As was mentioned on the Home page, the 'Twitch-Eye Photography' site is an ongoing work-in-progress, therefore, it will probably never be fully completed.

This site is a humble home-made project whose main purpose is to be a link between me, my family, my friends, my models and my photos of them. In other words, the reason for this site to exist is the presentation of samples of my most personal photography.

In all the years of my involvement with photography (which means most of my life), I have been trying my mind, eye and hand at many different types of photography: from snapshots of my family and friends, through street photography, portraits, glamour, nude, landscape and documental to abstract and conceptual.

For the purpose of this site, I’ve separated my work into two distinctive categories: ‘Snapshots’ and ‘Abstract Reality’.

The first one consists of my most straightforward, most opportunistic shots I took over the years—just snapshots of people, things, nature, etc., that strike me as beautiful (that does not necessarily mean that my photos are also beautiful—as a matter of fact, photos of beautiful things are often ugly or boring). The accent here is on the simplicity of execution rather than on art.

The second one is a reflection of my interest in the deeper, more creative, conceptual and often philosophical approach to my life—as shown by means of photographic images. Formally, it is more surrealistic and may even approach a paradox, or an absurd at times—and that's the way I like it!

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So, pick your choice—click on the subject theme in the column of links on the right side of any page. Or, perhaps you would like to read a little about topics related to my photography, like copyrights or my background in photography? If that's the case, click on the appropriate tab above this text. ⤴

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To ensure best viewing results, always use the latest version of your browser of choice! We recommend Safari for the 100% compatibility. Or Firefox and Chrome—as the slightly less compatible alternatives. Other browsers should be avoided.

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NOTE: To pause any slideshow, hover your cursor over a slide. When you remove the cursor, the slideshow will resume after few seconds. On the other hand, if you don't want to wait for the slideshow's timing cycle, move your cursor to the right edge of any slide and click on the arrow that will appear (conversely—clicking the arrow at the left edge will get you to the previous slide).

The history:

• The Premiere Edition (under the original name of "D.U.P.A.") has been first published in February 1999.
• The Fifth Edition (under the name of "Eye-Of-Beholder") has been first published in May 2007.
• The Sixth Edition (the current one, under the name "Twitch-Eye Photography") has been first published in September 2011. I gave up on hand-coding (too many workarounds to learn in order to avoid all the incompatibilities of Internet Explorer versions prior to version 9). Now, I am using the RapidWeaver application (from RealMac Software) with the professionally prepared templates, heavily customized by myself. One of the main new features is the use of non-Flash-based slide shows and a photo-gallery generated directly in RapidWeaver using some plug-ins from 3^rd party developers. I also simplified most core graphical elements by using purely–CSS coding instead of images. Stay tuned…

Here's what's new or changed since the original version 6.0 was published:

• Added a slideshow with Jeannette's photos;
• Added a new page ENVIRONMENT which addresses one of the most important issues of our time;
• Added new content to PEOPLE > FAMILY AFFAIRS > WARSAW (2012 visit to Warsaw);
• Added yet another form of contacting me—on almost all pages;
• Expansion of the EDUTAINMENT group by creating 2 new pages: ON PHOTOGRAPHY and BUNCH'O'VIDEOS;
• Withdrawal of the still experimental ARMADILLO blog.
• Revision of the full-page PORTFOLIO 1 showcase that has undergone tests and seems to work fine now.
• Revision and adding some content to the STORE page (previously, HARDCOPY page).
• Attempts to make the DOWNLOADS page functional—this will take me a while…

Recommended browsers:

To ensure best viewing results, always use the latest version of your browser of choice! We recommend Safari for the 100% compatibility. Or Firefox and Chrome—as the slightly less compatible alternatives. Other browsers should be avoided.

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NOTE: To pause any slideshow, hover your cursor over a slide. When you remove the cursor, the slideshow will resume after few seconds. On the other hand, if you don't want to wait for the slideshow's timing cycle, move your cursor to the right edge of any slide and click on the arrow that will appear (conversely—clicking the arrow at the left edge will get you to the previous slide).

For the last seven years before I came to America, I used to be a professional photographer, working at one of the European national museums of art.

My duties included reproducing works of art for print in catalogs and albums and for inclusion in research works of art historians and art students. That part of my job almost completely lacked creativity, but it enabled me to get in touch with and study great and small works of art by artists new and old.

I have photographed Egyptian mummies and hieroglyphs, ceramics and ivory carvings from ancient China, medieval religious paintings, 16th and 17th century gem-class furniture (above million dollars apiece) in the inventory of an ancient monastery, silver- and gold-embroidered dresses of the European royalty and aristocracy of past ages, collections of rare historic coins and medallions, drawings created by Jewish artists in mass-murder factories of World War II, modern sculpture, statues and architecture…

Also, I have photographed the process of restoration of all those kinds of art—to document their appearance and integrity before, during and after the process. Sometimes, I also used special techniques, like photographing in the UV light—to uncover old versions of paintings over-painted by the artists themselves or by others who tried to forge the paintings, for example.

This background was very important—for feeding my artistic curiosity and for developing my own creativity. I used photography outside of my job as well, trying to capture my feelings and thoughts about my life and my world and other things that seemed important to me at one time or another. But most of the time my motivation for taking pictures was less lofty—things just looked good in the viewfinder and that was reason enough for me…

And so, that's what my background in photography has been before I even bought my first computer, before the Internet exploded and before I started thinking about making my own web site dedicated to photography.

Then, I begun participating in several different photographic forums—in Poland, the USA and Germany. I got involved in commenting and critiquing other people's photography. As it often happens, people whose pictures I've been critiquing, demanded that I showed them my stuff (as if that would validate in any way my right to comment on their stuff…). So, I decided to build some sort of a gallery of my pictures that would be representative to my most basic interests in photography as well as to my deeper, more artistic and/or more experimental work.

So, here we have it—the full reversed somersault—from an amateur to a pro involved in the documental photography, to a hobbyist and an enthusiast involved mainly in "people", "nature" and "abstract" photography…

The ongoing 'music pirates versus recording industry' situation opened many people's eyes on copyright issues and fair usage of the intellectual property. My standpoint is this:

Record industry in the USA (and probably elsewhere, too) is a bunch of greedy parasites sucking blood from both the public and the artists and moving the responsibility for declining sales from their own incompetence and cynical marketing tactics to millions of young people disgusted with the crap the industry is shoving down their throats. The price of a CD should be no more than 1/2 of what it is now and even then it would be more than justified.

But that does not mean that anybody should steal from them. If you do, you also steal from the artists whose talent and effort must be compensated. Besides, even if you steal from a thief, that makes you a thief, too. Simple, isn't it? So, don't steal music and don't steal images.

Images within the 'Twitch-Eye Photography' site are free for viewing, but—at the same time—they are copyrighted and electronically watermarked. That means that you can only use them for private viewing over the Internet (no downloading to your computer). That is my own anti-piracy measure. Of course, you can easily break this rule, but I hope you're more decent than that. Furthermore, I've intentionally rendered the quality of those photos to be too low for printing, anyway…

This site is a humble home-made personal effort. It is the second site ever built by me successfully, and it is dedicated entirely to my interests and activities in photography.

When I first started putting it up together, I had no clue whatsoever what I was doing (from the developer's point of view). I was using wrong application in a wrong way and that resulted in many incompatibilities with different browsers on different platforms. By the time I've published the Third Edition I have learned a bit about HTML. I have redone the entire web site for the  Fourth Edition. The Fifth Edition was redone even more fundamentally—with the use of CSS and Flash technology. This (Sixth) Edition is a next step in the evolution. I do not use Flash anymore. Instead, I am trying to incorporate more HTML5 elements. I hope that the result will make me less embarrassed than previous versions had…

All the photos included in the pages of this site had been taken by me over a period of about four decades (since 1969). Until the year 2004, I've been using film cameras of different formats and brands and I haven't been inclined to take kindly to the digital photography. But the world does change and photography changes with it. So, since the year 2004, I am using exclusively digital cameras. I went through such cameras as Leica Digilux 2 and Canon EOS XTi. Currently, my main camera of choice is the Canon EOS 5D Mk II.

Creating this photographic site of mine has been a lot of fun—about as much fun as taking the pictures shown here. There was a lot of pain, too, associated with the fact that I was learning on my own mistakes as I was developing my site.

There's still a long way to go. I intend to modify and improve this site on the ongoing basis. But, since I have my day job (unrelated to photography) that consumes almost all of my time and energy, please, be tolerant if you don't see an update for quite some time. Instead of hollering, go eat an apple (no trademark) or jog a mile or two…

Each  major update, correction, addition or exclusion in the content, appearance or functionality of my web site will bear a new edition number (included in the tab title SITE NEWS on this page) and will be mentioned in my blog.

I recommend that you read my TECH INFO tab which gives you an advice on how to experience this site to the fullest and the CREDITS tab where I list hardware, software and resources I used to build this web site.

Recommended browsers:

To ensure best viewing results, always use the latest version of your browser of choice! We recommend Safari for the 100% compatibility. Or Firefox and Chrome—as the slightly less compatible alternatives. Other browsers should be avoided.

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NOTE: To pause any slideshow, hover your cursor over a slide. When you remove the cursor, the slideshow will resume after few seconds. On the other hand, if you don't want to wait for the slideshow's timing cycle, move your cursor to the right edge of any slide and click on the arrow that will appear (conversely—clicking the arrow at the left edge will get you to the previous slide).