Wiki Loves Monuments

Wikimedia Nederland will organize the photo contest Wiki Loves Monuments in September 2010. Following the success of Wiki Loves Art photographers are invited to take photos of the Dutch rijksmonumenten. A ‘rijksmonument’ is a Dutch object with special cultural historic value, beauty or special meaning to science as described in the ‘Monumentenwet 1988’. Some of the objects are marked with a special blue/white shield.

Blue white shield of the Haagse Conventie

From 1 thru 30 September 2010 photos can be uploaded to a special web site. Photographers can only upload photos of their own and are asked to release the photos under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Netherlands license so they can be used in the Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. The photos do not have to be made in September 2010, they can be taken earlier. Detail photos and photos of the inside are allowed.  Each photo must contain the ‘rijksmonumentnummer’.

Here are some resources to find a rijksmonument near your place:

• Per Dutch provincie / province: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijsten_van_rijksmonumenten_per_provincie
• KennisInfrastructuur CultuurHistorie
• a Google Earth Layer on http://toolserver.org/~erfgoed/monumenten_op_de_kaart/

Wiki Loves Monuments will coincide with the Open Monumenten Dag (the Dutch Europen Heritage Days) on 11 and 12 September 2010. They are organizing a photo contest for young persons between 10 and 18 years old.

The Making of the House Sonneveld Panorama

House Sonneveld is located in Rotterdam and is built in the Nieuwe Bouwen style in 1933. It looks very modern, even for today's standards. Since 2001 it is a museum house and you can visit it.

I visited this museum house during Wiki Loves Art/NL. During this photo contest the collections of a large number of Dutch museums could be photographed. Each photographer made his/her photos available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic licence. This way the photos could be used by others like Wikimedia Commons. The 10 best photos would get a prize.

Let me tell you how I made this panorama. I was shooting all objects the organizers wanted me to. Besides this museum I also visited the Tropenmuseum and later on the Verzetsmuseum. I was thinking that in order to win a prize the photo had to stand out from the crowd (one way to stand out is to give the largest number of photos to the project…click here to see my 314 photos which made me the top contributor :-).

When I entered the living room I decided to make a panorama so you could see all the objects in their surroundings. I assumed no-one else would submit a panorama. Click on the photo below to see the individual photos:


Normally the camera is put on a tripod with a panorama head to ensure the photos align with each other. However, the usage of a tripod is forbidden, so I took the photos ‘guerilla style’. This means you take the photos while rotating your body around a foot (in my case the left foot). It was a very sunny day and the orange blinds were down on the windows of the right side. You can see the orange cast on the individual photos.

All photos were shot in RAW, so colour correcting them in post production was easy. Autopano Pro was used to stitch the photos together. I was not sure to include or exclude the door on the left side of the panorama. In the end I submitted the photo with the door included, because it was my way to lead the viewer into the panorama.

When I won the seventh prize (see here and here), I was extremely happy, of course. I smiled when read the jury’s comment (translated from Dutch):

“Photo does good justice to the subject, beautiful panorama, disturbing is the composition on the left: the open door. The composition is better when the door is omitted". I am very glad they still awarded me with a prize!

Wiki heeft een winnaar (Wiki has a winner)

On the NAi (Nederlandse Architectuurinstituut) website I found an article about WLANL and my Huis Sonneveld panorama. Nice to know seven other people took the time to go to Huis Sonneveld.

Diez atracciones gratuitas en Europa

The Spanish must like the Verzetsmuseum a lot! Here is another article featuring one of my photos.

Wikilovesart /NL aftermath

Photos I released with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license for the Wikilovesart /NL project are slowly being used.
The Verzetsmuseum seems to be a popular subject
A Spanish web site uses one of my photos in an article about the Dutch Verzetsmuseum. The photos is hyperlinked to the source, nice!

Another Spanish web site lists the top 10 free attractions in Europe. Number 10 is the Verzetsmuseum.

A German web site writes an article about heating buildings and uses a photo of a transmitter in a suitcase. I don't understand the connection...

And last but not least: The local TV station AT5 has used my photo of the front of the Verzetsmuseum in an article about the director of the Verzetsmuseum.

Publishing my panoramas

I won a price with the panorama above in the Dutch wiki loves art/NL competition. The photo has been released to the Wikimedia Commons.


Publishing my panoramas on Flickr is not satisfactory because the panorama is scaled down. This is an experiment with Zoomify to publish interactive panoramas.

(http://www.tinyurl.com/winningpano)