My Love for Photography

How it began

 

I cannot remember exactly when I got my first camera. But I do know that I took it - a Kodak pocket camera - with me virtually everywhere I went.

 

At that time you had to be take pictures economically, because a real film cost money, and when a picture was mucked up, that was it. For black and white you also needed a special film. But still I took photographs - and loved it, when there were actually nice pics, that even looked like I had planned, after the film was developed.

 

With digital photography it is nowadays of course much easier to wildly experiment, and run dozens of pics into the virtual ground, in order to get “that one” picture in exactly the way you envisioned it.

Before long, I wanted more. Better pictures and more possibilities to get them. And since the technology kept setting boundaries for my imagination, the logical development went from the pocket camera to my first digital compact camera (Canon PowerShot), to my first SLR (Canon EOS 600D), and finally to the camera I am currently using: a Canon EOS 70D.

 

Power of Imagination

 

For me, everything starts with it. Without the power of imagination there can be no picture. I see something and I know exactly how I want to retain it in a pic. Which way it has to look so I would be able to remember this one moment in the future exactly like I see it in front of me right now.

 

Sometimes it nearly seems to me, as if there was some sort of mystery behind totally mundane things. Something that makes me look twice. Something that only gets revealed after a closer look. And when I take its picture, I manage to look behind that veil.

 

What sparks such a feeling varies. It can be a certain incidence of light that grabs my attention, or a motif that presents itself by chance (e.g. like the pic above). It is impossible to say in advance. When I take pictures of animals it is the seemingly endless variety that I want to capture over and over. I can have photographed the same animal several times before - and will still I discover new things, exciting things, something I never saw before. And that is, of course, reflected in my photographs.

 

For whom I take pictures - and why?

 

Straight answer: for myself. But of course I am totally delighted, when I manage to reach other people with my pictures. To me it is also fascinating to see how differently people react to my pics. A picture I might consider to be rather mediocre, appeals directly to someone else. It has to be that distinct power of images that triggers varying emotions in different people.

 

I want to pique people’s curiosity. Therefore I try to show how beautiful nature, a zoological garden, or a special place, can be. It always makes me very happy when someone tells me that they took a trip, because they wanted to see the motifs of my pictures with their own eyes. I assume the warm feeling that results from that is something everyone photograph knows.

 

This is why I will certainly keep going out and take photographs whenever I have the time and leisure to do so. The result will always be my view on the world…