Dear friends and visitors,

I have to tell you that I’m no longer updating my photostream at a regular rate. My last upload was some months ago and since then I even haven’t had time to thank you for your comments and faves. It was a pretty busy year for me and next year will be not any different. Over the last years, you’ve made my stream a real success by loads of faves and comments and invitations to groups and I’m very grateful for that. However, there came a time when coping with these social media activities put more and more a strain on me and I had to make a decision, i.e. whether I should either neglect my professional and private life or my flickr stream. On the other hand, I didn’t cease to take pictures (NEVER – just scrap it, dude) and actually, I like to show them to other people.

So I’m now trying to establish such a thing as an, mhm, unsocial media agreement with you, and it goes like this: If you like one of my pics – thanx a lot, but don’t fave it and don’t comment on it. If you do it nevertheless, please don’t expect an answer or an reciprocal fave, because it might take months before I check my stream the next time and by then, my activities list will show nilch.

I wish you the very best, and may the gods of light and art be yith you!

Picturepest, a.k.a. Michael

Apart from these laments, there's not so much to say about myself. I'm fascinated by black & white photography and by microscopy (or vice versa). It' s an odd combination, but well, that's my way.

Recently, I started to improve the descriptions, resp. titles of my microphotos by adding genus or species names, as it is common practice in scientific papers. Nevertheless, I'm just an amateur and far from being infallible. Moreover, my diagnoses/classifications are based on morphological features alone ("very old school", so to speak) and I'm leaning heavily on taxonomical textbooks whch are pre-2004. I'm fully aware that recent progresses in molecularbiology have led to a number of modifications and changes in the taxonomy of protists, in particular if radiolarians are concerned. Using only a light microscope and without having access to advanced knowledge and techniques, my classifications/diagnoses may be flawed or out of date in some cases. A word to the wise: Don't rely on them in your seminal papers, ok?

All my pictures are licensed as Creative Commons, so if you want to use them privately or commercially, please feel free to do so, they don't come with a price tag. CC only requests to mention that such a photo has been made "by Picturepest", but if you just don't mention it - well, I don't care.

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As some people asked me about it and as camera infos are not at display if one uploads a cropped picture, here are some infos on my equipment:

Cameras:

Lumix DMC-LX7

Canon EOS 70D

Canon EOS 5D

Objectives:

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM

Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM

Canon EF 35mm f/2 IS USM

Sigma 50mm F1,4 DG HSM | Art

Sigma 35mm F1,4 DG HSM | Art

Sigma 85mm F1,4 EX DG HSM

Leitz Leica-R 24mm

Leitz Leica-R 50mm

Leitz Leica-R 60mm

MIcroscope:

Zeiss Standard 16 RA (in connection with Canon EOS 70D)