PHOTOS

Creating photos seems to take the least amount of time, especially with a short shutter speed...

But all joking aside, making a good photo can take a lot of time. First of all, the time of year and the lighting moment on the day in question are crucial. And especially when taking nature photos, great patience can be required to capture the animal in question in an appealing way. And then preparations regarding the use of filters and tripods are often essential, not to mention the sometimes necessary and time-consuming post-processing.

My passion for photography goes back to my student days in Aachen, when I was blessed with a real, professionally equipped darkroom in the basement of our student flat. When many of my fellow classmates regularly went out for the nightlife, I regularly skipped it to reserve the darkroom and spend an evening experimenting with printing processes, paper types, sizes and exposure times. At that time I was very fond of Ilford's Cibachrome system, which allowed color prints to be made from slides. The only disadvantage was that the material costs for a student were quite high. And in addition to the photo paper and developing chemicals, a developing drum and a rotating device were also needed. To reduce costs, I built a rotation box myself, with my model making experience, in which the cylindrical drum, lying on 4 wheels, was rotated in order to obtain the most homogeneous development result. Always making you curious about what result you saw after opening the drum.

In the overview below, the last 3 photos were taken with Cibachrome and the costs were worth it because after more than 40 years they have not lost any of their shine and color fastness. All other photos were taken with a DSLR camera and are in a double sense 'pure nature' in the sense that, living in the French countryside, nature is often central, but in almost all cases no post-processing has taken place.

When I look at the photo overview myself, I realize that nature photography fascinates me the most; it is the combination of my great respect for all living things and capturing the ultimate moment when the right natural lighting and/or the animal presents itself to you.