I have never had any formal education in photography but always enjoyed taking pictures, doing it as well as I could with a painter’s eye. Two years ago I got my first digital camera and since then I have had great fun, but am still a rookie, especially on the computer.

The first set is pictures taken on our journey up the West Coast from LA to Vancouver in July 09. I am very fond of reflections, obtained from water, shop windows, and other surfaces. The distortions in the “Warps” from Vancouver have not been computer-generated but come directly from such surfaces and have only been slightly enhanced on fotoshop.

The second set was taken in two Roma settlements in east Slovakia in July 2010, our visits there part of Ida Kelarova's workshop on Roma music and culture "Romano Drom" (The Roma Way). We were the big sensation there, Gadje (Whites) and even foreign ones, caring about these folks at all to visit them. Some of the settlements are even way worse off than these, and this in the middle of Europe, but I couldn't take photographs there. Look at these beautiful people though!