Dirk Dom
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BIOGRAPHY
I was interested in photography since I was a small child, as my grandfather was a professional photographer.
When I was 18, my parents gave me a Canon FTb with a 50mm lens.
Two years later I bought myself a 100mm macro lens, with which I took tens of thousands of shots. Flower and insect photography always remained one of my passions.
When I was 19, and in engineering school, I designed an underwater camera for the Ftb and made it. That started off my underwater photography. I made four more housings, all increasingly better. I used the housings up to 230 feet deep, and never had a leak.
Underwater I shot mostly wide angle. I want to show the atmosphere underwater as I experience it. I shoot a very great deal at extremely shallow depths: light and rays.
Right now I shoot underwater with the Nikonos 5 and the Nikkor UW 15mm lens, which I consider the best UW lens in the world, It was so much better I gave away the SLR housings.
Topside, I shot for a long time with my FTb and just a few lenses.
9 years ago , I bought a used Canon F1 and the 55mm F1.2 SSC ASPHERICAL.
I was so taken by the quality of this lens that I started buying lenses. Helped by the dirt - cheap prices of most Canon FD lenses, I now have 40 Canon FD lenses and 11 bodies. My favourite lens is the Canon FD 85mm F1.2. The Canon FD 14mm and 24mm f/1.4 are close.
I'm interested in just any kind of photography. I like to work in projects which take a few years: Architecture of Downtown Antwerp, atmosphere in pubs, insects,...
Beginning of 2008, I bought the Fuji GX 617 panoramic camera. That was my entry in medium format. I'm very taken with it. I love really big prints: got 7 footers made from the 6x 17 slides.
Then, in May 2008, I bought a Mamiya C330F TLR with all seven lenses. The quality of this camera is superb and the lenses are very good. I shoot a lot of 6 x 6 nowadays, and enjoy it immensely.
A recent addition is a Voigtländer Bessa L with 15mm lens, which enters me as a rangefinder shooter. It's a very good and fun camera.
I entered Digital in June 2011, with a micro four thirds PEN EP-2. I'm thrilled with the fun digital is. And I can use my FD lenses on it!!
Acquired a Mamiya 7 and a Hasselblad Xpan in 2012.
I started again in black and white in 2012 (used to do serious wet darkroom work in the eighties) Because it's so easy and I can do so much with it, I no longer use wet darkroom but have gone digital in printing black and white. I do use black and white film.
Dirk.
Country: BE