Bio.

["joe b." <joe.b@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My Bio.
-------

- Name: Joe Berenbaum (I tend to call myself Joe B. because it involves
less explanation, spelling, questions about my exotic ancestry, etc.)

- Profession/Study:  Various, currently unable to do anything workwise
or studywise due to long-term illness. Would otherwise probably be
training as a counsellor or psychotherapist. I intend to do so when
things improve.

- Country: UK

- Personal history of photography: Fascinated by it since age of 9; I
used to spend hours looking at ads for Rolleiflexes- but after early
traumatic experience dropping my mother's low-end Ensign folder (it did
not survive) I didn't get into photography properly until my late 20's.
I abandoned photography for a few years and picked it up again around 5
years ago. So that's probably 20 years with a rest in the middle. Why
did I stop? One of life's mysteries. Certainly not for any good reason.

- preferred subjects: people, landscapes, interiors, "found subject"
photography (ie torn posters, peeling paintwork, illuminated signs
reflected in puddles, reflections in shop windows, etc), night
photography, urban photography, still-life, flower photography.

- materials (film, filters, paper, chemistry): IR Ektachrome, IR
monochrome- mostly Kodak, tungsten-balanced slide films generally but
mostly Kodak, Neopan 400 and 1600, Provia 100, Kodachrome 25 and 200,
Agfa, Fuji and Kodak colour neg films sometimes, especially in order to
give portrait subjects a bundle of prints subsequently as a "thank you".
Filters; Cokin various- no multi-image prisms or "speed effects though!
circular various- notably various shades of yellow and orange for IR
Ektachrome, some 90mm resin discs from SRB Film Services used in 82mm
B&W wide-angle holder, and a slowly growing collection of very dark red
and visually opaque filters in various useful sizes. My next wanted
filter; a B+W 484; "This deep purple filter transmits only UV rays
almost without reduction... it can be used in black and white
photography to *enhance* haze and fog". No, it isn't cheating, if it's
there, it can be photographed...

Paper and chemistry- Ilfochrome which I don't print myself (but I have
done so some years ago on an enlarger that didn't even have a filter
drawer- by sitting the filters under heat-proof glass over the condenser
inside the lamphouse- it worked...), and for b&w I don't know. Whatever
the printer uses! (I will get organised sometime). I don't do any
processing myself at present, but might get a Jobo for E6 sometime.

- format (35mm/medium format/large format): 35mm and medium format.

- Other strange hobbies: hi-fi, listening to baroque and early music,
esp Purcell (England's best composer), reading about cognitive
psychology and utilising it, reading/collecting books written by
channeling from persons who have passed on (well you asked for strange
hobbies), mind-body approaches to medicine and healing.

- How did you find out about this list: from W-J.

- Additional custom category- favourite photographers! Ernst Haas,
Eugene Atget, Robert Doisneau, Andre Kertesz, Cecil Beaton, Eve Arnold
(early work), Robert Mapplethorpe (probably only for the flower shots).
I think this list is due to expand shortly as I know there's a lot more
stuff I like, but I'm not too sure who did it all. But I'm learning...

- Expand on anything photographic you like: OK, my preferred equipment:
I have a great affection for some of the cameras that were available on
the 50s, 60s and 70s; cameras with very good quality optics and (in many
cases) rangefinders, that just happened to be relatively silent, with
very high precision mechanics, and allowed full control over the
exposure. I still use this type of camera today and find them wonderful.
Some of them even folded flat to go into a pocket yet spring open to
take sharp and correctly-focused medium format shots! (Yes I use one of
those). I particularly like cameras with no moving mirror and lenses
that are good wide open, as I do a fair amount of hand-held photography
in low light. So I like Rolleiflexes, rangefinders and the EOS RT.
My other favourite category- small pocketable cameras. The tinier 35mm
creations of Rollei, Minox, Olympus etc that have that special
capability of being able to be slipped into a pocket and forgotten about
until you want to take a picture- to my mind this makes whole areas of
photography possible that simply wouldn't be otherwise- namely those "I
wish I'd brought a camera" shots. That "always carry a camera" philosphy
is something I take seriously. Sometimes I take a Rollei 35S out with
infrared film, filters and lens hood, and it all goes into my pockets.
-- 
joe b.