Dragon Dagger Awards **Admin Invite Only** Please Vote for 156 / Discuss

Zuzka Grujbárová says:

1) What is your name, age, country you live in and occupation?
Nicholas Kenrick , age 49 , I have lived half my life in UK and half in western Canada .

2) When did you start with photography?
I started at age 19 I had a 110 film camera . Does anyone remember these cameras ? and my passion grew from there .

3) Is photography your hobby or employment?
Photography is my Number One hobby followed closely by music .

4) Your equipment?
I use a Canon Xti DSLR and a Sigma 10-20mm F3.5 EX DC HSM lens and a Canon 50mm f1.8 and a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H2 ; an excellent all purpose camera . Overall I favour lenses over camera bodies , and I have gotten some great shots from a simple P&S camera .
But by far the most important photography equipment I own is my Mac computer and the specialist software I use . My pet hate .. tripods .

5) Have you ever used a film camera?
Yes . I owned various Olympus and Nikon film SLR's . And I recently did a very fun course in Pinhole photography which was a great way to get back to the roots of photography .

6) What do you prefer – film or digital – why?
I prefer digital , its an incredible evolution and has catapulted my photography to levels I never imagined .And its so much cheaper . But I do miss the thrill of holding rolls and rolls of film at airports and guarding them lovingly from evil Xray machines .I also miss the slowness and excitement of the darkroom . But I used to have to throw away so many images ( slide film is very unforgiving) which I can now correct in Photoshop .. best tool .. Clone tool .

7) What do you usally make with your photos when uploaded to your computer?
I move my images straight into Photoshop and I am so childishly excited to try out new textures , brushes and plug-ins .

8) Are you making a lot of reprints of your photos?
Prints are a thing of the past for me now , I much prefer seeing them as Wallpaper on my desktop .

9) What is your favorite object of photography?
I love taking candid portraits when I travel . Whilst at home I always marvel at the fantastic scenery of beautiful British Columbia .

10) What does inspire you?
The appreciative comments and wonderful words of encouragement on Flickr is by far my biggest motivator .

11) Do you have another artistic hobby?
I have tried out video and painting .

12) What would you like to show or say with your photography?
The way photography captures the split second has always fascinated me and I always strive to show beauty in an image .

13) Some tricks and tips?
- Use your expensive camera , don't worry about it and leave it at home
- Look at photos a lot and ask yourself how was that done ? I am self taught and I endlessly research how to improve all the time .
- Travel photography ; no flashy straps and brand names , a useful tip : I poured paint over my camera bag when I bought it new to make it look old and scruffy and never had it stolen on all my world travels
- Smile a lot - it is a universal icebreaker .
- Keep compositions and subject matter simple and get closer .

14) Your photography dream that has not been fulfilled yet?
My dream was to be Steve McCurry . A famous National Geographic photographer , but I basically followed in his footsteps , for 20 years I travelled a great deal . 36 countries , and some countries many times .
My favourite region ; India and SE Asia.
I could never have dreamed that something like Flickr and digital photography would exist someday it has revolutionised my hobby .

15) Is there something more you would like to tell us?
I am so thankful to all the admins of the Flickr groups for volunteering their time and for the friends I have made and I wish I had so much more time to reply to every lovely comment that my photographs receive . :)






At the Dawn of Creation

Canon Eos xti and Sigma 10-20 zoom f13 1/180 sec
I then used levels and halved the photos and flipped it upside down
matched the layers up to make it look like a reflection and then added a texture on top.




Winter Seascape .. Gonzales Bay .. Vancouver Island

Canon eos xti and Sigma 10-20 zoom f8 , 1/125 sec
Three exposures and then HDR technique and levels adjustments and noise reduction.






Palace on the Lake .. India

Nikon SLR , slide film , scanned to digital
Textures and cloud brushes added.

This photo was taken of the famous Lake Palace in Udaipur , India , this was my first visit to India in 1987 . We had just taken a 2 day train ride from Bombay on a steam train through the Rajasthan desert on a slow route , every so often we would stop to refill the engine with water
We arrived to see this most romantic site across the lake which was very low due to many years of drought .






Ode to Childhood

Taken with my first point and shoot Canon sd 300
Convert to BW , add sepia tone , grad to darken sky and foreground.




Just tell yourself, Duckie, you're really quite lucky!” Dr Seuss

Canon eos xti and Sigma 10-20 zoom f13 1/350 sec
Cropped , levels adjustment and sun flare brushes added






If you have any questions or comments, you are welcome to post them to this discussion thread.
Posted at 2:27PM, 21 February 2010 PDT (permalink)