Starting this blog

Hello to you all.

When it comes to things to do in your spare time you are in more and more trouble. Like most people I personally feel drawn between tons of stuff I have to do (job, daily chores), and the stuff I would like to do:

• Spent time with the family
• Build my own electric guitar (long time dream since I was 10 years old...)
• practice the guitar (I just never get around to do it...)
• take more photos
• learn how to take better photos
• take better photos

OK, non photography "to dos" should not be much of anyone's concern in this blog (I will let you know how things are moving, once I get the guitar building project off the ground... :-).

I would like to focus more on the photography side of things here...
I always did like photography. I used a Canon A1 for the longest time and thought of myself as an advanced amateur, I guess. I knew enough about shutter speed, apertures and depth of field to take pictures the way I wanted them. But my knowledge was rather limited when it came to controlling of light in either an ambient lightning or a studio flash controlled setting.

Soon after I switched to a digital SLR (I own a PENTAX K10D with a selection of lenses and a system flash) I found myself overwhelmed with the possibilities of my new system.

• What to do with all the images?
• How and where to store all the images?
• How and if to develop the images?
• How to post process the images?
• Print or not to print?
• Trying to obtain a realistic reproduction of the scene or make use of the post processing possibilities of the digital age?

Reading other blogs, listening to podcasts and follow the discussions in forums did help me a lot in the beginning. But and the end of the day you will have to find your own way of how to do things, which will ultimately lead you as a person and a photographer to the development of your own style.

So what is this blog about?

• I would like to share some of my photographic work
• I would also like to share some of the thoughts, that made me take featured pictures
• I would like to discuss the gear that was used in the pictures
• I would like to share my post processing, and discuss alternatives or other ways of working on images
• I would like to discuss the use of some standard applications
• Being a long term Linux user I would like to show, how to use open source applications as an alternative to standard applications most people would use in the windows world.
• But I would also like to show you ways how to use your windows applications on Linux as good as one can.

So if you think one or the other topic might be of some interest to you, stay tuned.
Cheers Jürgen