About

Ahh yes… the inevitable “About” page. I never know if I should list out some things about me or just type an endless bad-grammar-filled paragraph about myself. I guess I’ll go with the latter since lists require coding and coding makes my eyes teary, back hunched, and fingers numb. Just kidding. I really want you to get to know me well and this was the icebreaker.

Introduction

Anyway, I was first introduced to dslr photography around 5 years ago when I was very passionate about nature aquascaping. At the time I was entranced by the great detail in the images posted on the aquascaping forums I frequented, and the work of Takashi Amano. He came up as a photographer and used his photography instincts to recreate vibrant and natural aquascapes. By his influence I brought my first dslr which was a used Nikon D70 with the kit lens. I was a freshman in college, basically broke, and basically taught myself how to use it and post-process photos. After fiddling around with the D70 for a year or so I moved onto a D80, which has since been sold for a D700 full frame. It really was not until I bought the D80 that I actually discovered how the different camera settings and functions could work for me. The D80 was my travel companion and has never left my side. I spent about 9 months in Hong Kong and China. It was there that I was able to develop a photographic eye for shooting landscapes. When I returned to the states with a better grasp of photography skills, my grassroots, and Chinese, I decided to broaden my photography to not only include landscapes, but also portraits, cars, and experimental. Thanks to the fact that I was still a student and still broke, I did not have that much money in my pockets to travel around. Now fast forward to the present, I have not only dramatically developed my photographic range, but I have also developed my own photographic style. Recently I have gone retro and have been playing around with film cameras such as the Nikon FE, but nothing serious has come out of it just yet.

Philosophy

Whether it be shooting or editing, I only have one philosophy that I follow: the final photo has to be poster-worthy not only to me but also to the viewer.

What the heck is “1013MM”?

A lot of people have asked me to explain why I branded myself as 1013MM well to be honest, when I was trying to come up with a domain name I did not want something typical like “John Zhang Photography” or “Photography By John Zhang”. The fact that there are probably several billion people named John in this world didn’t really help so I chose something unique and a name that should be easier to remember. I also wanted a url that was short to type. So anyway the “1013″ is my birthday month and day while the “MM” stands for the focal length measurement of camera lenses in photography terms. And there you have it, something simple, yet unique. 1013MM.