About Me, and My Photographs

Camera equipment: My interest in photography started in high school, but I didn't really get started taking pictures until I brought a 35mm SLR back from a trip to Germany in the mid-1960's. My "main" camera for many years was an Olympus OM-4T, which was used for most of the pictures shown here. Almost all of these pictures were taken using a Kalimar 28-105mm zoom lens, which has been a very useful lens for me (not having to take more than one lens on a backpacking or skiing trip). For most of the outdoor pictures, I also used a polarizer. More recently (early 2002), I decided that digital cameras had progressed enough in quality to be about equal to film cameras, and started using one-- I chose an Olympus E-10, since it was one of the few available (at less than multi-thousand-dollar prices) that had the single-lens reflex construction that I had come to depend on. And just to be sure, I took a series of pictures of the same scenes with it, and my OM-4, so I could get a good comparison of picture quality. I was convinced that it was just as good (I plan to post the comparison pictures on here fairly soon, so you can make the same comparison), and I've been using it almost exclusively ever since.

Film: For over 20 years, I used Kodachrome 64 for almost all of my pictures. This changed a few years ago, when I noticed that a lot of nature photographers like Galen Rowell were using Fujichrome Velvia (ASA 50). I tried a few rolls, liked it a lot, and it was been my film of choice for several years. Then when Fuji came out with Provia 100F, which was twice as fast but (surprisingly) just as sharp and saturated as Velvia, that became my favorite. And as mentioned above, I've recently switched to a digital camera, since finding that it can match either of these films in quality (not an easy test).

Digitizing: One other thing you might want to know is how the original 35mm slides were digitized, since I've used two different methods for that. Initially, I used a commercial photo-CD scanning service; since that cost $0.69 to $0.89 a slide, though (depending on the quantity ordered), I didn't have a large number done. For most of the pictures posted here now, I used a Hewlett-Packard Photo Scanner. It scans slides and negatives at a resolution of 2400 dots per inch (DPI), and prints (up to 5" x 7") at 300 DPI, and I've been very pleased with the results I've gotten from it. With the switch to the digital camera described above, of course, no digitizing is necessary on the newest pictures, but I've still got enough 35mm slides that I'll probably be using the scanner for some time to come.

One final note: all of the pictures shown on this Web site adhere to the "FoundView" standards for photographs. These standards are explained in detail on the "FoundView" Web site, but basically they require that any post-shutter manipulations be limited to those which do not change the content of the picture (e.g., cropping, or correcting contrast or color tones), and that the average viewer would not feel deceived by any aspect of the presentation. In short, what you see in these pictures is exactly what I saw at the time I took them.

Photographs from Alaska

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