About Cloud Photographic

Cloud Photographic is an online gallery of photographs by Ben Haller. All of the images on this site are copyrighted and may be used or reproduced only with permission.

Credits

Thanks to Andie for introducing me to photography back in 1994. Thanks to Saul for inspiring me to learn to fly, and for loving photography with me. Thanks to Jan Pieterzak, Craig Fucile, Barbara Brundege and the whole photography department at UCSC for their wonderful classes that taught me so much when I was starting out. Most of all, thanks to my wife Keewi for her support, companionship and love. I couldn't do it without you.

This site was produced on Mac OS X using Apple's iPhoto and Drooling Cat's BetterHTMLExport, using a custom template I whipped up to generate the web pages. The photos that are from film were scanned using Hamrick's VueScan. The photos that are from a digital camera were reviewed, weeded and sorted using Stick Software's PhotoReviewer (written by yours truly). Photos were then batch processed using Lemkesoft's GraphicConverter and Adobe's Photoshop Elements. Web pages were previewed using Apple's Safari and OmniGroup's OmniWeb. No Microsoft products were used.

My film cameras were (I no longer have them) a Pentax 645N medium-format camera and a Pentax K1000 35mm camera. In medium format I mostly shot Velvia, but experimented with many other kinds of film. I used the 35mm camera almost exclusively for taking infrared black and white photos using both Kodak and Konica film.

Then I got a Minolta DiMAGE A1 digital camera, which was a great camera; its combination of a very flexible zoom lens and anti-shake technology gave amazing versatility without the use of a tripod. Sadly, that camera broke after several years of dedicated service. I then got a Panasonic DMC-FZ50. I have to look up that model number every time; is it really necessary to string together so many meaningless letters and numbers just to represent a camera? Fifty years from now, will I have to remember that I drive a QRX-AC2340, while my sneakers are PMAG45-17WMDs? Anyhow, it was a pretty decent camera, although far from perfect; see Glaciers & Volcanoes, 2007 for a bit of a review of it. It eventually got stolen (I left it on a bench in the bus station in Stockholm all day, and was gone when I got back, unsurprisingly). My latest camera is an Olympus PEN E-PL2, which I like better than the Panasonic but not as much as the old Minolta; see Banff, 2011 for a short review.

I bought my wife a Canon PowerShot SD200 after very careful comparison shopping, and I'd recommend it almost wholeheartedly — it's very light and tiny, has a wonderful LCD screen, has a great lens with a really wide zoom range for a camera so small, and generally takes excellent, well-balanced photos with its automatic metering. Great for quick snapshots, family photos, or for a lightweight travel camera. Its only drawback is that photos using flash are generally very poorly exposed; but you really can't expect better from a camera in this class.

Contact Information

Feel free to send e-mail with comments, suggestions, ideas, etc. Please note Cloud Photographic is not hiring. Thanks!