Hey ho, crowd. You know that I rarely, if ever, do fundraisers, as I fund most of things myself, but this one’s for a reason.
When in 1998 I started my degree in Arabic language and Islamic studies at Sofia University, I found that my two obsessions – images and words – could combine in Arabic calligraphy. Much time has passed, but my love for creating visuals has never left me. Somewhere in there my passion for photography has also flourished, discovering the close parallels between calligraphy and photography.
Time went by, my degree is now behind my back. I’ve gone out of it with a love for Arabic language, Islamic history, and Christian Scripture.
I am still the photo and Arabic calligraphy enthusiast, somewhere in there turned into a freelancing scholar of Islamic history and Arab culture. And I found that my DSLR is an indispensable part of my backpack to document my travels, a third hand, a second nature, a primary viewfinder.
Besides my passion for photos of places, objects and people, I am serving my public through enhancing the academic and personal materials I often publish on social media and my site here, focused on history, art, Christianity and Islam. My Academia.edu profile is here, and my dedicated Arabic calligraphy site here. Some of my photo galleries have been published on chief media sites in my country.
But the other day my faithful workhorse, the Pentax K20D broke. My small x 1.5 crop opening to the world is gone. The type of damages around the shutter mechanism that practically make repair of such an 8 years’ old camera useless.
So I am fundraising for another one, and call on your support to keep on maintaining the specialized niche of the combination of images and words, where I stand in a limited audience space such as Bulgaria. The progress of my fundraiser is seen at the top of the page.
Top contributors among you will receive to your postal address a framed high resolution black and white print [15/21 cm size plus passepartout added] of a photo by me, in case you ping me. To it you would receive a letter with a personal story related to the photo.
Your contributions will be spent on one of the following Pentax DSLR models in a used state, keeping my costs low: K20D, K-7, K30, K-S1, as they are all water-resistant and can bear the rough conditions where I occasionally find myself. I am looking for your support for a camera body only, as I have a great collection of lenses I do not want to abandon, they perfectly fit my purposes. The bank transfer details are below, or my PayPal.Me link:
Atanas Filipov Shinikov
1756 Sofia Andrei Liapchev Blvd.
IBAN: BG04FINV915010BGN0ZAUB
FIRST INVESTMENT BANK, Bulgaria, Sofia
BIC/SWIFT: FINVBGSF
Thank you all!
