Preliminaries

 About 30 years ago I had a wonderful Minolta X-100 camera with a couple of decent to good lenses. I really liked the camera, film of course back then, and it delivered. I was the lazy photographer and had my girlfriend develop and print my stuff. She was right into that and I was much more into music and took pictures occasionally. It worked in spells. All of a sudden I would be busy with my camera for some weeks and then it would lie around again for months. My recording studio, writing songs for my bands and doing scores for films occupied much of my time. And of course the computer, which was laughed at by all my friends, asking me "what the bleep are you going to do with a computer?" I had just upgraded from a Sinclair XL to the now famous Macintosh (Mac Plus). At first I had no clue either what to do with it, but I knew it was the tool to go for. Especially when Hypercard came along (thanks Bill Atkinson and shame on Apple for discontinuing Hypercard after a couple of years). I am still using a spinoff of Hypercard, called LiveCode, which is great.
When the digital revolution in camera's came, I let it slide by, like I also had done with auto focus. My father had bought the Minolta X-9000, fully auto focus, but I didn't like it at all. Slow, clumsy and very noisy. It was only in 2009 that I finally swung myself on the digital train and bought a Nikon D200 with the much used and not too bad 18-200 mm lens with VR. And again, as with the Minolta, I had spells during which I was taking pictures, but more often and I enjoyed editing them in Photoshop. Once I had the camera and lens, the going was cheap in comparison to the old days of buying film and developing. But the images remained on my hard drive, with the exception of a couple which I had printed by a mail order company.

 

Jump ahead

About 2 years ago, I saw a photo in a magazine and I tore it out to serve as an idea to try something. It took another couple of months until I actually tried the idea. It was then that the boat started rocking, I was completely taken. That is now just over1 year ago. Since then I have made thousands of photo's, bought a new camera, a D750, some lenses, an Eizo reference monitor and just the other day a Canon IPF6400 printer. And now it is time to write a blog and move out into the world.
So in the coming weeks I will share some things that I have learnt, some adventures I have had and a lot of excitement that has come my way. I want to ride the technical side, as well as the emotional and artistic side of the craft or art. One of my aims is to bridge the horrendous gap between science and art in general. Of course, the language is different, but the underlying questions and quest are the same. Both disciples try to describe 'reality' in their own way and they should be seen as supplemental, not opposite.
I do like good gear and if possible I get the best. But it's never my goal. It should always serve to make great work. I have been talking to people (read men) who had the best there is, talked endlessly about their gear and always were getting an even newer and better piece of hardware. Unfortunately, they have never shown me a decent picture they have taken.