Flickr: David Jackmanson

Hi, I'm David Jackmanson from Brisbane, Australia.

I'm an Arkady Renko fan and I like to chat, and to promote interesting, fun things that are happening in Brisbane - taking photos is just one way I do that. I do a lot of photography with my mobile phone - first was a Sony Ericsson K800i, now I'm using a Nokia 6120c. The Nokia especially is not a good camera, but I still love being able to take a photo of something and have it online instantly.

In late May 2010 I was chosen by Telstra as one of 25 people to review the HTC Desire; in return I get to keep the phone. As part of this I'll be using the phone to post mobile photos here.

Since I've been on flickr, I've discovered a lot about my taste in photos. I certainly don't share the popular taste for cute children, close-ups of flowers, flowing streams with that "cloudy" effect in the water that I think you get from long exposure, and so on. I prefer the odd, photos that are obviously of a specific place and/or time, photos with lots of explanation, photos that show real events happening, photos that could easily be used to illustrate a Wikipedia article and so on. Have a look through my favourites to get an idea of what I like.

In Brisbane, there are also some photographic cliches - the Story Bridge, the Riverside Expressway and/or city skyline shots by night, and a big white Ferris wheel in the Southbank area. So I favour photos that don't show things like that - especially photos that are of the city, but not in the CBD (downtown) or Southbank.

These rules aren't hard and fast - if someone takes a photo of one of those things that's really original, I'll like it.

Thinking about what photos I like means I've thought about original photography vs beautifully photoshopped ones. I'm not good at post-processing - most of my processing is done in Picasa. I've seen thousands of photos that are very well processed with great deal of technical skill - far more skill than I have - that have made me yawn.

That doesn't mean that I reject post-production skills - I think if I learned some more I'd be a better photographer. But I am bored by what I call the "merely beautiful".

Oh, and I'm a supporter of Creative Commons - all my photos are licenced under a CC Attribution licence, meaning you can use them for any purpose, even commercial projects, as long as you credit me by including a link to bit. ly/ djackmanson (take out the spaces, please)

Of course, I can NOT give away the model rights in my photos - you can't use photos of people for commercial reasons without dealing directly with them. So if you use one of my photos in a commercial project without checking the legal status, don't come crying to me if there are problems later on.