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Submitted by Samatar 11/01/05 9:43 PM GMT
Announcing our first ever "Artist of the week" on caedes: Paul Gerritsen! Paul was a very popular choice with 5 out of 15 nominations received. During the following week, and possibly longer, we will be focusing on Paul's work and offering encouragement, support and feedback on his individual works and his gallery in general. You may also ask questions by posting them in this news item. Below is some information that Paul has graciously provided for us to learn a little more about him. I hope you all joining me in congratulating Paul and make this week one for him to remember.
Paul: To begin I would like to say that I am real proud on being chosen to be the first in a, hopefully, long line of artists of the week! Let me introduce myself first. My name and artist name are one and the same, so it’s just Paul Gerritsen. I live in the Netherlands (or Holland whichever your prefer). I am 39 years old, have a wife by the name of Tanja, a son Bas of 5, a daughter Julia of 2 and a dog Simba of 1 year. The latter 3 can all be found in my gallery. Beside photography I do al lot of push biking to work (yes that’s fairly common in Holland!), I swim and I read lot’s of books. Oh, and last but not least I have those kids and dog of course to keep me busy. My occupation is Head of industrial Automation. That means I run a department with 7 wiz kids that designs and produces all kind of computer controls for the industry. My specialty is pumping systems for which I create the electronics and write the software which we sell in Europe, and soon in the USA as well.
Back to the photography, I started seriously when I was 18 years old. The main reason at the time was that I started traveling a lot and I wanted to record my adventures. It was the time that I met my wife and also the time that we could purchase train tickets for teenagers that cost less than a tank of fuel for your car today, but that would take us all over Europe. And it was during those travels that I started taking snapshots. In the beginning I was very good in the Japanese technique: see something nice, move your family in front of it to make absolutely sure that there is nothing left of interest in the viewer and click-clack! Of course that did not last long as I found out there are other points of interest beside my girlfriend. And so I started to develop my own style of photography. I had acquired a second hand Minolta and I started to take pictures of famous buildings all over Europe. My favourite place was the Alhambra in South Spain. There was a real challenge over there, the Moorish influence in the architectural style required a whole different approach of photography. You see, the detail of those famous tiles and wood carvings on the walls are enormous, but the light is very dimmed. So, instead of just standing in front of the building and shooting a photo of the whole thing, I had to start looking for good compositions and work with long exposures. It turned out very well, I was amazed how good and saturated those picture were when the negatives were developed. That was the point when I said to myself, this is what photography is all about: you have to make a selection of what you want to show to the audience, and you must try to enhance the ambiance or atmosphere that is so unique in a given situation. I started to look at my surroundings with new eyes, looking for points of interest and special light opportunities to create something special. Before I started traveling I was sure that Holland had to be the most boring country in the world, flat, green and wet. But guess what, now that I have seen many places in this world and learned to look for the interesting details, I feel privileged to live in a country that still hold so many cultural, historical and artistic treasures.
Besides Europe I have been to the USA four times, seen Canada, Thailand, New Zealand and a lot of Islands. I have thousand of photos (analog) so you should all be glad that I can not post them (ha, ha..). My first digital camera was a Sony DSC-P120. An incredibly good camera for many, but I found out that it does a bit too much of image pre-processing in the camera. And although the pictures come out with vivid colours and incredible good contrast I found that to be a limitation if you want to use PS or PSP on the PC. Since a couple of months I have used a Canon EOS350D camera. I have the standard 18-55 mm lens and an extra 50-200 mm. I’ll tell you one secret; I was very disappointed in the beginning with the results. The cheaper Sony produced better images! Now I know better, the Sony does a lot of processing that the Canon allows you to do yourself on the PC. And that means I have complete control of the contrast, saturation etc. now. So in the end I am very happy with camera. The resolution is 8 mega pixels, which allows me to crop away what I don’t need and still have a decent image.
About Caedes, I found this side by accident on the internet. I was looking for photo sites and this one appealed to me immediately, because of the galleries and the discussions below the posted images. The variety of artists make this site interesting too, it’s like a whole community with artists of different backgrounds and styles joining here. It can only exist by the grace of tolerance and mutual respect between the members. That is what I like about Caedes. What I value most is when someone responds to an image, tells you something nice or maybe give you honest advice on how to improve.
If you ask me who has inspired me I would say that most of you do in a way. Because everyone makes a brilliant post sometime, that brings up an idea in me. What I like to shoot myself most of all (with the camera) is obvious: animals. There beauty and character is what I try to show to you all. I like photographing people too, but I find these shots do not really belong on this site, not many of us will use a photo of a person as a desktop wallpaper. My favourite personal shot is the King, the lion head with the black background. I received many comments on that one and I have the blown up photo hanging on the wall at home. Ok, that’s all I will tell you right now, for you and I must be running out of time, interest and patience by now. Please feel welcome to view my gallery, and if you have ideas, suggestions, requests or even bold critics, feel free to speak out loud. That’s what we Dutchies are good at and accustomed to anyway. Thanks for allowing me to be the first artist of the week.
- Paul Gerritsen
