Through my lens: discovering Rotterdam
What the city of contrasts has taught me about embracing failure & living the dream.
In 2022, I participated in my first Urban Photo Race1 in Rotterdam. Despite having lived in the Netherlands for almost half my life, I hadn’t visited its second biggest city before; the city known for its international port, modern architecture and vibrant cultural scene.
Where Amsterdam is currently the equivalent of a matcha latte & avocado toast, Rotterdam can best be compared to a Red Bull, purchased around midnight at your favourite 24/7 toko. It just hits different. Rotterdam is a city that is completely unpretentious and a bit rough-around-the-edges, but it’s also full of unmistakable energy.
Unlike most cities in the Netherlands that will lure you in with picturesque canal views and crooked houses, Rotterdam offers breathtaking views of its many bridges and skyscrapers instead. Having been largely destroyed during WWII, it is a city marked by striking contrasts, offering excellent opportunities for street photography.
The Urban Photo Race, which is an 8-hour long photo marathon in a city of choice, with a number of pit stops and four challenging themes to focus on, has been uniting street photography enthusiasts in the Netherlands since 2011. As a newbie, it is safe to say I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into; but in hindsight, it has been one of the most rewarding experiences on my photographic journey.
I walked 24k steps that day, took over 600 pictures, and shared a few beers with fellow street photographers. But besides being an excellent opportunity to meet like-minded people and learn from their experience, the race gave me the chance to discover a new city in a unique way; paying attention to its gritty parts, observing people (plus getting out of my comfort zone by asking strangers to pose for me) and learning to not just look, but truly see.
Seeing a city for the first time this way enabled me to look under the surface; there are plenty of tourist sights and hotspots in Rotterdam, but what I was interested in – and tried to capture – was its spirit. The indestructible spirit of a city that had to rebuild itself completely, embracing different cultures along the way. Even now, looking back at some of the shots I took three years ago, I can see how the city constantly changes. One example out of many: the large green area below, located right in front of the Markthal, a popular place to hang out and relax in the middle of the bustling city life, had to recently make space for a modern housing project. To me, this is one of the most exciting aspects of street photography – we never quite know what will be worth documenting, until we look back at it a few years later.
A valuable lesson I’ve learned that day was that in order to learn and improve your skills, you must be willing to feel like a total failure from time to time; and I sure did. As the day progressed, I could feel getting increasingly stressed about not having enough shots for two of the four assignments. But as we all know, the more you push for a certain result, the more elusive it becomes. I came to a breaking point when I bumped into a friend who, like me, was getting tired of the game of looking for something that just wasn’t there, and we decided to simply stroll back along the river to our final meeting point. That’s when the race became fun again, rather than a competition of sorts - and as luck would have it, we both took some of our favourite shots of the day during the last leg of the race.
I’ve carried this lesson with me ever since. Besides the joy and thrill of a good hunt, street photography can also be disheartening at times; you don’t always get the shot you want. Sometimes the weather sucks, people walk in the wrong direction, you only get cross looks and no one steps into the perfectly lit frame you had in mind. But whenever I get frustrated, I remind myself that ‘failing’ to take a good shot is not only part of the game - it is the whole game. It teaches you to be humble and patient; in fact, it is the direct opposite of the kind of instant gratification we’ve collectively become addicted to.
When I submitted my pictures the day after the race – a set of three images for each theme - I knew I wasn’t going to win. My work was not even close to some of the brilliant shots I saw on the screens of my fellow shooters.
What I did not see coming was that a few months later, one of my favourite captures of the day ended up being selected for an annual photography exhibition in Venice: the Venice Photo Lab. I called this image ‘Living the Italian dream’, as a nod to the Vespa and the vaguely Italian-looking guy on the billboard.
Besides learning to embrace failure, one thing the photo marathon has taught me was that it doesn’t matter how advanced you are – as long as you’re willing to walk the walk and remain devoted to your art, it’ll eventually get you where you want to be.
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I don't envy you culling through over 600 photos, curious what your workflow is. One things I've learned traveling is that you can't stereotype an entire country, or even an a single city, there are so many types of locations all with their own feel. When I traveled to Japan I was excited to take photos because of photos I've seen others take. I was not prepared for the sheer variety of locations though. From the countryside, to temples, to industrial Osaka, traditional Kyoto, and just Tokyo could take a lifetime to capture.
"Where Amsterdam is currently the equivalent of a matcha latte & avocado toast, Rotterdam can best be compared to a Red Bull, purchased around midnight at your favourite 24/7 took."
I loved this sentence, it describes the cities perfectly. :)