One morning I accidentally received a photo that was sent by an old friend. In the image, he was standing on a rock, behind him was the warm turquoise sea, a backdrop of mountains, where I imagined there would be waterfalls and fruit trees. The photograph reminded me of the painting of “Wanderer above the sea of fog” by Caspar David Friedrich.

 

Seeing it for a moment, I started thinking maybe I should make some nice photos and send to my friends. They often ask me to send them beautiful photographs. I know what they like to see, but I’m just not so interested in making them. May be I should do it.

 

It was still early in the morning, the weather was very nice, so I took my big camera and a good tripod which I do not use often and went out.

 

After the whole night snowing, the small trees looked like wearing a big white hat, all the branches were already invisible. Some noise came from the small birds, but I couldn’t see them, only feel them in the air. All morning I weaved through every small streets and imagined a lot of possibilities to build a great image. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any beautiful views that I had imagined in my head. My interest of seeing strangely diluted compared with an afternoon in the Rijksmuseum, where the essence of Dutch beauty is collected just in those rooms. There are all the elements from which I could learn the culture in here.

 

Suddenly the weather changed, everything looked very dark and uninteresting. My equipment became so heavy. Then I started feeling a kind of disappointed. It seemed nothing could light my desire again to see them.

 

So I decided to go back. On the way a computer stopped me when I arrived almost at my house. It was laying in the middle of a small street, so I had to pass it. It was a very broken one, must be someone has smashed it while throwing it away. But suddenly I remembered I had shot it a couple of days before. Then I quickly shot a photo and went back to my room. Put all the heavy stuff off, I opened my computer and checked it.

 

 

 

 

Yes, it was near the garbage bin in this photo. And compared with the other photo, the small mark on the backside of the broken computer was telling that it was the same one. My interest was smoothly coming back in a strange way. This might be just a simple movement by a person and translated simple information that the cleaning workers didn’t work during these days or other unknown stories. But compared with my primary attention, this detail reminded me that everything can be interesting except when I plan to find it.