Hans van der Kamp

Well, it seems I have survived both a Christmas and the lighting of the first candle all in one day. I even made two pictures that commemorate the event. (See Amsterdam section) I am always very impressed with photographers who have posted ‘their first picture’ on their website.

I appreciate the works of Saudek a lot and it was a surprise to find his first picture on his site. It was just a man lying on the ground but there was so much to be read from that picture, the crucifixion, frustration in creativity; it was all there.I am no Saudek; that is for sure. I could not have handled a life with just one goal, the everlasting perfection of one particular pictorial approach, although I admire him for that immensely at the same time.

However I did find (one of) my first roll(s) of film during the Holidays. Lately I am often criticized for my blunt approach to nudity and sex, but boy – I sure was a devoted Catholic back then in 1970. There were 36 pictures on a roll of Agfa Gevaert, almost all taken in churches or depicting any kind of religious devotion. One of the few pictures that were taken outside a church, I am posting here. Just to prove to you that I was born a romantic.

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I am one of these grouchy old pioneers; relatively speaking that is, because the Web was already there for a long time when I started off in 1994 building websites. I mean grouchy because in many ways the Web has not lived up to my expectations back then. It has been taken over by marketing engineers and crowds of visitors who seem mostly interested in obtaining free ringtones for their cell phones. Or anything that is “free” to be more accurate. Then suddenly you come across a Russian web project like photokonkurs.com.

Their community is growing faster than one could dream off. The concept is simple and brilliant, visitors vote for pictures posted by both professional and amateur photographers.

I am not saying it has not been done before, nor am I stating that it is The Louvre of Fine Art Photography, but it is alive and kicking. Russians, Americans, Europeans; the whole world seems to be posting and voting there.

Of course the Nudes section is most popular and sometimes the voters vote for the girls more than the pictures. Here is democracy at work!

Serious entrepeneurs as the photokonkurs people are, they decided that they needed a professional jury to iron out the sometimes unfair voting system and they asked a group of photographers to join their jury. I had sworn that I would never do another job without a pay check, but I said ‘yes’ right away.

photokonkurs.com

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For the last few months – whenever I had the time – I have been scanning negatives for this site. Sometimes I find a picture that has never been printed before, but I also stumble upon images that embaress me, like the one below.

So whatever happened to those fisheye lenses, I thought. They disappeared completely, whereas there was a time when every serious photographer would at least have a go at it once. The technique was available, so they just *had* to play with it. Like young photographers today can not resist a new Photoshop plugin, simply because it is there.

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