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Re: [OM] Yet another online gallery...

Subject: Re: [OM] Yet another online gallery...
From: Marko Vrabec <marko.vrabec@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 23:06:49 +0100
Claire,

> Since we are all 'OManiacs', could U tell us what gear U used ? Don't seem
> like very wide angle lenses were used. More like 35mm or 50mm. 

The Greenland shots were done with EOS 600 and <blush> Canon EF 28-70
zoom mainly at 28mm. I was a poor student then, not being able to afford
Olympus. Later I sold EOS to buy OM4T, my dream camera; the lenses I
used on Svalbard were mainly Zuiko 24/2.8 and Zuiko 35-105/3.5-4.5. 

> Actually the
> naturally vast expanse don't need superwide angles.... by itself, the
> composition is already quite strong.

There was a very interesting discussion quite a while ago about the
relation of one's psychological profile to the lens preferably used (I
think the subject was "Lens and vision", and the contributor was Jan
Steinman). Myself I am definitely a "wide-angle" person and could live
with 24/2.8 as my only lens. The 35-105 was quite a surprise for me; I
did not imagine before that 35 or 105mm can be so useful for landscapes
:-)


> What does Terra Nullius mean ? Nice name to use in a sci-fi movie like
> 'Aliens' or 'The Thing'.

It's a legal term, meaning "No man's land". It was used to describe
territories which were not under sovereignty of any country. For
example, the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic had a status of Terra
Nullius until 1920 when the Treaty of Svalbard gave Norway (limited)
sovereignty over the islands. Politically, the term can have a bad
connotation since it used to be routinely applied to territories
occupied by indigenous peoples, giving "discoverers" the right to
conquer the land.

I am using it as a synonym for absolute wilderness (or the impression of
it) and the impact it can have on you. The photos are just a by-product
of this mental state (in another discussion on this list, a conclusion
was reached that you start making really good photographs in the second
week of bushwalking alone with at least 30 kg rucksack on your back :-).

For example, there are quite a few native villages along the east coast
of Greenland, but nobody is going any further than 5 meters into the
inland - not really surprising since nothing of practical interest lies
there. So when you wander deeper into the country, you meet an Arctic
fox which has never seen a human being before. It carefully inspects you
making circles around at 5 m distance and then goes on with its own
business. It's quite a shocking experience. 


Marko Vrabec
Kamnik, Slovenia



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