Photography…it has kept me spellbound since my childhood, but only recently was I able to fully grasp the answer to a deeper question…why?

When I won a prize in a competition at eleven, I was infected with the photography bug. Even in those early days, it was all about discovering the secrets of composition, whenever I pushed the release button. 

I don’t know why, but it mattered a great deal to me and that became the start of an endless learning curve that soon broadened to include all technical aspects of photography.

And with it came a plethora of cameras and lenses that propelled me along my journey…point and shoot, range Finder cameras, SLRs and later DSLRs, middle format, technical cameras…you name it.

At some stage on that journey, it dawned on me that I was always trying to paint with light. Could it be that my Flemish genes are linked to schools of famous painters from centuries ago?

What I do know is that for me photography was never about recording a scene, but rather about capturing how the scene appeared under a certain light. And that required planning… and sometimes a huge amount of patience too.

I’m fanatic about achieving the highest technical quality in my pictures, yet for all those gear freaks who are into pixel peeping, just remember…“cameras don’t take pictures!“

They are but tools…what matters is how you use them and that’s why I started also teaching photography. It can be just a simple click…but it may take you twenty years to get to that click.

As a descendant of generations of teachers, passing on knowledge is in my blood and here it’s all about unravelling and sharing the secrets behind beautiful images.

And many of those secrets aren’t on the capturing side…especially in the digital era, processing is equally important. Long gone are the sins of the early days, luckily. For me the golden rule is never, „did the scene look like that?“ but rather…“could it have looked like that?“

Light fascinates me and the pursuit of it is a thrilling journey of consciousness – a spiritual journey. It is my way of becoming one with nature…always in the present moment.

For years, one thing always intrigued me…and that is how lucky I seemed, whenever I was out with the camera. Very often the beauty of the light was so striking that I asked myself…could there be something out there arranging this for me?

Be it as it may, I captured it – the moral duty of a photographer, so that others can enjoy it too.

And that I did again and again…until one day, I could put my finger on the profound spiritual truth behind this:

„What is within, manifests without.“

In this sense, I will always continue my pursuit for what I call…the zen of photography.