Chungking Express' photostream  

[updated Sept. 3, 2011]

"The harder [a person's] life is, the more he needs art, because he is in search of strong emotions that parallel those in his life." - Ulyana Lopatkina, principal dancer of the Mariinsky Ballet Company (formerly the Kirov Ballet)

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I've actually been here on Flickr since February 2005, but this is a new account, started November 2009 (as you can see over there on the right). It was a mistake to delete my first account. I wish I hadn't done it.

I am interested in a variety of things, including what you see in my stream.

Photographically, I'm interested in finding my own way to express what I see in the natural world. I don't believe I have yet found my own unique photographic vision, although I know I am closer to it than I used to be. I was distracted for a couple of years with the idea of doing bird photos, and then butterflies and odonates (damselflies and dragonflies), but in the end, I had to acknowledge that those photos just never satisfied me as much as my other work. I also wrestle with the idea of how "postcard-ish" my photos should look. In general, I tend to shy away from that more and more, not because I dislike that style of photography, but because I don't feel it's an adequate expression of my overall photographic goals. I'm interested in texture and detail, complexity, color; and I'm interested how those things combine to form individual scenes. I've become more interested in shooting "landscapes" with a long telephoto lens--a seeming contradiction in terms, but I find myself often being quite happy with the results.

I didn't get much photography done over summer of 2011, due to exceptionally hot and humid weather, incessant car problems, and a particularly stressful work schedule.

Equipment:

Nikon D40
Nikon D7000
Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-S (the D40 kit lens--the autofocus no longer works on this, but I still use it sometimes anyway)
Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-S VR [not the "II" version]
Nikkor 300mm f/4 AF-S (highly recommended)
Nikkor 1.4x AF-S teleconverter

(Pardon me if the equipment names aren't exactly precisely perfect, but frankly I find Nikon's naming conventions to be extremely tiresome.)

35mm film equipment on the older shots:

Two Konica Autoreflex TC SLRs and several different lenses, including a 24mm, 40mm, 50mm, 80-200mm macro-focusing zoom, and a 2x teleconverter which I sometimes used with the zoom. There was also a nifty Konica 35mm rangefinder with a very nice little fixed 35mm lens. The lack of EXIF data makes it difficult to tell which equipment was used, in some cases. I find I no longer recall which shots I took with the rangefinder, although I can state that by the time of the Australia trip in 2004, it wasn't working anymore. It and the first Autoreflex TC had developed leaks.

I was born in 1968. Do the math. ;)