My name is Paul Smit, 48 years old. I am Dutch but live in the village of Roure, perched on a mountain in the French Maritime Alps. I work as a professional photographer since 1981 and as a journalist since 1983.

Actually I studied physical geography, and tried to pay for my study in different ways. One was photography, my main hobby. It worked and I liked it so much that I decided to quit my study and start up a small business in touristical photography, later growing into photojournalism. I learned while doing.

My father was an enthusiastic photo hobbiest, mostly during holidays, and I guess I got the inspiration from him. His First Rule of Photography still works for me: get close and when you are close enough, do one more step. When I was 11 years old I became member of a photo club and learned to develop b&w film and print my pictures. During my years of study I spent a lot of time in the colour darkroom of the university of Amsterdam, which hardly anyone was using (they all did b&w, which was next door). Having it nearly for myself, even after stopping my geography study, I could endlessly experiment with different chemicals and papers and learned colour printing that way . These prints were better then those of professional labs and they did the promotion for me when I visited clients. I first started working for ad agencies in the field of tourism. Later I got bored with the commercial world of tour operators and moved towards journalism and magazines. I still like it as on the first day.

My idea is that equipment doesn’t matter, it just must work. What really counts is your eye. I’m still 100% shooting on film: Fuji Velvia 50 and 100 ASA. My main body is a Nikon F4, I never upgraded to the F5 or F6 because I work a lot on tripod, using a cable release that I keep losing. They function mechanically on the F4 and cost nothing, from the F5 on they became electronic and losing them became expensive. I just didn’t like the idea. I am also old fashioned in that I still use some fixed focus lenses: 16 mm fish eye, 18 mm/2.8, 28 mm shift and an old but superb 400 mm/5.6. For the rest I have two zooms: 35-70 mm/2.8 and 80-200 mm/2.8. I hardly ever use flash. Since this year I deliver digitally to my clients, so I scan my slides with a Nikon Coolscan ED V. After that I use Photoshop - to enhance but not change my photos - and PhotoKit Sharpener for professional capture sharpening (since I work on film) and sometimes output sharpening as well (when I know the exact lay-out (= pixel sizes of the photos) used by my client. My next piece of equipment? Going digital, in about one year, probably with Canon. I guess the body will be the follow up of the 5D, at the time when the technology of the new 1Ds Mark III has come down to that price level. I will add some high quality zooms ,at least one of the tilt/shifts and I will be happy to go down in weight.

Showing the beauty of our world is what makes me tick. People don’t want to destroy the world if they love it, so it is my dream to try to make some people care for the world by showing, in photos and text, the wonder of the world. The subjects can be everything from landscapes to religious festivals or cultural heritage. Favorite places are the American southwest, the west coast of Scotland, France – the country where I live – and Venice.

I was mostly influenced before becoming a professional photographer, by photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Ansel Adams for their perfect compositions in b&w and Ernst Haas for his thirst of colour and abstraction. But of course there are thousands of other influences; I keep looking at photographs.

I chose SmugMug in September 2003, after first using a Canadian service called Photochannel , which had very little usability and a hopeless customer service, and after testing most of the others after that. SmugMug was the best and what I liked (and like) most is the simple beauty of the ways SmugMug can show my images, the usability (even my clients understand it ;-) and the way it can be perfectly integrated into the broader experience of my website. I am a perfectionist and if SmugMug might not be able to do what I want – which is rare – they help me invent things in an amazing short span of time.

Before Smugmug I went visiting clients in in the capitals of Europe with a map of prints. I wasted time and money. Now I can send them proposals and ideas by email, they can click and look when they have time, and they can read the captions and my articles, find similar photo stories, get inspired by previous published work or the portfolios, all on SmugMug. Only my articles and stock lists are hosted elsewhere, but integrated into one single website experience, together with my blog (hosted on Typepad). My move towards the web with Smugmug definitely brought me more clients and work and I wasted less time and money. And it helped me start doing promotion for another photographer: my friend and colleague Mick Palarczyk.

If you want to be professional, follow your own vision and ideas while not forgetting what the client wants. If you love what you do and do it with passion, the results will make your clients happy. But you don’t need to be professional to take good pictures; simply never stop shooting!