Welcome to One Camera One Len’s Photographers Spotlight Series, where we discover other photographers who you may find extremely interesting. They share their love for photography, their stories and a selection of their images. This is a regular feature, see the end of the article for details.
Hello,
My name is Marc Roovers, the youngest of four and born in 1961. My brother started a photography club in the village where we lived and it didn’t take long before I caught the virus too.
First it was mainly watch them take pictures, lying flat on their belly in front of a mushroom or a row of trees, and learn about coupled flash units, command dials, extension rings and reversed lenses. Almost every weekend we were hauling bags full of camera equipment to a new destination.
And then into the dark room, the red light, the chemicals, the baths, the enlarger, and finally a photo on paper. Who thinks that photography stops with the shot, and that developing the film is something you can’t control is wrong, the darkroom is the photoshop of the computer.
Analog photography, fully executed from shot to result, has something …
I don’t remember exactly, but it must have been somewhere around the age of 10 that there was nothing stopping me, I needed a camera, and I got one, a Kodak 110 Instamatic.
There was not much fun to be had with that one, and as we had a lot of cameras at home, I quickly switched to an old Voigtlander with bellows, which could be set completely manually, then the fun started!
It didn’t take long before I got my first SLR, I think it was a Fuji ST701, shortly afterwards I also had a Pentax SV, and as the years passed, other cameras followed.
I completed my obligatory Military service, got married 3 years later and soon after we had 2 children, both girls. In this period one element disappeared: development from start to finish. I continued to shoot, but it wasn’t the same anymore.
The eighties brought the computer into my life through work, and a new hobby was born, from self-study to programming courses, website building, databases, etc. to evening classes and ultimately trained as an IT specialist and got a job as network administrator.
Meanwhile, digital photography started booming. A new hobby that revived an old hobby. What was missing was back: developing… now digital, on the computer. And yes, it just wasn’t enough, I soon developed tools and apps for image editing in Windows.
At one point I realized it was time to move on and leave Windows for what it is, about 3 years ago, I started working on Kubuntu and open source image editing software. Making apps and tools has temporarily stopped, and now I’m developing HaldCluts and profiles. I have developed my own series of Luts called PictureFX, and these are also present in the G’MIC-Qt plugin and the Free Online Film Emulator, recently my infrared Luts have been added.
Other hobbies? Bushcraft is one of them, learning survival techniques, not to survive but to live in and with nature. Less of a hobby but a very deep interest in motorcycles, cars and airplanes, especially older ones and more specifically those of the WWII period.
Got the opportunity thanks to a wonderful wife and life partner to drive a Ferrari like in the Magnum P.I. series years ago, and as icing on the cake more recently flew with a WWII fighter plane, the Mustang P51, I was even allowed to take over the controls for a short time while we were up in the air, of course under the supervision of the experienced instructor / pilot. This last present was not cheap so I don’t expect any major ones for the next 10 years 🙂
Not so long ago I started a new website, https://marcrphoto.wordpress.com/
I was already working on my own website before, in 2011 I bought my own domain, digicrea.be, but retirement is imminent, and the costs became too high to maintain it any longer (the contract expires April 2021).
Hence the new start – photography Regenerated !
Marc Roovers
Camera Gear:
Pentax DSLR K3 and K5 and many lenses from 8mm up to 500mm.
Olympus OM D EM10 with pancake 14/42mm and K&F Concept OM/M43 adapter.
Fujifilm X100 original, X-A3, X-E1, X-T10 and X-T20.
Fujifilm XC 15-45mm, 7artisans 25mm, Meike 35mm, Samyang 12mm and 7Artisans 7.5mm.
Olympus Zuiko OM lenses from 21mm up to 300mm with K&F Concept OM/Fuji X adapters.
and more…
Development:
Dell Studio 17” i5 8MB ram (about 10 years old) with Kubuntu 18.04.
Rapid Photo Downloader, Digikam, Luminance HDR, RawTherapee.
We’re always looking for photographers to share their stories, websites, social media and more. Please contact me if you would like to contribute! People always enjoy reading about others. Get yourself seen today
One Camera One Lens 
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