My photographic journey has brought me to melt plastics and glues with MEK, measure radiations exceeding 40 μSv/h, burn power tools, spend hundreds of hours on CAD software, cut aluminum, brass, lead, and different steels, sometimes by hand and sometimes with machine tools, remove mirrors and prisms to repurpose optical trains, appreciate the properties of polybutene as lubricant additive, produce lenses out of 15 separate subassemblies and custom parts, wander through countless museums with 4 kg of glass and metal hanging from my neck, play around with optical design software, cure epoxy in the oven of my kitchen, fantasize about the transmission spheres for interferometers (the f/0.56 ones), seriously miss and eventually get a granite measuring plate, need an ND8 filter in 105mm size as standard equipment in daylight, test more than 20 different exotic lens designs from the medical industry, and shoot at or below f/1 probably more frequently than at any other single aperture.

I thank all the optical engineers at Rodenstock/Linos/Qioptiq, De Oude Delft, Optec, Kowa, FJW, and Meopta, whose most exotic projects have unintendedly received a new life as toys in my playground.