Impressions of a Dutch Icon

Introduction

So you all know I’m a trainspotter. Whenever possible I escape the Netherlands to photograph interesting railways all around the world in their various forms and in exciting landscapes.

While I’m doing that, people from all around the world travel to the Netherlands to visit one of the best known Dutch icons; the windmills of Kinderdijk. Kinderdijk is a small village just a 15 minute drive from where I live. I hadn’t visited the place for over 20 years when I used to go for walks there with my parents, but as an English acquaintance wanted to shoot windmills I thought I’d show him around and get some shots myself. If you can take good pictures of steamtrains in the middle of the Inner-Mongolian winter, shooting windmills couldn’t be that difficult. Unlike trains they don’t move, they are never delayed and they don’t unexpectedly appear from the wrong direction.

The place is a lot more touristic than I remembered from the past. Tourists (more than 50% seem to be Asian) arrive by the busload. Many others arrive on boat tours originating in Rotterdam. Europeans usually arrive by private car.

Some history

According to a legend, Kinderdijks name originates from something that happened during a flood. A cradle with a child was seen floating on the waves of a flood and stranded on the slope of a dike. The spot where this happened was named Kinderdijk.

Kinderdijk is the only place in the world where so many windmills are concentrated in such a small area. This is one of the reason why Kinderdijk has been added to the UNESCO world heritage list. In the Alblasserwaard, where Kinderdijk is situated, problems with the water management became more and more apparent from the 13th century. Long canal were dug to get rid of the excess water in the polders. These canals are called "weteringen" and you can find them all over Holland. This method only works for a few years because the original peat ground subsides so an new way of keeping the correct water level in the polders had to be found. A series of windmills was built to pump the excess water into a reservoir during the period of the year that the level of the river was too high to pump the water directly into the river.

The Kinderdijk windmill complex consists of 8 brick windmills of the waterboard Nederwaard which were built in 1738, 8 thatched windmills of the waterboard Overwaard built in 1740, 2 brick windmills of the polder Nieuw-Lekkerland built in 1760 and 1 windmill of the polder Blokweer which was built in 1521 and burned down in 1997. The restoration of this windmill was finished in 2000. In 1869, the windmills received assistance from a steam "mill" or pumping station, which was finally replaced by a diesel pumping station in 1927.

The first shoot

Light was very poor. Well at least it wasn’t raining. It was clear from the start that we’d have to go for hard contrast black & white conversions to gain anything useful from the visit.  The area near the “white bridge” offers the best photographic possibilities with many compositions possible including good reflection in the still water. It’s also the furthest place normal tourists reach. They get their shots, and rush back to the visitors centre and the waiting bus. Kinderdijk is usually only a two hour excursion on a “Europe in a week” or “Holland in a day” itinerary. We were lucky as just as we were there one of the millers started to hoist the sails. Using my 70-200 with a 1.5x TC I managed to get suitable close-ups from across the water.

The second (and third) shoot

I revisited the location two weeks later during the annual floodlight event, during which the windmills are illuminated in the evening. Knowing the area I bypassed the visitors centre an drove up to the “white bridge”. I don’t like to carry a tripod too far. As night fell the illuminated windmills combined with great reflections and the afterglow in the sky. The first night I got there too late; the afterglow was already coming to an end. Shooting windmills by night was new for me. It turned out that the brightness contrast between the floodlit windmills and the already very dark sky was too much for a normal exposure. I found that an underexposure of 1 stop gave the best possibilities for good postprocessing. So I had to go back the next day, as I wasn’t quite happy with some of the results of the first night… Yes, years long experience photographing trains teaches patience and perseverance. If at first you don’t succeed…

By the second night the local mosquitos had realized that photographers were easy bait and they attacked us (don’t think I was the only photographer there) en mass. Keeping close to a guy who was wearing heavy aftershave gave some protection, as they preferred to attack him, but even so I didn’t get home without a few bites.

Technical information

I used every item in my camera bag.

• EOS 10D and 300D (giving my backup body a spin before the next railwaytour)
• Voigtlander 19-35/3.5-4.5
• Tamron 28-75/2.8
• Canon 70-200f4L
• Kenko 1.5x teleconverter
• Tripod for the nightshots

About the Author

Ian Lawrence lives in the Netherlands and works as a civil engineer (piping and pipelining). He spends his spare time photographing trains in their surroundings, always looking for the perfect shot in the best light. As the Netherlands don’t have many locations where he can get the type of shots he likes, he travels abroad whenever he can.

More of his work can be seen on his homepage at www.railway-photography.net