About PhotoMann
I am PhotoMann (a.k.a. Doug Mann). I’m an American engineer currently living and working in Misawa, Japan. Prior to relocating to Japan in July 2001 I lived in Wiesbaden and Berlin, Germany, as well as Okinawa, Japan. I traveled in Asia and Europe on business a little and traveled extensively any time I had time off.
Travel, photography and computers are my addictions. The creation of PhotoMann is blending of the three addictions. The site dates back to 1995 with the photomann.com domain being registered in 1997. The web site currently has images from 20+ countries out of the 52 I’ve visited. My most recent destinations have been Egypt and Jordan however those images aren’t on my site yet. Hopefully I’ll get time to add the images soon! Thailand is by far my favorite country. I’ve been there frequently as my wife, Roongnapa, is from Chiang Mai. Be sure to visit the coverage of our traditional Thai wedding. The images were not taken by PhotoMann but it was his most harrowing adventure. Be sure to visit other destinations along the filmstip menu.
In November ‘98 we added Chanapa to our family. She provides a continual challenge and of course a great photography subject. Chanapa was joined by our son Taksin who was born in January 2003. The two together are more than a handfull! Be sure to visit the PhotoKids.
On the side PhotoMann is also a faculty member for Aspen University which has excellent on-line MSIM, MSIT and MBA programs. I’m currently the instructor for the Masters level Intranets and IT Security courses.
I hope you enjoy traveling the world with PhotoMann. Most of the early images are shot as 35mm slides. My primary film body before converting completely to digital was the Minolta 9Ti (Titanium version of Minolta 9). The slides are scanned using Nikon’s line of Coolscan’s. My current one is the LS-2000 SuperCoolscan. There are some images on the site shot with a Nikon Coolpix 5000. In Nov 03 made to tough choice to change ‘religions’ and switched to Canon digital SLRs. My inital one was a 10D, then a 20D and finally a Canon 5D (a fantastic camera!). I had given up on Minolta coming out with a digital SLR which they eventually did over a year later. I haven’t looked back. I’m really pleased with the performance of Canon digital SLR bodies. I shoot mostly in RAW and convert to JPG for the web as necessary.
Converting to all digital for my travel photography has been a great experience overall. The biggest benefit is having instant confirmation that I probably have the image I want versus waiting for film processing after I return home. I no longer have to worry about the impact of xrays on the tons of film I used to carry. However, now I have to worry about storing the many gigs of images on the road.