Caedes
Upload Images
Welcome guest
Log In or Register
User Stats
- 1 total users online
- 38 users active today
- 259158 total members
- +show users online
Artist of the week has been chosen!
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
Comments
Post a Comment - Subscribe to this discussion
-Laurel
Lauren
Rob
Ewa
Your contribution to the site is really great!
Also: thanks Sam for this idea!
Peace&Respect Jojo
Now seriously, for quite some time now you have become my favourite artist on Caedes so this is only natural that you should be the artist of the week, month and as far as I am concerned also the artist of 2006 [because there is not that much of 2005 left ...].
Congratulations and many thanks for the joy and delight that you have been giving us.
To all of you: thank you so much, you are the best friends and supporters I can think of in this virtual world of Caedes!!
I'll do my best to personally adress each and everyone of you, but forgive me if I fail during the proces. Since yesterday alone I already received 26 subscriptions, not counting the subscriptions above!
As we say in Holland, BEDANKT EN TOT ZIENS!
thanks for sharing it with us and thanks for the photos too
well deserved
Congratulations on a well deserved honor. Your work is always top notch and I look forward to seeing more. It is also nice to get a little backstory on the person behind the posts.
It's been quite a bussy week for me. I received about 70 subscriptions and p.m.'s this week and that is not including the great comments in this new item.
I have yet to respond to a lot you good friends for thanking everyone personally. Please be patient, I will address all of you.
Now, what I liked about this new artist of the week concept is of course all the positive attention my works received. Who could ask for more? But, maybe that was not what this concept was all about. I guess I did expect some more critics in the way of suggestions of how to improve my work or what you personally would like me to focus on i.e. what subjects of photography I should address and put more effort in.
Of course we all have our personal preferences, and that becomes very clear when I view the subscriptions. Some of you like the animals, some get crazy about mushrooms (maybe consumed one shroom too many) and others get very enthusiastic about black and white photography.
It made me realise once more what a multi cultural site Caedes is, and how impossible it is to please just everyone. But of course that's an utopin thought, we can't please everyone, for we have many different interests. But we all do have something in common: our love for photography and the creation of art, of wanting to share our experiences in this big world with the rest of that world. The reasons for submitting our work may differ for each individual, but we all hope to receive respect and a little affection form our Ceades mates.
And that makes me want to express once more what I have to many of you personally: Caedes can only exist if we all be tolerant and respectful for each each others work. The very work that is the most personal and creative expresion of the human mind that we can hope to share. I don't believe that hiding behind an artistic pseudo name will reduce the hurt that we feel when our work receives bad critics, or worse NO COMMENTS AT ALL.
Think about that and lets especially support those among us who are not voted artist of the week.
They need and deserve the attention probably more than I do!
Thanks everyone and I wish our next artist of the week a very good time!
When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete,
everbody will respect you.
Jenny
-- Arne --
*have not been active here for more than a month
