ME - TECH - CREDITS

W H O T H E H E L L A M I?

Do you really want to know more about me? You must be bored!

My name is John Webster and I live in the City of Sheffield in the United Kingdom.

I'm a Goth by nature in both music and dress sense so yes I wear a lot of black!

I've been interested in photography ever since high school but I began to lose all interest in 1989-90 when I started doing wedding photography for friends, It then became a job with a lot of stress involved so I stopped taking weddings and soon after I lost interest all together. After almost 9 years away I decided to start a website to catalogue my Dragon fantasy figure collections which would need 1000's of photo's and the only economic way to do this was to buy a digital compact camera, and that's where it all began, my love of photography was rekindled but I soon found myself restricted by the lack of functions on the digital compact so I waited until the technology improved and I bought myself a new Nikon Semi-Pro Digital SLR so that I could still use all my old 35mm SLR lenses

I have a live journal where I talk more about my life but if you want to know what name I go by on LJ you will have to contact me because a lot of it is private and I don't let just anyone read it

One thing I must stress is that I am in no way a religious person, in fact far from it! I have no religious connections what-so-ever, some people say I have pagan traits in me, maybe so, but I'm not a pagan, I'm more comfortable in the company of pagans but I'm not one myself, I just have some of the same ideals and I tend to be more comfortable with nature. And no! no matter what you've heard, Gothic folk are NOT Satanists or devil worshipers (the Devil is a Christian belief thank you very much). I take photos of Churches and Cathedrals etc... because I have a love of the architecture and the work involved in such structures and that's it! I don't take kindly to people pushing their religious beliefs on me! believe what you want (I honestly don't mind at all) but please don't expect to convert me to your way of thinking, so if you plan to contact me, make sure it's connected to the site or photography in some way and not about pushing your religion, you have your beliefs and I have mine, lets leave it that way and then no one will get insulted

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

For those interested in this kind of stuff, here goes!

I have always liked heavy solid cameras, I started off using Olympus equipment but when they stopped producing SLR’s and moved onto compacts it was also time for me to move on, so I sold all my Olympus stuff and moved onto Nikon and I’ve stayed loyal with their SLR’s ever since! I started with a Nikon 801s with Nikkor 50mm, 70-200mm and a Sigma 28-70mm len’s, eventually I moved onto digital but stayed with Nikon so that I could continue to use my Nikon lenses, this was fine for a while but slowly I replaced the old lenses with new higher quality ones. I try to keep the number of lenses to a minimum, it looks great to open a bag full of lenses but i've found that they just get in the way if you have too many and they are a pain to carry around:

Cameras

Nikon D200 – Digital SLR (with the additional MB-D200 battery/function pack)

Nikon D100 – Digital SLR (with the additional MB-D100 battery/function pack)

Lenses

Nikkor 12-24mm f4G IF-E – (18-36mm when used on D100/D200) This is for wide angle interior shots and locations with little space and I love it for the dramatic shots i can get with it

Nikkor 24-85mm f2.8-4D IF – (36-122.5mm when used on D100/D200) This is my replacement for my Sigma 28-70 and is now my standard lens, it also has a fantastic Macro function for close-up work

Nikkor 70-200mm f4-5. – (105-300mm when used on D100/D200) This used to be my main zoom lens for distance work and is hopefully to be replaced soon because compared to my other lenses it is loud and slow and is starting to have focusing problems. I may replace it with the Nikkor 55-200 f4 - 5.6G DX which is a cheap entry level lens but is miles better than this one and will be fine until i can afford something better.

Sigma 100-300mm f4 APO IF – (150-450mm when used on D100/D200) This is the largest lens in my collection and can be used with my Sigma APO 2x Tele converter EX to give me 200-600mm (300-900mm when used on D100/D200)

Flash

Nikon SB800 & Nikon SB24 – I'm not a great fan of using flash to be honest but when the need arises I will use them but the photos for this site don't generally require any flash

Stabilising

Velbon PH-157G (El Charmagne 530) Tripod - A nice lightweight(ish) tripod that has independent adjustable legs and can get me low to the ground. I was going for a Benbo tripod but this was lighter and does everything I need from a tripod (hold the camera steady)

Gitzo G1564 Mk2 Monopod - I rarely use this, I find it a bit big and heavy, it's damn sturdy but I'd like something a little more lightweight and something that doesn't look so cumbersome

All photos are colour adjusted/corrected/resized for this site in Adobe Photoshop CS (and on occasion JASC Paint Shop Pro)

C R E D I T S

I couldn't have done this site without the support of a few people; firstly my family who have always been behind me no matter what I do.

Many thanks must also go to my friend, Pamela Peffer who came up with the name for the website when I couldn't think of anything.

To everyone on livejournal who have been fully supportive, you know who you are!

Nikon for making such fine cameras :o)