There's been a fault at the local telephone station since Saturday which has stopped my access to broadband internet.  The only access I now have is a 227 Kb connection using my Nokia as a modem.  That's too slow to upload photos, so there won't be any new ones on the site until the fault is fixed.
Telia has been notified, so hopefully I will be back online in a few days.
På återseende!

When I read my favorite photography blogs every day I feel a bit of consternation that none of them make any effort to talk about the equipment the rest of us, you and I, use. They are, after all, professional photographers writing for and to other professionals - all of whom accept that high-end Nikon and Canon cameras are the best there are for photographing sports and reportage, Leica is best for street photography, medium-format cameras are best for fashion photography, and large-format cameras are best for landscape photography. We ordinary folks can't afford the prices of any of those cameras (or lenses); we've got to pay the bills every month.

I've got two real-world facts to point out:

--Real art has been created using (cheap) Lomo cameras (see ”Lomography” in Wikipedia)

--Many news photos are made using (low quality) cell phone cameras (see your favorite newspaper) 

How about another fact – magazine reproduction is limited to about 130 lines of resolution per inch, newspapers to about 65. (These numbers are from memory, correct me if they're wrong.) In other words, printed media, including photography books, is unable to show any visible difference between photos from a 10,000 dollar pro camera and a 300 dollar point-and-shoot.

I acknowledge in advance your comments about wall-sized prints, lens clarity, high-speed sequence shooting, low-light photography, and camera sturdyness.

The point is, ordinary consumer cameras with 8 or more megapixels can be used for journalistic, sports, or landscape photography – if the person behind the camera has talent, uses off-camera flash when necessary, and post-processes the photos with distortion correction, sharpening, and curve adjustment. Anybody can do this processing withThe Gimp (free) or Photoshop (don't pay the rent this month).

I photographed the gallery pictures with my compact camera and downsized them for web presentation. Decide for yourself how much technically inferior they are to photos from pro cameras.

My camera is lighter than a Nikon, smaller than a Canon, has an optical zoom equivalent to 676 mm (which would be a huge and heavy sewer pipe on a pro camera); my camera has image stabilization, PASM modes, in-camera post processing if I choose, and a multitude of preset modes for shooting when the scene is changing too fast for me to use time setting up the camera. My camera has 12 megapixels and it cost about 400 dollars.

I can use my camera for sports and event photography, street shooting, art photography, and landscape photography. If I wanted to, I could do protraits with it too.

Each of those photos in the gallery is exactly the way I wanted it to be, not a one of them is a compromise.

Why in hell would I want a 10,000 dollar camera.

Rävlanda got its first snow of the season on Tuesday.  I took this "nothing special" photo with my phone and put it on Facebook.

Wow, it immediately got a bunch of (positive) responses, sure surprised me.

My corner on MostPhotos sure hasn't gotten the same response; neither has my gallery here gotten the same response.

So now I have a dilemna: should I devote more time to producing photos that please me (and only me) esthetically, or should I just point-and-shoot "grab shots" with my telephone that turn out to be popular with others?

Gotta think this one through.

From Smarholmen bay: "Water, rock, and algae". 

The weather this week has been cold, raiiny, and dark ... it's now Friday and there may not be any new photos this week.

The camera is water-resistant, but I'm not.

Yes, I'm a cranky old #¤%.