Personal history and philosophy

I have been a passionate amateur photographer for the last five years and quickly developed my skills in digital photography. Being an astronomer, I did not have a hard time to grasp all the technical details of cameras, exposure and the limitations of digital sensors.

Concerning the technicalities arond photography, I strongly believe that...

Equipment

• Camera bodies: Nikon D300 and D70
• Nikkor AF-S 18-200mm VR f/3.5-5.6
• Nikkor AF 105mm f/2.8 Macro
• AF 80-400mm VR f/4.5 - 5.6
• Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6
• Software: I use a linux-based workflow which includes gqview, ufraw, the gimp and several smaller scripts of my own.

Comment spam in blogs is evil and unexcusable. Not enough that I have to take certain measures to keep this site and some other blogs clean, no! Now they have started spamming my picture gallery which uses Coppermine. I turned the anonymous comments off now, so you have to register in case you want to comment pictures there.

Which reminds me that I have to select some good images from the last months and put them there...

The choice wasn't easy, but a few days ago I ordered my iAudio 6 and it arrived yesterday. In short, it is an mp3-player with 4GB capacity and, judged from the few hours that I have had it, it seems to live up to the expectations. Read on if you want to know why, see pictures and read the full review.

I finally got around to sort some older pictures and upload them to my gallery archive. In particular these are

• A short excursion to Ulva Kvarn.
• A quick portrait session at home.
• More images from my trip last week.
• Party images from last Friday.

Have a look!

Here is another image from La Palma that I like:

For the time being, I am on La Palma and carry out astronomical observations at the Nordic Optical Telescope.

The image below shows part of the mirror of the nearby MAGIC telescope. The other images that I have taken so far can also be seen and this gallery will grow with time.

I just came across KeyJnote (via). It is a little script, written in Python, that takes a PDF file or a buch of images and displays it/them as a slideshow. It uses OpenGL to make eye-candy transitions between the slides and allows highlighting of certain areas and an easy overview of all slides. Since OpenOffice can export to PDF, I probably will use KeyJnote next time I do a presentation (if I don't prepare it in S5 instead, that is) or next time I present some photographs.

For the last three days, we had six French from Lyon as our guests - of course via the HospitalityClub. Since it would have been very tight with eight people in our flat, we billeted out two of them to a neighbouring friend. But we had two very nice dinners altogether around our not-so-big table and had great fun. You even can have a look at some photos.

Well, although the images in the winter-gallery keep streaming in, there admittedly has been very little writing here. This may be due to my blog in German that has gained a little momentum recently, mainly because I got a little involved in the discussions about the Mohammed-Cartoons. But I am awaiting the 4.7 release of Drupal and most probably the upgrade will bring a change in layout, too.

My interest in photography had worn off lately and my camera mostly remained in my backpack. Yesterday evening however, I felt like going out and taking night pictures here in Uppsala. Have a look!

In addition, this year's winter gallery is opened and will subsequently grow during the following months. I also added some older galleries that had been forgotten to the picture archive.

Autumn has come. No big news, I guess, it has been here for a few weeks already and quite amazingly, we had nice weather, namely sun and 12 C instead of rain, heavy winds and 5 C, like it is usually this time of the year. In spite of that, I have not been out to take pictures until the day before yesterday. I finally caught up a little on this.

As mentioned previously, I attended the Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture, given by Hans Blix. It was a very good lecture and instead of me giving a summary of what he said, you can read the transcript here. I only can highly agree with most he said, which might have to do with the fact that there was little new or controversial for pro-UN thinking people. Nevertheless, it was nice to hear things in a concise way by someone who knows what he's talking about. I also took some pictures.

Finally the bad ones are thrown away and the newer ones made it in, so here it is: the Berlin Gallery.

Strolling through Berlin yesterday afternoon, we went to a small exhibition by a Finnish photographer which was good but not overwhelming. At Cafe Zosch, where we sat down afterwards, we met the band Emmy Moll which would play in Zosch's cellar in the evening. We helped them push their broken-down band bus aside and promised to come back for their concert. Then we went on to see the Holocaust Memorial, right next to Brandenburger Tor. I took some pictures, too (not sorted yet, though).
OK, we're heading off again. Continuation follows...

My new backpack just arrived. It's called "Formal Lounge" and made by Crumpler. Their website is refreshingly bizarre and all the bags are strangely named. Nevertheless, they seem to make good stuff. I was looking for a backpack to hold my camera gear as well as my laptop when needed (e.g. hand-luggage for travelling), but that is small enough at the same time to serve in everyday use and to be put into my big backpack on longer trips. I first found this one on the net and tried to find it in a real-life shop - without success. I finally ordered at macoteket.se, a Swedish Mac-company that sells it as a laptop bag.

I have it in the color of the left image and the right one shows the lower interior where the (removable) camera-compartment is located. What is not seen is the large laptop sleeve that is at the back of the upper compartment and extends all the way down, behind the camera gear. Of course I only have had it for an hour now, but I think it's exactly what I wanted - now I can have my camera stuff with me whereever I go. I've reduced it to the essentials: Nikon D70, 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5, 105mm f/2.8 Macro, 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 with vibration reduction, SB-600 flashlight, Kenko 1.4x teleconverter, a short mini-usb cable, ML-3 remote control, lens cleaning paper.

I have been living in Sweden since 2001 (with half a year of interruption) and my mother had never visited me. From last Thursday until yesterday she finally was here. Although I had not spent this much time with her since I moved out from home in 1997, it went surprisingly smooth. The occasions where my patience was put to the test were few and I suppose those are unavoidalbe when you have a visitor for more than three days. I took my mom through the usual touristic things in Uppsala and Stockholm and on the last day we made it to Sigtuna, a pittoresque small town south of Uppsala. She did not have a camera with her so I had to take the pictures for her - which was fine with me since I like taking pictures. You can see the result here.

In case you wonder who the the two additional women (apart from my mother and my Sanna) are: They were on their way to a week of camping in the wilderness but had missed their flight, just as my mother had. They met during a long day waiting and were in need of a place to sleep to take the train up north the next day. They stayed for the first night of my mom's visit and joined for some sightseeing the day after. If you are travelling and need a place to stay in Uppsala, join the Hospitalityclub.