About
Hi! I am Joost Koedam, an amateur photography enthusiast located in Utrecht, The Netherlands. I retired a few years ago, after working for 40 years in biomedical research and teaching. This gives me a little more time to dig around in my pictures, both new and old. I don’t really have a philosophy in photography, except that I like to document places I have been and sceneries and events I have seen. As a scientist, I like to observe and record and compare.
I started taking pictures on my 11th birthday, when a friend of my parents gave me a secondhand Kodak Instamatic camera. This was in December 1968, now over 56 years ago. My photography evolution included a long period of black and white photography. The Kodak Instamatic was replaced with another secondhand camera, a Ferrania. This camera allowed me to learn all the ins and outs of ISO values, aperture, depth of focus, shutter speed, etcetera. My uncle had taught me to develop my own negatives and soon (at the age of 13) I started printing my own pictures as well. Pictured is the setup in my parents’ guest room. Also pictured is the terrible way in which I initially stored my developed films. In 2003 I made the switch to digital photography. So any pictures you see before that date have been scanned from a slide, negative or print. Starting from 1992 you may see some pictures that include my wife, Cathy.
My first camera
A fully manual camera, no battery needed!
Dark room setup, 1986
Early rolls of B&W films
There is a rich tradition of photography in my family. Recently, I have obtained some old family photo albums which include pictures taken by my grandparents and great-grandparents. I will post some of these treasures, and also photographs that I have collected over the years, from browsing collections in antique stores and fairs. I like traveling to places where we have been before, and comparing old and new pictures. So I will try to juxtapose those in the Blog posts. Sometimes, I will also use pictures taken by my parents to illustrate these stories.
I look forward to digging into my old photography archives. It is not my intention to exploit this website commercially, I am just looking for a place to collect photographs and memories. Hopefully, you will get some enjoyment out of it as well. I would love to hear from you (see the form below)!
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