What's (in) the Picture?

Chris Breebaart Photography – finding stories

Chris Breebaart

Hello there! I am Chris Breebaart, 65 years of age, living in The Netherlands. One of my hobbies is taking pictures. I started as a little kid and kept going! On this blog I publish pictures; some are from the archive, some are recent.

My first camera was a Kodak Instamatic. From there, I borrowed cameras from my sister. These included an Agfa and an East German Praktika that weighed a ton but had a Zeiss Lens. Later, I bought my first camera, a Pentax K1000. I remained faithful to Pentax until my ME-II Super shutter broke down. I experienced the hassle of repairing it many times. I decided to turn to Nikon, and I stayed there since. My first Nikon was a F301, then a F90 (occasionally still in use).  In 2004 I took the step to digital with a Nikon D70. In 2012 I switched to the Nikon D7000. Ad since 2016 I used the Nikon D500 as well. In 2025 I gave up my DSLR’s for a Nikon Zf. It brings back the fun of an old mechanic camera with dials, in combination with electronic state of the art. And the idea that it weighs less is an urban legend.

Being one of a generation that grew up with monochrome, I love shooting black and white. Most of my archive is build on that. I love the Kodak TriX, a great film. My love for monochrome was kept alive using various iPhones more and more as a source for photography. Having a phone always with me, I use it a lot for snapshots.  My favourite app was Hueless.  It reminded me of the ‘old’ days when I started to learn to work with monochrome film. The app had built in filters and allowed me to focus and measure light flexible. The big difference compared to film is I now can see the results immediately. Unfortunately Hueless has not been adapted to IOS 11, yet. I do hope it will be available again, to use on my iPhone.

The thrill of seeing a developed film from the lab is gone with digital. Even better was developing prints myself. It was always a surprise to see what came out, and how it came out. And back in those days photography was expensive. Film, chemicals, tools, enlarger, clocks, a dark room, paper etc cost money. But what did not change over the years was my way of working: most of what I do is intuitive.

My iPhone and iPad are also my ‘darkroom’. I edit photos for this blog using Snapseed and Marksta. My DSLR photos are downloaded to my iPad from my network storage. The result is good enough for this blog. Printing on paper is something different. I use Lightroom to keep my archive.

I hope you do enjoy visiting this blog, and I do hope that you will come back regularly. Enjoy your stay. If you feel like it leave me some comments and feedback! It is nice to see comments. Sometimes it is endearing to read what a photo can do to a visitor.

That theme matches the topic of my photo blog: What’s (in) the picture? Finding stories. Photo’s tell stories. My story (what made me click my shutter), and the story of the spectator.

At the start of my photo path I used to get comments ‘why do you shoot that? That is not a nice photo!’. In a time of film it was impossible to show a result quickly to make my idea visible. Wait, be patient, wait for the print! I printed my own monochrome photos in my darkroom. But sometimes I was not able to create the envisioned result. I had the passion, but lacked the skills and patience to achieve that. Nowadays you just look at the back of your camera and share that with the critic. And sometimes even that does not make sense, but it shows a picture. Developing with software today is easier that in the darkroom. The scanned negatives that were too difficult to print in the darkroom can be shared now.

Photography is about seeing, observing the world. And be ready for the decisive moment as Henri Cartier-Bresson said. My photos tell my story of the world. They are my way of giving ‘voice’ to something that made me press the shutter. It is something that reflects inside me. That is extremely subjective. Showing my photos to the world taught me that my story is uniquely mine. It can differ from the story of my distinguished visitors. My story is not their story. So, what’s behind a photo?

 

284 Responses to “Chris Breebaart”

  1. Dreamer of Dreams's avatar
    Dreamer of Dreams

    Hi Chris,
    Thanks for including my ICA, Boston photograph and poem for this week’s “Harmony” prompt in your list of blogs!
    Very please to come across your blog.
    Cheers,
    Dreamer of Dreams

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply
  2. neuroticphilosopher's avatar
    neuroticphilosopher

    Thank you for listing my link on the photos I put on WPC, Half-light. You have a lovely knack of saying things simply that touches ones heart.. You do it even better with your photos. Thanks again!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
        • Chris Breebaart's avatar
          Chris Breebaart

          Thank you again! I just read your about section and your travel in life. I recognize a lot you say about your discovery of what photography brings you as a subconscious memory service to shape stories you suddenly actually see in display. That is how it works for me in a lot of photos! I am happy my photos bring you something. Especially you taking the time to let me know!

          Liked by 1 person

        • neuroticphilosopher's avatar
          neuroticphilosopher

          Thank you Chris. I hope to ask you much more about the places you have been to. I am not a very active blogger when it comes to connecting with other bloggers.only because I am an introvert by choice, habit and personality! Sometimes some posts bring a sense of that part world at that time and i feel compelled to say something. Thanks for reading about me.

          Liked by 1 person

  5. GeorgieMoon's avatar
    GeorgieMoon

    Thanks for the Pingback on the Faces theme.
    I was interested to read that you also edit your DSLR photos on iPad. I would like to do this too. But I can only do it from my compact Nikon. I don’t know the editing apps you use – Snapspeed and Marksta, so I am looking forward to trying these out.
    Can I ask you an iPad related question? I have over 5000 photos on iPad camera roll, and I have put lots of these into smaller albums, My photos are getting too much to deal with. How do I delete the camera roll and just have the albums? Will the camera roll ever fill up completely?
    Hope you can help!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • Chris Breebaart's avatar
      Chris Breebaart

      Hi George, all my original photos are stored on a network attached storage of Synology. I use Lightroom to organize them and work on the ‘bigger’ pictures. I import files from the NAS to my iPad to edit them in Snapseed and Marksta and then upload them to a draft on WordPress. The publishing of drafts I do from a pc, that is more easy with a keyboard. So I do not store all my photos on iPad or iCloud. Just the ones I shoot with my iPhone until they are uploaded to the NAS and the photos I work on for WordPress.
      The all photos album is the original storage of photos, in albums you can make selections. Throwing away the original however makes you lose the album copy. The other way round (deleting a photo in an album) does not delete the original one. This what I know, but that might be not conclusive, I do hope it helps.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  7. CC Richards, Daytripper Sippers's avatar
    'CC' Richards, Daytripper Sippers

    This is very interesting reading about your journey with your cameras. I’ve only grown from snapshots to photography since starting my blog. I know what you mean about working intuitively, I don’t like rules and calculations so much, so digital cameras are great that you can try something and see if it works or not, then try again. That’s the wonder of the experiment. I’m going to enjoy having a look at your work now. Cheerios

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  9. Marsha's avatar
    Marsha

    You have a long history of photography, for sure. I remember working with my dad in the darkroom. I loved the smells. I love your long list of cameras and equipment. I’m not a pro, and so most of my semi-professional shorts are with a Canon xTI Rebel. I use my iPhone for many things because it is so simple, and it shoots video. Thanks again for visiting my blog and linking my challenge post. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • Chris Breebaart's avatar
      Chris Breebaart

      I was lucky to live through film and dark rooms and the magic of it all. And looking back when scanning films how unfortunate it was – and understandable – that I shot so little of a promising object :-). On the other hand software now makes it able to work photos like I meant them then but was never able to print them in the dark room. I love my iPhone for daily shots. Thank you for leaving this reply

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
      • Marsha's avatar
        Marsha

        It was so costly to print everything, we were careful about what we took. Even so I have tons of slides that my dad left me, but over 23,000 of my own digital photos, most of which are only so-so, if that good. I take a ton of record shots! 🙂 Marsha was there, you know the story.

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply
  10. lafoose's avatar
    zenbaby

    Hi Chris

    Thanks for including my WPC Buddha – On Chaos in your list. I appreciate all the support I can receive in growing my blog site traffic and followers. Photo blogging is an area I would like to pursue more in depth. I don’t own a camera at this point but I love my Galaxy S7 :). Works well for now. Keep going with this!!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

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