Last week’s blogpost got quite a good review. A hard act to follow. You do understand, I cannot always deliver such posts, don’t you? LOL… Why not? Well…because of the factors time (or rather the lack of it, due to a full-time job), availability (of husband with camera, time and willingness), good light and nice weather (usually bad in The Netherlands in winter). Fortunately my dear Ron asked me once again whether I wanted anything photographed for my blog and suggested the railway station of Haarlem as a setting. Beautiful old station, which meant Dark! And the day was Grey. And it Rained.
It didn’t strike me as the most logical place. Especially not because both our skills for indoor and bad-light photography are very poor. But…. you don’t argue too much when the services rendered are for free. Beggers can’t be choosers. And off we went.
Below: oh.. there is a booth with a mirror… quickly check my hair (extremely necessary with my hair).
I am wearing my purple Max Mara coat from last year, a black and white scarf (gift from Anja, the Curly Traveller), a black and white bracelet, bought for next to nothing in Bella’s Etsy shop, new leather jogging trousers, bought last week when I went shopping at the Lab (remember? at the end of the post Market in Haarlem), and my Tommy Hilfiger pumps. Pfff… quite a list.
Below: this is Haarlem station. Old and beautiful but not light and bright….
Below: …. which meant dark and vague pictures.
I did my best to upgrade them in a programme called Lightroom. Sylvia of 40+Style recommended it to me and my brother-in-law taught me last Wednesday how to fully use the programme. So nice of him. Lightroom really helps, especially when you shoot your photos in RAW and not in JPG … which I did…(originally I had set the camera to RAW but somebody had changed that and I never checked). So this picture (and a lot more) does not really show what you can achieve in Lightroom, but believe me, it is a whole lot better than it was before.
The sweater is Kenzo (this year) and the necklace is a gift from Suzanne Carillo. She made it herself and I get lots of compliments over it. 
Below: from the side. You can see why I tucked the sweater in at the front. don’t you? Do I need to elaborate on that? No, I didn’t think so.
Below: the platform. The archway on the right leads to the waiting room (first class as you had different classes in the old days) 
Below: this is me in the waiting room. Having a red nose from the cold.
Below: beautiful decorations with tiles in this station which was built between 1899 and 1908. Lots of Art Nouveau decorations
Below: going outside to get some more light… adjusting, adjusting, adjusting…. the bag is by Longchamps by the way
Below: we got on the train to Amsterdam (station Sloterdijk) to see whether the light was better there. It was, but it is a very modern station
Below: it was still cold.. so I pulled one of my faces. You might not know this but I pull strange faces all the time.
Below: boring station, so we had one coffee and decided to go right back
Below: one last picture… See what a difference a bit of good light makes?
Below: the conductor looked at Ron’s camera in astonishment. As if to say “Why would you want to photograph this?
Below: back home, smiling at the conductor who warmed up to us
You see, not as thrilling and good as last week’s post, but hey…. you cannot win them all.
Greetje
PS: Linking up and joining so many other bloggers at Patti’s Visible Monday. Go and see.
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