Photos

Tilting

Region: Haarlemmermeer Polder: Town: Nieuw Vennep Occasion: Koninginnedag

Holland is a constitutional monarchy. On April 30, the birthday of the former Queen, the Dutch celebrate Queen’s day, the day of the monarchy so to speak. Queen’s day is a popular celebration with cultural manifestations, street theatre and musical performances and of course lotsa Dutch folklore. This folkloristic thang is maybe the most dominant aspect of Queens Day.
Displayed here are two boys participating in the “tractor-ringsteken” event in Nieuw Vennep. 40 mostly historic tractors drive along a 300m track and on three spots one must target a suspended ring with a short lance. The team that collects the most rings during a series of runs wins. When a ring is missed, the team loses instantly. A better known version of the ringsteken (‘tilting at the ring’) is the ringsteken on horseback. But in the Dutch “polder” with its strong mechanical agricultural tradition, people sometimes like to do it a little bit different.

And how things can suddenly change from celebration to mourning. A hour later during the Queens Day festivities in Apeldoorn a mentally short circuited man who had lost his job drove his black Suzuki compact car through a crowd control fence and a group of people standing there to ram the open top bus with the Royal family that was just passing by. He killed 6 people and wounded 16 in the process and luckily rammed into a monument instead of the bus.
My sympathy and support for the families and friends that have to handle their tragic loss.

Holland is still in shock and the initial reflexes -wanting a security clamp down and a ban on this kind of large scale public events – have made place for a another approach based on the thought that you can and must rule out the obvious security risks but that an open society simply can’t prevent freak attacks likes this.

The PCS4 work flow: I altered, the contrast, curves and levels for the whole pic and some elements separately, using different layers, USM-ed, added a frame and resized, enhanced the edges on a 88 % transparent layer, merged the layers and did a gentle USM (0,2px, 72%) again.



exif data
Camera Manufacturer : Panasonic
Camera Model : Lumix G1
Exposure time [s] : 1/500
F-Number : 5.6
Exposure program : Aperture priority (3)
ISO speed ratings : 100
Date taken : 2009:04:30 10:19:54
Exposure bias value : 0
Metering mode : Multi-segment (5)
Flash : No flash
Focal length [mm] : 28 mm (35 mm equivalent)