Interview with my Flickr friend Paul (Licht)

1. How did you first get interested in photography? And are you self taught?
As a boy, about 50 years ago I got the first camera. Think it was an Agfa Box, very simple. Then I participated in a photogroup at school, build my own darkroom. Worked beside school to earn mony - bought my first SLR then - the legendary Exakta Varex, a dream of a camera at that time.

2. Do you have a favourite walk around lens? If so, what is it?
Not absolutely - I have several lenses, it depends what I wish to do with a camera. No lense is really perfect, no lense is really bad. I try to get the best out of it.

3. What equipment and software do you use?
For dull+bad weather, IR, macro: Pentax K100D,
For b&w IR: Nikon D40,
For color IR: Canon Powershot S5iS
For macr: ALDI Traveler compact
For light enhancement I use Picasa, for some minor photoshopping The Gimp and for 3+ HDRi Photomatix.

4. Which one item of equipment is the most important for you?
I love all of them. The Pentax is a great bad-weather and night camera. The Nikon is great at B&W-Infrared, the Canon Powershot is wonderful camera for biking+hiking. On macros I love the ALDI Traveler.

5. How do you decide on locations and subjects?
I always have 2 or three projects to study: different daytime, light, weather, season and I’m always going back to this until I get a really satisfying result.
It depends on my mood - I let me surprise.

6. What are your favorite subjects to photograph?
Landscapes in infrared - horrible difficult, but mezmerising

7. What continues to inspire you as a photographic artist?
I’m captured by the fractal math in coherence with real photos.

8. What is the one thing that you have not captured on camera you feel you need to express?
Human portraits -
Lomography - I’m on the way to buy the Russian Lomo.

9. What other artists have influenced your work?
Anselm Adams - he is the greatest photogapher for me. Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger.

10. What other talents do you possess besides photography? And is there another area of talent you would like to explore?
Mathematics an Astrophysic - this are endless beauties. Math.-color fractals

11. Have you met other flick rites in person, and how was the experience?
Up to now not.

12. Any words of advice for those who would like to dig deeper into photography?
Take a camera and listen to YOUR heart !

13. Of all the photos you've taken, what is your favorite and why?
Difficult to answer, think I love them all.
flickr.com/photos/stuntbear/986987353/
This is one of my favorites. It was a cloudy day , not good for IR-photography. But I tried and was totally surprised about this breathtaking result. Whan I saw it the first time, the Creation History of the Old Testament came into my mind - that’s why this title.

flickr.com/photos/stuntbear/962178710/
Same situation: Season and weather not good for IR-Photography. I made about 100 - 200 maybe more photos on this spot. I knew, there is a chance, there is something... came back for several days, took more shots - and got this surprising photo.

14. If you could change anything on flickr, what would it be?
There should be two filters:
One filter to keep this silly and vulgar animated gifs out, or at least to keep it reduced to a tiny size.
One filter to allow only a maximum size of the comment/group/invite icons, let me say max 50x50 only.
It’s horrible to find my own comment stream flooded by oversized ugly animated gifs as it happened some days ago again to me again. It’s not an honest way to say: “I love your photo” but more a selfish thing..

These are the photos that Paul want to show us in this interview:

Infrared Photography



Photography and fractal math



Abstract comp



Thanks to Paul for his disponibility and for introducing us in the World of Infrared and Fractal math photography.

Angie_real aka Angela Lobefaro