I occasionally describe myself as a freelance curmudgeon or a grumpy old man in training, but it’s just age creeping up on me, and as my waistline broadens instead of my horizon, I get more reflective about what is going on around me.

The short story: I was born in the Netherlands, grew up in New Zealand, and I’ve lived in Australia for the last quarter century or so. Life has been varied and occasionally eventful.

As an amateur photographer, I will be using this blog to post some pictures and talk about the process of creating them. I’m sure there will also be the occasional diatribe about something that has annoyed me <grin>.

I first got interested in photography in high school in the ’70s, using a school owned SLR, shooting black and white film, and learning to process it in the school darkroom. Never got right into it, but the interest stayed. In the mid ’80s I dabbled a bit more, but never seriously, and mostly stuck with point and shoot.

In 2000, I managed to get hold of an early Kodak digital camera (one whole megapixel I think), but never achieved any real satisfaction with it. So I bought a good film SLR, along with a film scanner, so that I could digitise the negatives, and do all the neat stuff. It was cumbersome and time consuming as a hobby, and the increasing move away from consumer film to digital cameras made it harder to find a good processing lab to process my film.

About a year and a half ago, I bought a digital SLR, and since then have taken photos in fits and starts. I’m now at a point where I’m starting to feel comfortable with the tools, and just need to translate their usage into helping with my image capture. Whether to not I succeed, only time will tell.