Andreas Helke's photostream  

About my flickr account
It is a big collection of photos and favorites and now an increasing number of galleries. I consider all of those parts important.

I tried my lack with creating groups too. But most stayed very small. And instead of the images I wanted in there I got others I did not care about. So most of the groups are now running on autopilot.

I am back to actually using and not only possessing a blog. Currently I use it mostly to present newly finished galleries.

I have high standards for the look of a gallery and am good at finding the images I need for a good gallery. So I managed to produce several very good looking ones.

About my photo hobby
I am experienced at taking photos and selecting and processing promising ones to look good. I am now quite content with the look of my flickr photo stream most of the time.

For a while I had photo technology as a hobby too. I spend a lot of time learning how digital photo technology actually works and why it performs at the level it does today. I think I have learned pretty much all I need to know and now am impatiently waiting until Canon photo technology comes as close as possible to performance level that the natural laws of physics allow a perfectly designed camera to reach.

My equipment
I am mostly using Canon DSLR equipment with the 350D as my first and still working camera. It already has reached about twice the not officially rated shutter life but is still working fine. Added later where a 5D classic and a 60D. My current favorite equipment is the 5D with the 24-105L lens.

I´d rather have the modern user interface features of the 5D2.But the classic one is the one I have and for a final lightroom processed and then printed or web published image the image quality difference between both cameras is very minor. The 5D2 can produce much better JPG files than the 5D. But lightroom can do JPG creation even better and is what I use now. With the new processing engine of version 3 the lightroom quality reached and maybe even surpassed what DPP can deliver.

I still have and occasionally use my 3 MP Panasonic DMC-FZ3. But only if I have enough light that a P&S sensor camera has a chance to deliver a usable image.
About me
I am a 52 year old German male. A scientist by education and initial profession.

I am now mostly recovered from the paralysis from a stroke I had 2 years ago. But still on a termporary disability pension. So right now I have a lot of time to spend on my flickr activities.

This year I will have to start to look for a new job or a big consulting contract. Something to do with photography or photo equipment or handling other peoples photos would be nice.

And I think I could really contribute something useful to the design of cameras and their user interfaces. But I am in the wrong profession and geographical location. So this likely has to stay just a pipe dream.





Some necessary rules
Group invitations using the usual invited or admired in group xxx folowed by a tasteless image are no longer welcome in my images.

On the other hand I like to see badges that do something useful like showing your 5 latest uploads or the most interesting photos in a group pool. I like to see those in the comments I get. Extra credit goes for presenting a flickriver badge with a useful tag search.

I usually honor admin invites into groups. But only if it is a group where I can expect to avoid unwanted badges and which has no mandatory commenting rule.


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My profile was big and had a lot of hand coded HTML in it. I decided it was time to start over and only add to it what really makes sense in a flickr profile.

Head to my The Daily Upload set if you want a taste how my old profile was looking.


My current project

Often I concentrate on doing something specific in my photography or in my flickr account. The latest project is presented here.