While I grew up near a military air base (Soesterberg AB), there was many a day I skipped school and took my camera to take pictures of the resident United States Air Force (Europe) jets of the 32 TFS and visitors to the Dutch part of Soesterberg Air Force Base. All through the 1970s and 1980s I concentrated on military aviation, though there were large breaks because of other interests (e.g. travel and photography).
In 1977 I was released from the Dutch Air Force, thus ending my enlistment which lasted 16 months. I found a job at Amsterdam International Airport Schiphol and have been there ever since (with various employers and in various jobs). Consequently, my interest began to shift from military aviation to civil aviation.
During the early 1990s I became interested in the early stages of the airline industry and thus started to read about "propliners", as well as searching them out during my travels. And aiming my camera on them for my personal collection.
It's not that I am just interested in getting the planes on film (or digital, these days), but I also like to know "what's what and was what" with the planes and companies that operated them.
Only in the late-1990s I started photographing modern airliners too, mainly because my son did and together we started making trips for this purpose.
Since history in a general sense is also an interest of mine, I tend to seek the history of aviation in general or airlines and airplanes in particular and this will be reflected in my website.
The intention is to use mainly my own photographic material, though sometimes I find the occasion too much to pass by or friends contribute to something I started.
The photographic equipment I have been using over the years include Olympus OM-1, OM-2, OM-4, Nikon FM2 and Canon EOS50E and EOS5. As well as a Mamiya 645S for black & white photography. The medium format camera was sold in 2003 to enable me to buy a Canon 100-400/4.5-5.6L lens, to improve the quality
of the telephoto photography.
In 2003 I found myself concluding that printing B&W photos in my darkroom had been replaced by working my scans and digital photos (in 2002 I had bought a Minolta Dimage S404) in Photoshop on my PC. My interest in travel- and landscape photography, which peaked in the 1980s and early 1990s grew less while time was now spent with aviation photography and updating my database on multi-prop transports.
In the previous century I saw some of my aviation photography published in magazines and I dreamed of publishing my work in a book one day. When I started my website in 2000 the website became 'my book'. The online exposure has led to some of my photos being published in books produced by others.
In 2003 I started expanding my website with the photographic fruits of my travels, dating back to 1981... There is still quite a backlog to catch up on and time is limited, but in Dec.2003 I replaced my (analog) EOS 50E for a digital Canon 300D; new material took less time to add onto the website, both on the subject of travel as well as aviation. 
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In Dec.2004 I had to update the subscription with my webhost, as the bandwidth did not suffice to deal with the increased number of visits to my website.
When I started this website in 2001, I never dreamed the website and all the work that seems to come with it (research both in books as well as online, contributing to fora) would become so dominant in my daily activities. As I said, 2009 the interest in airliner photography declined; other interests, and the goal to be less of a slave to my PC, showed less time spent on the website. This continued through 2011. The EOS 40D and later equipment, with its feature to be able to shoot in low-light conditions (using 3200+ ASA), comes in handy at singer/songwriter concerts I like to go to: Comedy: Eddie Izzard (Heineken Music Hall, Amsterdam 14Nov09) Paul Merton's Improv Chums, Theatre Carré, Amsterdam 05Jun10 |
Someone sent me this photo, without information of source, adding following comment:
"This is a 5 MB Hard Disk in 1956... In September 1956 IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first computer with a hard disk drive ( HDD). The HDD weighed over a ton and stored 5MB of data." |
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Although I have gone 'full-digital' a few years ago, I have used Kodachrome (in later years Fuji's Velvia slide film) for decades. So I thought this message noteworthy: June 22, 2009 They're taking the Kodachrome away By The Canadian Press -- ROCHESTER, New York -- Eastman Kodak Co. is retiring its most senior film, the iconic Kodachrome, because of declining demand in this digital age. Kodachrome was introduced in 1935 and became the world's first commercially successful colour film. It had its heyday in the 1950s and '60s and Paul Simon immortalized it in song when he crooned, "Mama don't take my Kodachrome away" in 1973. But sales of the unique film are now just a fraction of one per cent of Kodak's still-picture film sales and only Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas still processes it. Kodak says the decision to discontinue Kodachrome was difficult but necessary. The company says it plans to stay in the film business as long as it can and has introduced several new films in the last few years. |
Another one of "those without a flightplan"...
As an enterprising five year old, handling an Agfa Clack
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 To email me, click on the image and write the correct adress as given below (replace -AT- by the @ symbol).  Sorry for the inconvenience, but this is because spam has increasingly become a problem.
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Work on the website (both on the travel- as well as the aviation pages) took more and more of my spare time (the website receiving aprox. 1800 hits on average each month), and while struggling, I enjoyed working the digital flow...
