Hello and welcome,
glad you found your way here! I'm Julian and on this website I show you the results of my somewhat outlandish hobby.
To help you understand the person behind the pictures, I'd like to explain how I got to the point where I decided that my pictures shouldn't just be for my own hard drive, but that I wanted to give other people the opportunity to discover my pictures and the journeys behind them.
It all started around the year 2017 at the age of 14. At that time, I was on holiday with my parents at the North Sea and my mum, as she had already taken over from her father as a de facto necessity, had an DSLR camera with her to capture the holiday in photos. On this trip, I took on this task for the first time, walked around with the camera bag on my shoulder and practised using the camera. At the time, it was a Canon 650D with a Tamron lens. And so my first experiences were classic holiday photos of sights.
At the time, I had no idea how this device worked in my hand. Terms such as aperture, exposure time or ISO value were strange to me, and I photographed in automatic mode without a really deep understanding of image composition. But what has not yet been, could still be.
You can see a few of my first attempts right here below the text.
The following year, we went back to the North Sea. The advantage was that we were able to experience incredibly beautiful sunsets on that holiday, which I was then able to capture with my mum's camera. This picture, which you can see here next to the text, fascinated me so much back then that I now describe it as the decisive moment for the start of my passion for photography.
The deep red sun, the dramatic sky and the dark silhouette of the cargo ship create an enormous visual power and capture the mood of that evening with impressive simplicity.
But I realised that I wasn't going to be happy with my mum's camera, which I had to borrow every time, and so I decided that I wanted my own one. So that I could afford to buy one at a young age, I delivered newspapers in my neighbourhood at the time for less than four euros an hour. In hindsight, it was pretty exploitative, but it was actually enough for my first purchase in a specialised photo shop.
I wanted my first camera to be a powerful entry-level model. As my experiences with Canon at the time were consistently positive, after careful consideration I chose the Canon EOS M50, which was quite new at the time.
Back then, the manufacturer was trying to produce small, yet very powerful cameras for everyday use with the M series. I was impressed by the image quality and the fact that videos in 4k resolution were also possible.
I took my first picture ever in the shop itself by photographing a display stand with all kinds of filters (see above). Saying it was love at first sight is probably a bit cheesy, but the fascination for my new toy, to put it bluntly, was there right from the start.
The fact that the camera itself was very small and handy meant that it didn't get in the way when I was travelling. On the contrary, I took it everywhere with me and took pictures of everything I could.
For just over six years, this camera was to be my faithful companion throughout my life. With it, I learnt the basics of photography, in other words the interplay of aperture, exposure time and iso value.
Over the years, my equipment grew to include not only several lenses, but also tripods and various filters. And with every purchase, I realised that I was developing from my original motivation of capturing beautiful moments with a simple snapshot for eternity into a semi-professional photographer. I even started to plan holidays in such a way that I explicitly included photo spots in the trip or even travelled especially for one photo.
Over time, I also developed my individual style, if you can call it like that. As a person who is very interested in the beauty of nature itself, but also in the things that humans have created, I developed into a landscape and architecture photographer.
My goal that I pursue with my photos is to capture the mood of the place where I was and which I captured on my sensor. The light and colours in my work are always as I experienced them on the spot.
I like to use long exposures in my work, in which the movement of water, people, vehicles and clouds are captured in the image, making it tangible for the viewer.
Nowadays, I also photograph people themselves. In contrast to landscapes and buildings, they tell their own story and are therefore the most interesting subjects that appear in front of your lens as a photographer. The art of portraying a person and their character as they really are is rightly regarded as one of the greatest challenges of this profession and so you never stop learning, especially in this field of photography.
All this knowledge, all these experiences that have made me a quite talented photographer, I have gathered with this one, my very first own camera. I can only be grateful for this journey and even though Canon has decided not to develop this camera any further, I have to say that I couldn't have wished for a better one to start in this hobby.
However, at the end of 2024, it was time for a brand new camera. I had just finished my studies and my employer was transferring my first “real” salary - and where would the money be better invested than in a new camera? And so I bought a new one in early November, and of course it was another one made by Canon - the Canon EOS R6 Mark II.
With this and the appropriate additional equipment, I'm now travelling around and continuing taking photos. Nevertheless, it has to be said that the switch from an APS-C sensor to full-frame format is a huge step forward and will have a positive influence on my photography in the future. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing where my journey takes me and I'm grateful that you're now a part of it!
Until next time
~ Julian