A rather personal life principle explains my approach to quality.
The start of my career as a pro photographer — aged 17 — brought “complications” into my life. My first near-death experience was a shock: as banal as switching the lights off. Sometimes, just before I lose consciousness, I manage to recall what we know about our observable universe.
The probability of not ending up as some virtual hydrogen particle in space, but a sentient life, that would, above that, possess a rare combination of DNA strands enabling me to create art and design ex nihilo? The probability of 1 in a quintillion (1 in 10¹⁸)? The odds so tiny that, the way I see it, my “talent” isn’t here to be handled lightly. Even on a planet that often doesn’t care until the artist is finally dead.
I’m not a trauma guy. I’m a tech guy. These “recalibration events” have kept resetting my priorities over time. So I have been living my life in such a way that every time I face death or feel its presence — which happens quite often by today’s developed world standards, once or more per week — I find myself at peace with how I have spent my life up to that point and how I’ve given back that “gift,” as David Viscott put it.
And that means no regrets about mediocrity and compromise. In whatever I do: film, photography, design, writing, business, philosophy, running, climbing, lacing shoes…
I never planned to live till age 44, but I always planned to die doing things I felt passionate about, as best as I could, with every Watt aimed towards excellence, in everything I have done.
Beauty and harmony are of utmost importance to me. In esthetics, I search for color, minimalism, elegance and precision. In design, I believe form and function complement and enhance each other. Elegant function feels beautiful.
Take a look at my photography or design portfolios to appreciate the esthetical quality of my work, or read some of my prose to taste my writing style.
Vision without the precision of appropriate technique remains a foggy dream.
I’m not an owner-operator. Why? Because I get the best equipment available for the project. For each project. It may be a top of the line Steadicam with a ciné-zoom, a full-sized digital SLR or a smallish point-and-shoot camera filled with professional slide film. I look for the best balance of optical and digital resolution, contrast and color. My experience with digital retouching and color management allow me tight control over how things look. Sample the quality of my images in my photography portfolio on-line, or appreciate some of my fine art prints off-line.
I design print and product projects with a precision of tenth of a millimeter. I strive for accurate type. I have learned the specifics of prepress and frequently go on the presses to run a job. I ensure faithful color reproduction and exact cropping, folding and stitching.
For the majority of websites, I generate a sizeable proportion of images, HTML, CSS and JavaScript on the server-side using PHP, Node.js, some variant of an SQL database, as well as Nginx’ rewrite rules, caching and load balancing. Depending on the project, I also add enhancements on the client-side: JavaScript, WebAssembly / Canvas / Web Components…
Whatever the tech, I enjoy writing elegant and readable code. And in 27 years, I have written enough of it to get into an early habit to routinely document it. Even for my future self. Marvelling at my own genius months later without a hint of how I chose a particular solution is no fun! I’ve shared my explanation of the second hardest thing in Computer Science — my variable naming system — on GitHub.
5-axis milling? Laser cutting? Folding? Welding? How about brazing custom AC units? SOC light controllers? For someone from Geneva, I hope you’ll forgive my pedantry. 🤪
Take a look at my print and web design portfolios.
My continuous study of Russian, English and French since age 6 has inspired me respect and admiration for these beautiful languages. I work on my style and spell check my writing even when I send e-mails or post on the web. Read some of my prose.
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