Rotterdam has it all - when I first visited the city I didn't expect it to be so diverse and photographically interesting. Rotterdam is not your typical dutch city. After the severe bombings in the second world war, which grounded the complete center, the city decided to start completely new, instead of rebuilding the old houses. Rotterdam is a real architectural highlight, wide streets, amazing modern architecture that is constantly changing, it's like a living museum of modern architecture. The Cubus House, the Markthal, the different Bridges are just a few Highlights to look out for, besides that you have of course Europes biggest harbour as well as the smaller nostalgic city harour and it's harbour museum.
The city is very multicultural, open minded, has a lot of great futuristic projects (e.g building a forrest and a farm on water) and has also a great cultural scene. But besides architecture it also offers great opportunities for landscape and macro photogrpahy. The huge parks like the Kralingse Bos with its lake, forrest and windmills or the Bergse Voorplas offer beautiful viewpoints to photograph. The Rotterdam Zoo is a great place with a lot of space for the animals and great opportunities to watch the animals. If you are into Macro Photography you will be over the moon when you enter the butterfly house. There is several botanical gardens of which the Arboretum Trompenburg is the most impressive as well as a rooftopgarden on top of a shopping area.
Only 22 min drive away from Rotterdam you find the old windmills of Kinderdijk, a World Unesco Heritage site and not much further away you have a huge nature reserve that you can explore by foot or boat, called the Nationaal Park de Biesbosch. You can even take the waterbus to commute between Kinderdijk and Biesbosch.
And if you still want that charm of the traditional dutch cities with their narrow alleys and old quirky houses then Delft is a 15 min. trainride from Rotterdam away, a really stunningly picturesque town.
