Photography is an art. Undeniably so. That means all of us who dabble in photography are participating in the art. And there are many great artists on flickr. I am an amateur but in some way my photography is an extension of my life's search. In my career I was a physicist and more lately a professor of Liberal Studies - a "discipline" that sees all disciplines as part of a larger discipline called philosophy - which - in spite of more technical definitions - is really simply the love of beauty. We all love beauty in words, in painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in music, in cinema, in ballet, in photography.

I work with both digital and film and really do not acknowledge the superiority of one over the other. They are both rich and varied - but different enough to see them as distinct modes of expressing photographic images.

I also work with a variety of film cameras, from simple fixed lens AF 35 mm film compacts (they can produce stunning images), to film SLRs from the 70's (Pentax ES), to the last consumer SLR - the Nikon F75 released in 2004.

The first consumer dSLR, the Canon Digital Rebel 300D was released in 2003. Canon had pioneered the EOS fully auto-focus feature in its film cameras in 1987 with the Canon EOS 650. Most of the film SLR's made between 1987 and 2004 are quite advanced and a pleasure to use still.

The point and shoot consumer gear available at the end of the film era was equipped with great optics and effective electronics. The cameras were easy to use and when used sensibly produced images every bit as good as film SLR's and so educated users on the artistic possibilities of photography. The Contax T2 and Yashica T4 (both in my small collection) have acquired near cult status for the quality of their images and optics. But other cameras in this class are every bit as good. The Konica C35AF2, znd Pentax PC35AF-M produces images as good as any film camera.

The simple but powerful longer lens compacts from this same era, such as the late model film Olympus Stylus 140 Zoom rivalled the film SLR in the quality and reach of its imagery:

When you give up craving for a long zoom lens (most of my photos are taken at wide angle) the medium range Pentax 105-R was an advanced and versatile camera with enough zoom to cover most situations I run into:

This photographic expectation made quality photography available to the masses and carried right over into the digital world, which began in earnest in 2003. Good digital cameras were designed from the beginning of the digital era with all of the features available already to the advanced film camera. The digital Canon Rebel 300D SLR was released in 2003. And that camera defines the true beginning of the digital era.

I have a small collection of old SLRs (they are hard to resist) and try to keep them all in rotation. Film is really a bit of a luxury which I indulge in when I can.

I also have three great digital SLRs from Sony, Nikon, and Canon. These I also try to mate with a collection of vintage manual lenses (both prime and zoom) using adapters. I really have ended up however with four flavours defined loosely as Sony/Minolta, Nikon/Nikkor, Canon EOS - of these the Nikon is the least adaptable to older non-Nikon lenses.

I am an experimenter. I put my images out there not always because they are beautiful but because they teach me something about photography and I like to share that with others.

I am of late experimenting with HDR. I like it - if it is applied gently. HDR adds a new dimension to the photo image. When it is done right (most of us are still trying to figure out what that means), the HDR image carries an impressionistic and painterly feel, while retaining all the information of the original non-HDR image.

Photography is an art form and I believe that 95% of the art is in the eye of the photographer - it does not matter all that much what sort of box you are carrying. I resist falling for super-expensive equipment. i can't afford it and I've discovered - painfully - that becoming mired in the technology - or process - of any technologically dependent art form can kill the aesthetic experience. One should be able to take a great picture with a Kodak Brownie.