (as did Rotterdam), but this idea could work in most places.

Next Time: Photojoiners