Message from James Deakin
Welcome to my little world. Here you will find a window into my life, as captured by me, the way I want to remember it.
I am the Editor in Chief of a Philippine based car magazine called C! Magazine. I love cars, F1 and photography and am in a unique position to be blessed with a job that lets me indulge in all of my passions whilst getting paid for it, too. Photography was something that only came about because of the magazine and the early days when we couldn't afford to hire pros.
I only started getting serious about photography in 2004 when I got a Canon 300D. Before that, I was using a Sony Cybershot 707. That was a great camera. I enjoyed taking pictures but took little interest in photography, if that makes any sense. Basically, I used to shoot a lot of pictures but I didn't know what aperture and ISO were. If it looked good, it stayed, if not, I trashed it.
Then came the 300D. I thought it was the miracle I had been waiting for. But like some new users of a DSLR, I was left very disappointed. Because of my lack of knowledge, my pictures actually degraded. This is not the camera's fault, obviously. The learning curb was steeper and a lot of the control was put back in the user's hands, therefore leaving very little margin for error. Also, with less in camera processing, I needed to work harder at getting a better result straight out of the camera.
I plodded along with the 300D and got used to it. I bought a cheap 28-200 Tamron lens and a very slow 75-300 Canon. Life was good again. Until a friend of mine introduced me to the 50mm f/1.8, that is. Things have never been the same again. I got a taste of good glass and started getting slowly consumed by my pursuit of the perfect shot. I would find myself scouring the house for stuff I could sell to build up my lens collection. College funds are over rated anyway, right?
I slowly added to the collection and swapped some of the crappy stuff for decent gear. I now shoot with a 50mm 1.8, 70-200 f/4L, Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 and a 100mm f/2. I just picked up a 17-40L and a 10-22. Update: Someone stole my 28-75 during a night time shoot of the Golden Gate Bridge. I sold the 17-40 and the 70-200, I now use a Sigma 18-50 2.8 as my semi-wide angle and a 70-300IS for telephoto work. Just got the EF-S60mm Macro, but it is a compay lens. I also travel now with a Kodak P880; this is turning out to be a wonderful little back up camera.
I try to update this site as often as possible (once a week or so) so be sure to drop by regularly because I will be adding more Formula One races and Car Launches as I get the opportunity to travel to these events.
I hope you enjoy your stay here, and please, if you like what you see, leave a comment and click the 'vote' button. Or sign my guestbook.
Below is the map of the countries I've been blessed enough to visit.
create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide
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