Ralf Stockmann's photostream  

"Art is whatever makes you proud to be human."
-A. B.



I’m 36, male, married and from Germany.


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I’m head of the Göttinger Digitization Centre, somewhat popular for our online version of the Gutenberg Bible.

One can call me a late bloomer concerning photography. I did lots of other artsy stuff (music, webdesign and filmmaking) before, but my first noticeable pictures date from 1999. I joined Flickr in spring 2005, my colleague netomer said this would be the place to be.
I wasn’t impressed at all.
In July I stumbled into deleteme!, and things changed. I loved the combination of contest, excellence, nastiness and - humor. Good old days, I spent hours laughing about KKs comments. Nowadays – well.

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What I do like:
All kind of experiments and unusual styles. IMHO it’s more interesting to try something uncommon even if it does not work out than to shoot the 500. “landscape at dawn” pic.

Heavy PS-editing. I’m addicted to Photoshop and always keen to find interesting new effects. Especially to simulate “vintage analog” stuff like my quite complex Lithprint filters. Sad thing: I’m the only one who likes them, but I can live with that.

Iconographic style: most of my pics are concentrated on one object, subject, contrast, theme.

All kinds of competition. No pain – no gain, no guts – no glory.

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What I don’t like:
People (especially at deleteme!) who shout OVEREXPOSED! BLOWN OUT! UNDEREXPOSED! 1/3 RULE! when it’s quite obvious that the specific effect was nothing but intended. They may say “I do not like your approach” but anything like “go play by the rules” offends my intellect.

Realism freaks. Photography is a snapshot per definition, just a small section of the surrounding reality. Two dimensions – depth and time - are always missing. So any debate reading “keep the realism” is pointless. At times e.g. I love pop-art, and I show it.