About Chocolate Fish Photos

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	Chocolate Fish Photos as a Web Portal The Photographer behind Chocolate Fish Photos The Camera Equipment The Films The Awards won by Chocolate Fish Photos The Link Partners of Chocolate Fish Photos How to set up a link exchange with Chocolate Fish Photos

Chocolate Fish Photos as a Web Portal

Maori, New Zealand

The Chocolate Fish Photos website exists since the year 2000 and serves as a platform to promote some of our photographs to a wider audience. The name was inspired from when the photographer, Oliver Ross, lived in New Zealand where hot chocolates in cafés are sometimes served with a chocolate coated marshmallow fish, just like the one above.

Since its humble beginnings, the website has seen major changes, the last one in March 2004 when the entire site was rewritten in PhP and MySQL based on coppermine.

Waiotapu, New Zealand

It is now possible to leave comments on individual pictures, or send them as electronic greeting cards. There is also a search function which speeds up the process of locating an image on a particular topic or from a particular location.

The pictures are available for sale, either as fine art prints or for commercial image licensing. See the order info page for more information.

The Photographer behind Chocolate Fish Photos

To be a travel photographer means to hike, climb, walk and experience some of the most beautiful and remote corners of the earth. It means trekking across icy mountain passes, through insect infested swamps, or along tranquil tropical beaches. It means sleeping cosily suspended in your hammock,

Nelson Lakes, New Zealand

restlessly in a flea infested makeshift bed, or not at all while travelling on some dilapidated bus. It means listening to the soothing sounds of a mature old forest, the whispering silence of an endlessly stretching desert, or the commotion of a bustling bazaar. It means meeting the friendly local who offers you food and shelter, the Buddhist monk who offers just a friendly conversation, or the con artist who offers you the free ride of your life.

While all these experiences may appear very different, they all share the same invigorating simplicity and teach us an appreciation of beauty, a sense of feeling connected and close to the world, its liveliness and chaotic order. It is through my photographs that I try to convey these same feelings of passion and awe to the viewers.

The decisive moment!

I began with photography out of a fascination for nature and the desire to capture the inherent natural beauty of a place as faithfully as possible. It is my aim to establish a connexion between viewer and motive by giving a sense of place and time. To achieve this, I carefully select and analyse a subject until its essence is revealed and can be distilled into a photograph. While this often requires a great deal of effort just to create one single image, the creative process of mentally designing a shot, developing the film and producing the prints in the dark room, gives me a great satisfaction and pleasure which make it worthwhile.

It was Pablo Picasso who once said: "I have discovered photography. Now I can kill myself. I have nothing else to learn." I wouldn't give up so readily because there are still the different styles of photography to explore. More recently, for instance, I have become interested in a style which is often referred to as photographic realism as it depicts scenes of everyday life and local culture. It is all about 'The Decisive Moment', the virtual point where eyes, heart and brain meet

Oliver Ross
(the words of Henry Cartier-Bresson). So you are bound to see a bit more of this in the time to come.

Born in Germany, with a German mother and a French father, I originally trained as a scientist (MSc in Physics, PhD in Oceanography) working in the fields of optical remote sensing and bio-physical interactions in the ocean (turbulence and plankton). Through science I was not only able to gain deeper insights into the natural world but it also gave me the opportunity to live and work - or at least spend considerable amounts of time - in many of the countries that I have photographed.

If you like my work, I am also available for hire to do commissions and contract work. Please contact me for details.

Equipment

These are the main items in my camera bag ...

Equipment

Canon EOS 5 + VG10
Canon EOS 5D
Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM
Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
Tamron SP 90mm F2.8 1:1 Macro
Sigma 15mm F2.8 EX Fisheye
2x Canon Speedlight 430EZ
Canon EOS 300
B&W filters (UV, Cir. Pol., 81b)
2 tripods
Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED

Equipment My standard travel kit contains the EOS 5D with the 28-135 IS, the 17-40L, and 70-300 IS lenses. The 28-135 is a great all-rounder and its image stabiliser allows for hand held shots down to 1/10s like in this example. The 17-40L is of course ideal for capturing sweeping panoramas or large interiors but it can also be used to create unusual perspectives. The Tamron is one of the sharpest lenses I ever used and delivers

autumn

beautiful portraits and macro images. With the 70-300 tele it is possible to take pictures far from the subject or to simply obtain a compressed perspective. With the 180° field of view of the Sigma fish-eye, it is possible to produce visually stunning photographs.

Most images on Chocolate Fish Photos were scanned from film with the Nikon 5000ED film scanner. The scanning can be quite tedious and time consuming, however, especially if you have to scan hundreds or thousands of images. As a consequence, I recently started to use the Canon EOS 5D with its full frame sensor. Almost all images in the Montenegro Gallery were taken with this camera. Due to its large ISO range it is also well suited for interiors like in this gallery featuring Istanbul Mosques.

Film

Images that appeared on Chocolate Fish Photos before 2007 were taken on one of these films:

Film

Fuji Velvia 50
Fuji Velvia 100F
Fuji Provia 400F
Kodachrome 64
Kodak Professional Elite 100
Ilford 100 delta
Ilford 400 delta

Before switching to digital in 2007, the standard travel films for me were the Fuji Velvia and the Fuji Velvia 100F but I also occasionally used Kodachrome and Kodak Elite which tend to give slightly warmer images. The Provia 400F can be used for darker environments like forests. For the black & white photography I prefer to use Ilford's 100 and 400 Delta which I develop and print myself.

Awards for Chocolate Fish Photos