Yesterday I’ve participated in this event in Amsterdam, together with 3 friends.
The registration point was close to the Albert Cuyp Market; a busy place with lot’s of different people, colours and sceneries.
After registration we received our first themes and the first checkpoint. The themes were: Eye contact, I wish the world take me, as I am (Vincent van Gogh and high. With the intention to capture photo’s according the themes we started. The advantage of this is the focus; we were looking to the world around us through the lens of a photographer looking for pictures meeting the themes.

It was easy to catch the pictures, the themes were recognisable and in time we reached the first checkpoint at the MuseumPlein.
Shocking here was an exhibition of T-shirts, I guess several hundreds of them, hanging on lines between trees and fluttering in the wind, each of them with a name on them. The explanation was that the name on each T-shirt was linked to a Dutch child, killed with a violence action at home. I was really shocked; we consider our Duct society as civilised and each week a child is killed behind the front door at home.

At the first checkpoint we received the next themes; Desire is the essence of man (Spinoza) and nothing here, together with the location of the second checkpoint.
The level of themes was less clear or more open and we were less focussed on our job. Walking trough a beautiful part of Amsterdam, De Pijp, we passed the famous Hallen with lot’s of small shops and food-corners. Nice place for making pictures.
Coming to the second checkpoint, we realised that we were to early and decided to continue the day on a terracce in the neighbourhood. Enjoying a glass of wine and checking each other pictures we concluded that the urban Photo Race was a great event; it gave us the opportunity to meet each other and spent a nice day in Amsterdam with some nice pictures as reward.

June 2015
Herman