ALL MY NEW WORK WILL BE POSTED HERE:
www.flickr.com/photos/en_pj

Well.....where to begin......I bought my first digital SLR camera in December 2003, and, (more or less) began taking photography sort of seriously. Before that I owned a few digital cameras, but never did much with them until I left the US on an around-the-world trip in February 2003 with an Olympus C720 Ultra Zoom. It was an ok camera for the time, and I got some good photos out of it in England, Morocco, and Spain, but I never really learned how to use the manual controls, (even though the fact that it had them was one of my buying criteria). I regret that now, since a lot of much better photographs went untaken, but, that's life.... When this camera was stolen off a train in Morocco, (just as I was leaving the country, thankfully- I still have a lot of photos of that wonderful place), I decided to replace it with a camera I could really grow into, the Canon Digital Rebel/300D. Even after I picked that up from a friend in Thailand a day or two before New Year's 2004, I still didn't really learn about DOF, aperture, or even shutter speed for another year and a half, and didn't get another lens to replace the kit one for almost two years. Now I have some much better lenses, and a better camera body- so if I don't get the shot now I have only myself to blame, which is how it should be. Good gear doesn't make the shot, but it can help you capture what you see, in the exact way you see it.

Most of my images have some photoshop/lightroom work, although for 90% of them it is minimal- levels, curves, (some masked asjustments), saturation, sharpening, etc. Some images are cropped, although most of my portraits aren't.

I'm now using a Canon 40D and eagerly anticipating the 5D Mark II (or 7D or whatever it will be called). I've moved on to almost all Canon L lenses and don't regret it at all. The MOST important part of photography is having an eye for the shot, but GETTING the shot the way you saw it/want to present it does require the right equipment, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. A great photo can be taken by any camera, but not any camera/lens can take a photo that can be blown up with perfect clarity, or used in a magazine or an ad.

On the one hand the map below seems so pretentious and arrogant, and on the other an interesting way to see where someone has been, and, maybe, even a little about them, so......my visited countries map:



create your own visited countries map