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Too bad the tagline "A curious character" has already been taken by Richard Feynman...

If this profile is too long for you to read, feel free to take notice of my statement below regarding my group memberships.

When I am not an amateur photographer, I work as a state-certified professional translator and interpreter of German, English, Italian, French, Spanish and, occasionally, Russian, for governmental agencies as well as for private enterprises and the occasional individual stumbling across my business entry in the yellow pages.

And when I am not busy massaging words, I try to get a masters degree in physics.

Apart from that, I am trying to support the cause of Free Open Source Software and Open Access to knowledge. This includes opposing software patents and private ownership and control of knowledge originally gained through government funding.

And I love traveling around the world, seeing places, eating food and meeting people.

And I am trying to learn as many languages as I can. I am currently in my Far Eastern Asian phase. This means that I am trying to learn Japanese, Mandarin, Mongolian, Vietnamese and possibly Thai. There still are a lot of languages to go and I do not know when I will find the time to get busy with them.

Busy life, eh?

Anyway, a few notes about my photos:

At first, you will see pictures which I took in my second phase, some ten years after my first phase with Ilford Delta 400 black and white negative film loaded in a Canon T70 or an AE-1, both totally set to manual mode, which produced, in my opinion, better pictures.

But to show you those, I need to acquire a decent negative scanner first, and funds are tight.

The pictures of the currently visible second phase, I made with what I hade to make do with: A very simple, 1.3 megapixel Fuji A101 digital camera.

Being totally convinced that a simple tool cannot limit a determined and skillful artist, I went on a mission to prove this. So the objective was to make the best possible pictures with the most simple and affordable digital camera available in 2002.

From the very beginning of my adventure into photography, I set myself a basic rule of taking only one shot of an image. Digital photography of course allows for instant review and corrected takes, but I only use this feature to repeat a blurred shot caused by low lighting conditions.

One shot is usually all I need to get the picture that I want.

Another rule is that the picture needs to be honest or genuine without stretching the meaning of the terms: They are all snapshots of images as they really and coincidentally presented themselves to me. Any picture which I arranged or altered after its taking for artistic purposes is revealed as such in the comments. Anything else is exactly how I found it.

A good example of this is Green Coke: I passed it, noticed the fine subject and took a picture just like it was there.. Click. And another one (yet unpublished). Click.

Done.

Enjoy the results!

P.S. - A word about my membership in kinky or even obscene groups:

When checking out my group memberships, do not feel disconcerted by the obviously indecent ones.

If you are squeamish, just ignore them as they do not commonly reflect my personal taste or preferences. I hop in and out of them to take a curious peek and - like a gold washer with his pan in the creek - look for rare gems in the streams, since I also collect fine art photography (books and digital pictures),

The broad mass of human society has yet to come to stylish, tasteful, refined, relaxed and natural terms with its own sexuality.

This is by the way why modern mainstream American "erotic" cinema always feels compelled to link eroticism to violence in its productions. This being quite sad, you can always try European productions to recognize the difference.

And this is why there are so many (technically and artistically) bad pictures out there that too many people find appropriate, erotic or even sexy.

Mind you that I am not judging their taste, merely that my membership in groups with such pictures should not be taken as grounds to derive, assess or judge my personal taste.

In any case, make sure you know what to expect when you click on any of those group links. And do not expect those groups to linger about for long in my membership summary as they are only there for a short term out of (I swear!) academic interest...

...- and to read the articles, of course.