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About BalancedLight

“For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen…”

Douglas Adams

The BalancedLight blog was first setup as the Des Paroz on the go blog around 2002. Today it is a place for me to publish my photographs as well as to write about my personal adventures, experiences and thoughts on photography, writing, diving and travel.

This iteration of BalancedLight is a hosted Ghost.io site. Posts are generally written in the Markdown format in the Ulysses editor.

I have a second site, Micro Thoughts, which is a Micro.Blog site that serves as a link blog and a home for short thoughts, particularly on productivity, technology and photography. It acts as a complementary site to BalancedLight.

About Des Paroz

I am a communication professional, photographer and trainer based in Canberra, Australia. I have strong interests in landscape and astro photography, bushwalking (hiking), writing and diving.

As a PADI Course Director I teach PADI Instructor Development Courses and first aid/CPR instructor courses. I also teach Shorinjiryu Koshinkai Karatedo.

Photo Gear Info

I get some questions regarding my photographic gear. If you’re interested in my photo gear, please take a look at my Camera Bag.

Photography Principles

I’m a proud member of Nature First: The Alliance for Responsible Nature Photography and I’m dedicated to following the Nature First Principles:

  1. Prioritize the well-being of nature over photography.
  2. Educate yourself about the places you photograph.
  3. Reflect on the possible impact of your actions.
  4. Use discretion if sharing locations.
  5. Know and follow rules and regulations.
  6. Always follow Leave No Trace principles and strive to leave places better than you found them.
  7. Actively promote and educate others about these principles

Ethics in Photo Editing

My images represent my own experiences of the landscapes, seascapes, mountainscapes and cityscapes that I create images of. I personally choose not to add things to my images, but I do use various tools to eliminate distractions. This happens sometimes at the time of capture (i.e. composition and perhaps removing rubbish) and sometimes during editing using healing tools in LrC, or Content Aware Fill or Generative AI in Photoshop.

Again, I choose not to add things. Just delete. I am not criticising those that create photo art through adding things, it is just not what I do.

  1. All views and opinions expressed are my own – except when quoting someone else. And then those views are theirs. ↩