| About Shantideva |
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Picture by Paul Biel Shantideva is my nickname as an urban explorer on the Internet. I use this name with great respect because Shantideva was an 8th-century Indian Buddhist scholar that is particularly renowned as the author of the Bodhicaryavatara. There is no other book that I read as often as the Bodhicaryavatara. Born in 1970 in Paris, I live since my earliest days in Luxembourg. I am working in the IT as a network and security specialist. Photography became one of my many passions a couple of years ago while I was taking landscape pictures of my hiking trips all around Luxembourg. But having quickly reached the limits of my good old camera, I decided to buy my first digital SLR camera. This was the Canon EOS 350D. I began to spend a big part of my spare time to study all the little secrets of digital photography, lighting techniques and HDR and to practice with my new camera. I discovered my love for decay when I started to visit old abandoned iron ore mines. Fascinated by the underground world I have discovered underneath my feat, I started to experiment photography and lighting techniques to get the most out of the captures from within the mines explored. At that time I decided to buy a new expert camera body, as the Canon 350D was dedicated to heavy duty jobs like speleology from now on. As I am always improving my gear, I have created a list of the gear I use today.
Picture by Gilles Glod (gloda) In parallel with photography and mining speleology, I began to study the history of the iron ore industry in Luxembourg to find out as much as possible about the places I have visited. Very soon I started to visit the old abandoned buildings related to the iron ore industry, and to take pictures of those buildings. Out of that, a new passion for urban exploration was born. Today I think that photography, urban exploration and mining speleology are deeply interdependent. Probably one could exist without the other, but this burning passion, this deep love for those places, full of serenity, abandoned by the crowds would not be the same, if I could not bring back some glimpses of decay and impermanence in a life where we all grasp for a permanence we could never reach. --- Shantideva
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