The Netherlands and water

The Dutch and water have been intertwined for centuries. With a large part of the country below sea level there is a constant awareness and respect for water.
The Dutch built dikes, pumped water away from the polder with windmills, had a huge flood in 1953 and built an ingenious system to protect agains the sea; the Deltawerken (you really should check out the Wikipedia page about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works)
The Dutch know how to deal with the water. Dutch engineers helped develop new protective structures around the New Orleans, which was partially destroyed by storm Katrina in 2005.

I was happy to see that water was chosen as the subject of the HiveBR Photo Contest since I've got a lot of photographs containing water and stories that go with it.
And water also is a very nice subject to work with in photography. You can play with reflections, macro photography of water drops and you can use long shutter speed to create smooth, glass like waterfalls.

Windmills

The Netherlands is well known for its windmills. There are still over 1000 different windmills. Most of them aren't actually in use anymore and only have historical value.
There are different types of windmills. A lot of them were used to grind grain into flour or tp create oil from seeds. Others were used as a sawmill to make planks from trees.
And then there were also windmills that were used as pumps.
To reclaim land from the sea, the Dutch built dikes around large bodies of water. On these dikes they built several windmills which served to pump water from the area to create new land.
This new land; called a polder, was often used as farmland for cattle or cultivation of crops.

These windmills have been replaced by electronic pumping systems many years ago, but you can still see them when you go to the polders. The photo below (my entry for the HiveBR Photocontest) was taken by me when I made a cycling trip in the polder. There are foundations that support the maintenance of these windmills so they can be kept for future generations as they are inseparably linked to Dutch history.

Canals

In the Netherlands we have a lot of rivers. They originate in the mountains in France, Austria, and Switzerland and flow into the North Sea in the Netherlands, but during the middle ages, the Dutch started to dig canals. These canals were used for drainage and transport between cities. In the 17th century, the canal network was significantly expanded to promote trade and shipping.
Many cities in The Netherlands, like Amsterdam, Leiden, Delft and many more, have a very extensive network of canals.
I live near the city of Leiden and this is the canal that leads to another large city; Haarlem.
They used to transport goods from one city to the other with tow boats that were pulled by horses.

Excessive water

Being below sea level also means that the groundwater level is very high. When we have long periods of heavy rains the soil becomes saturated and the water cannot go anywhere.
Below you see a picture I took after it had rained for a couple days in a row. The lawn is more of a lake.

Some more water photographs

As I already mentioned earlier in this blog; water is a very nice subject for photography. I will showcase some of the different photos with this subject that I've found in my photo archive.

The following photo is from a pier in a nearby lake. It's an artificial lake. The sand was needed to build a new residential neighborhood and they used the hole that was left to create a lake for recreation. In summer you see a lot people swimming and it's also a famous fishing spot.

This photo was taken in Italy. We visited a lovely waterfall in Tuscany where I played a bit with the settings of my camera. By placing my camera on a rock and setting the shutterspeed a bit longer I could create this very nice 'glas-like' effect.

The following shot was taken with my macro lens. It's showing hundreds of tiny water drops that are stuck to a spider web. all the drops are so perfectly round. They look just like glass.

And finally one of my favorite spots with water... the beach. This is the beach where I live nearby. It's lovely to go there in the summer to go for a swim. In winter it's a bit cold, but then you can go for a walk on the beach and see the strength of the waves crashing on the beach.

Thanks for reading my blog. Feel free to leave your comments!

About FriendlyMoose

I'm an amateur photographer with a love for indoor gardening, craft beer, and cycling. As the owner of the Cycling Community and the creator of the Topcomment initiative, I focus on fostering engagement and bringing like-minded people together.
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