Windmills from the roof of an abandoned building continue forever into the distance. Water quietly flows even through the smallest towns surrounding the city. In some areas the canals are still frozen, but the ice is far too thin to support the would-be skaters quietly sitting on a bench.

A few weeks after my son Hudson was born, and unsure of what to expect, we wrapped him up and headed from New York to Amsterdam. It was a commission to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson leaving Amsterdam for New York. Somehow this task of getting everything through security seemed far more daunting than anything Henry Hudson could have ever encountered.

I was asked to respond to the idea of borders. What does it mean to be an American, a New Yorker and to look at that relationship to Amsterdam’s surrounding areas? With that in mind I knew I didn’t want to make some broad declarative statement about a place I knew little about.  I tried to imagine what it would be like to see Amsterdam for the fist time, to imagine it all through my newborn son's eyes.

I had spent so much time in New York looking at maps of Amsterdam, and thinking about the role of borders in relationship to the city. It was pretty much all I could do to ease my mind from the adrenaline rush that poured through me every time I thought about fatherhood.

It is hard to believe that I am here right now underneath the A10. This elevated beltway feels too obvious, too literal. The roar of cars above is deafening and I am worried Hudson is going to wake up from his nap. I want to show him a more peaceful setting: a sunrise on the canal; trees along a path; something beautiful for him to gaze upon. Driving north, urban sprawl seems to come to an end. The planned communities are no longer to blame and someone has decided, at least for the meantime, to let the pastures win. The sun sets and rises above us. As Hudson wakes from another nap he turns his head to find a ‘68 Caddy and its Frank Lloyd Wright counterpart fighting to mark their claim to American culture, somewhere on the borders of Amsterdam.

I went to Amsterdam and walked around. I walked around with others and I walked around alone. Before I was a photographer, I was a pedestrian. These days, I am both at once. The eyes look out to the unknown street, a decision is made, the feet follow. As I walk, the camera is in hand, it gets raised to the eye, things are gathered.

Most of the pedestrians have a destination, but my walk is unplanned and unpredictable. I can’t say I know where I'm going or what I'm looking for, but I am guided by a sort of visual hunger. Sometimes I feel like a sheep grazing in a pasture – only seeing my shadow on the grass that’s right in front of me. Other times I feel like a monkey. Standing in one treetop I see something in the distance that’s of interest. So I grab a vine and swing towards it.

It’s a little bit chilly today, but there’s some sunlight, and I like the way it’s landing on the people and the leaves. I use the camera to stop another pedestrian in her stride. I look at how the light reflects and jumps off the big picture windows. As it gets quieter and darker outside, I see more happening inside. The homes are inviting. The lightbulbs in the chandeliers look warm. The camera is put away. It’s time to be a pedestrian with a destination.

I set up shop in the center of Amsterdam in a houseboat docked at 52G Gruenburgwal, in late October and early November last year, to photograph “Water”, the theme I’d been given by Marloes Krijnen of FOAM Museum, for an exhibition titled “NY Perspectives: Amsterdam discovered by New York photographers”. Autumn has always been my favorite season, the fiery endings of so much effort and gnawed-upon growth, combined with memories of new beginnings. Burnt-orange and acid-yellow leaves adorned the crowns of hardwood trees generously planted along the canals, their boughs drooping toward the water, as dots of color spilled out along the ground and drifted by on the surface—a harvest of ephemeral beauty that induces an eternal melancholy.

Water braids its way through the center of Amsterdam and outward, forming vital arteries that define the movement, character, and aesthetics of a city that has been crafted and shaped by liquid and human engineering for centuries. Of course, being on the water is only partly about water, just as cities are only partly about buildings. There are the trees, and the fish, and the birds, and the people, old and young, densely packed, bicycling on crowded streets on their way to work, to eat, to run errands, meet friends, find love, or spend solitary nights in their watery homes along the Amstel. There are the stars, and the winds, and the streetlights and the cafes on nearly every street, and all these things form fluid combinations of uniquely urban experiences that reaffirm the pleasures of human individuality while celebrating the city’s collective achievement.