About timtom.ch / Thomas Guignard  

I'm a science librarian, with a background in electrical engineering and acoustics, living and working in Lausanne, Switzerland.

For me, photography started as an escape route, something different for the stressed-out engineer I was. Just after defending my PhD thesis, I bought my first "real" camera (a Canon 350D) and went to the loneliness of Brittany in November to test my new gear out. Why I chose to go there and then is still unclear to me. Probably because I needed to calibrate myself to the famous 18% gray, and 18% gray is pretty much all there is to see in Brittany in winter...

Anyway, even though it soon dawned on me that I still had a tremendous lot to learn before I could call myself a photographer (I still have), I came back to Switzerland with a new passion.

In the years that followed, I tried to go beyond the first snapshots and started taking photography classes. But what really helped me progress was the wonderful Flickr fraternity, notably the flickr@lausanne crowd. Thanks to the artistic talent and technical knowledge of its members, I have learned a tremendous amount of things, which I now try to apply to my own work.


Obviously, I still have a long way to go. My biggest remaining problem is self-conciousness. I just can't go out in the street and shoot candids, or walk up to a complete stranger to ask if I can take her portrait. I always feel like an intruder, especially while traveling to other countries. But over time, thanks to all the encouraging comments I have received both online and in real life, I gained some confidence and started shooting less objects and more people!

I'm not really trying to say anything special with my pictures, and I post on Flickr the ones I personally find the most interesting. Comments are always appreciated, especially critical or technical since they will help me progress.

Photography is a hobby for me, it is a way to have some fun, and so far it's been working pretty well :-) Enjoy!



Do you want to use one of my pictures? That's fine, help yourself but please pay attention to the terms of the Creative Commons license under which most of my pictures are released. You are free to use them for non-commercial use provided you cite me and/or maintain a link back to the Flickr photo page.
It is not compulsory to inform me when one of my images is used, but I always appreciate hearing from people liking my work enough to want to use it! :-)
If you want to use an image for commercial use, you must contact me first, stating the details of your project.