photography
Links
Some links to begin with:
Jan’s gallery (especially Douce France and Sailing Friesland)
Photography
Photography is a bit of a hobby for me. It started when my dad gave me his old Pentax Asahi S1a when I was about 12 years old. The Asahi S1a is a very simple SLR camera with absolutely no frills, dating from around 1960. No built-in light meter so in those days I could be found walking around with a light meter in my hand. The complete set consisted of the camera body, the light meter, a 50mm prime and three macro rings. Around the same time my high-school physics teacher, David Bowman, decided to teach us photography, i.e. how to build your own pinhole camera, how to develop film and photo’s, etc.
Living in Kenya at the time, there was plenty of subject to shoot. Appointed as school photographer for the 1996 school magazine I was able to shoot an unlimited amount of film at no cost, allowing me plenty of room to experiment. A passion was born.
After returning to the Netherlands for university photography took a step backwards, owing to a changing set of priorities and, frankly, not too inspiring surroundings. Nevertheless I acquired some new equipment in those days, initially purchasing a wrecked Olympus OM1 with a cheap 28mm lens, the standard 50mm f1.8 Zuiko and a fungus-filled 210mm Panagor telelens. Since the OM1 didn’t work, I now had two lenses doing nothing without a matching camera. This caused me to purchase an OM-40 from the local photography store in Maastricht (“you can’t go wrong with this one, son”). Holdidays caused brief revival of my old passion, but I basically didn’t do much photography for the past years.
Since I finished my studies and started working, another priority shift appears to have occurred. I started asking myself why I didn’t put more energy into this most satisfying hobby. After some serious soulsearching (triggered by someone asking a colleague of mine what his passion was, causing me to wonder what mine was) I decided to elevate my hobby to the status of “passion” again.
My friends gladly fuelled this passion by dishing out for a proper 400mm f5.6 Sigma prime as a graduation present. This lens was the most valuable piece of luggage I took along to Kenya last summer, and I was – on the whole – quite happy with the results.
I’ve recently had another OM1 that I bought a couple of years ago (on e-bay) fixed up, after using it for the first time in Antwerp and Brussels. I’ve decided I quite like it. Not as fancy as the OM-40 but more functional.
The only problem now is again one of subject – I need to find something to photograph here… Or go on holidays all the time… 
Kenya 2005
See this site for photo’s of Kenya, August – September 2005, taken by Mayke and me. See this site for rather more photo’s, taken by Olaf and Sabine (with some of my photo’s mixed in).
Old photo’s
There are some old photo’s here.
Photography category
Clicking on the category “photography” (in the sidebar) displays all my posts related to photography.