KuraFire Network

For about eight years and counting the Web has been one of my life's greatest passions. Building websites isn't all that much different from one of my other great passions: creating stories. When building a website, you have the chance to tell a story, your story. Your choice of color and imagery, your style of writing content, all of the elements that you use to put the website together tell the visitor the story of who you are. I've now found a new passion, and again it bears resemblence to the telling of a story: photography.

I've been writing stories as long as I have been building websites, as I started both these hobbies at exactly the same time. Ever since, my life has revolved around these two activities. The jobs I've had either involved professional writing, or professional site-building - if not both. For years, my writings and websites dominated my life.

A few years ago, I got myself a digital camera, a 5-megapixel Sony DSC-V1, also known by the horrible model name "Cyber-shot" - which goes to show that Sony's marketing development has been performing very poorly for years already. But I digress…

The camera brought me many great joys in life: on my vacation to Minnesota, I ended up taking well over 750 pictures with it, with about 140 of them being very nice shots in my eyes. Some of the best ones have been used in the 21 themes that this website (currently) features, and were in fact the main reason I ended up creating so many different themes for this site in the first place. It's safe to say that ever since I got the Sony camera, photography started playing a bigger and bigger part in my life.

However, when I later encountered pictures taken by Andy Budd (among others, but primarily Andy's) I noticed that there was something missing from my shots: interesting focus, or an interesting depth of field. It was at this point that I started researching the differences between regular compact cameras (such as mine) and Digital Single-Lens Reflex cameras, or DSLR's.

Suffice to say, I realized that if I wanted to have more control over my pictures, I needed to get myself a proper camera. Not necessarily a true Pro camera, but a "prosumer" DSLR. A few weeks ago, I did just that, and it's been an amazing experience so far.

After carefully examining the range of DSLR's currently available, I ended up going for the Canon EOS 350D, an 8-megapixel DSLR. I ordered the camera body + lens kit (an 18-55mm zoom lens) and a 50mm Prime lens, along with two 1GB SanDisk Extreme III Compact Flash cards and a Firewire400 Lexar (CF) card reader. I chose those specific storage cards and that card reader because some research had shown that they were the fastest combination in both in-camera use as well as card-to-computer transfers.

At this point, I really want to thank Hayo Bethlehem, Rob Mientjes and Frank Hartman for their help and advice with choosing a camera and explaining various of the finer details to me. Rob also gave me a link which I can't recommend enough to anyone who wants to learn more about photography: Ximina's Photography. Seriously, if you take pictures at all, take a look at that site; it's the CSS/edge of Photography.

My first experiments with the camera proved worthwhile: I was loving the quality of the pictures in every sense, from color, lighting, detail and (varying) focus. In short, I fell in love - with my camera. A whole new world had opened up for me, a world wherein I could tell more stories, but in a whole new way.

Ten days and 1140 pictures later, everything suddenly seems so clear to me: my life is about telling stories.

Stories that require a fair bit of imagination sometimes; stories that are just charming and sweet.

Stories which tell themselves.

Ever since getting my camera, I've had a hard-to-resist urge to keep it with me wherever I went. I just want to have it near me in case I spot something interesting, beautiful or compelling. I want to be able to capture what I see, when I see it. Why? Because ever since I have this camera, life around me has become more of a visual delight for me.

Nothing really changed in my world, of course; what's changed is my way of looking at things. Rather than seeing just a sign post, I now see a potentially nice composure involving a sign post and a colorful background, for instance.

I've had a Flickr.com account for a good while now, but it wasn't until getting this camera, and getting serious about photography, that I started to really get into the nitty-gritty of Flickr. I've since joined about 30-40 groups, organized all my pictures and am constantly looking to find more interesting photos by others on Flickr, which in turn may inspire me for certain compositions.

Moreover, though, I'm constantly in search for other people's stories. I'm intrigued by what others see, what other people have to say, not just with words but, especially in the context of this post, with pictures. So, if you have a Flickr account, send me a FlickrMail, comment on a picture of mine or add me to your contacts list and let me know you're there. I'd like to see your view of this amazing world that we live in.

I'm documenting the world through my eyes, and showing you my story. What's yours?

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