clickr100's photostream  

Pentax equipment has always been part of my gear. Other than Pentax I have owned Mamiyas (medium format, film cameras) and various rangefinders. I'm now down to a Pentax K-7 DSLR, a Panasonic Lumix GF1, a Pony 135C, and a Minolta X-700 (35mm film, best built-in bright screen I've ever encountered). I enjoy vintage equipment so I now put lots of old lenses on the Panasonic Lumix GF1 because it will take almost any lens that a micro4/3 adapter will allow. Film and its costs are starting to turn me off, though I much admire the work of many film photographers.
My buddy icon image is a photograph of Old-man-afraid-of-his-horses, a Lakota chief of good character who led his people (the Oglala division--Kiyaksa was his sub-tribe) through the last free days of their existence and then into the early reservation era. Man-Afraid (as his people commonly called him) was born around 1808 and died in 1889 on Pine Ridge reservation in what is now South Dakota. Man-Afraid brought his people to the reservation in 1871 and remained there through the turbulent years that followed. The image was taken in 1868 at the treaty of the same name. The chief's name in Lakota is Tasunka- Kokipapi. I like the idea of utilizing old photography in order to represent something in the digital era. I don't view native Americans as noble or anything beyond what they are--human. They lost their land because the Stone age could not withstand the Industrial age--it was no single person's fault; nor can Americans be blamed today for events that happened over a period of 300 years or more. I admire this Lakota chief so I used his image.