skomra's photostream  

Here I consider my flickr stream to be a photo log. My main goal here is to post at least one image a day. Hopefully, this isn't "quantity over quality," but rather a privileging of seriality and predictability over inspiration and artistic revelation.

Databases. When I was a child my mother kept all of our photos in one large cabinet. (A few of these have been scanned and moved to the back of my photostream) There were too many photos for the cabinet so when you opened the doors they spilled out and you ended looking at whatever ended up on the floor.

There's something wonderful about flickr in that all of the photos still seem to be random, you could chance upon anything, but now because images can be tagged they can also be easily retrieved from their randomness. The combination of order and disorder in the database rules.

Ones and zeros. I got my first digital camera in 2001, an Olympus D-490 which took great photos. I bought a canon powershot sd500 in 2005 this has a great sensor and it gives great crisp contrasty images. In 2006 I got a panasonic fz7 because I wanted control (shutter speed, aperture) but I was afraid I wouldn't carry around a heavy slr( the fz7 weighs about 11 ounces).

Then at the same time I got a dslr (the pentax k10d), I also got interested in low res digital photography, I've also been using a vivitar mini digital camera, an oregon scientific, and the famous vistaquest vq1005. Also an old Pentax Ei-100.

Subject. I shoot a lot of my photos in Northeast Portland which is in the US state of Oregon. Because of its low density, high number of artists, weak economy, and liberal attitudes, Northeast Portland has been fairly successful at resisting the bland corporate aesthetic widespread in so many other parts of the United States.

Me. When I was a child and they invented emoticons, I thought they were for children. I didn't realize that they were trying to bridge the emotional void of the computer. So predictably I had a lot of trouble in the 90s with people misinterpreting my flat internet tone as hostility. Now I try to be as positive on flickr as I can. So if you think I've used too many exclamation points I'm sorry, but for me it's better than the alternative!! ie it's better than you thinking I said something hostile.