I was born in The Hague , the Netherlands. I am married, no children (but a dog & a cat). I read English at Leiden University, and taught English for many years. Today I live in Monster (short for monastery in case you wondered), close to the Hague and our house is a five-minutes walk from the dunes and the beach.

Ah, photography . . .My first camera was an Agfa Clack , a cheap, German medium format box camera of the fifties which produced surprisingly good pictures for such a simple camera. I used it for holidays only. My wife bought me an Olympus Trip which was a big improvement but soon photography was becoming more and more important to me, and I bought my first SLR: a Pentax MX.

I was very happy with the Pentax but when Minolta introduced the 7000 and 9000 I decided to jump ship and bought a 9000. I used the 9000 for 15 years, and I still have it, but in the nineties I became more and more disappointed in what the labs made of my photos and slides and I became interested in medium format which resulted in the purchase of a Mamiya 645 in 1995. I started developing my films and printing B&W MF negatives. I also started using Velvia in the Mamiya.

In 1996 we went to Iceland, my photographic soul country, for the first time, and I was extremely happy with my Mamiya gear (I used the 9000 as a backup system). It was heavy, yes, and I started the love-hate relationship with my tripod but I had found my photography: trying to capture the overwhelming, breathtaking landscape in a photographic composition that would enable me to re-experience and (hopefully) others to experience the sense of beauty and awe I had when taking that photo. With many photos I took during that trip I had what I can only describe as a religious experience (though I am not a religious person), and I found myself thinking: Thank you for letting me capture this.

In 1999 we went to Iceland again; and in 2000 we visited New Zealand We rented a camper and toured both islands for 5 weeks. A unique and wonderful experience, captured with the Mamiya and the Dynax 9 + (among others) the Minolta 400mm I had bought for the occasion. Heavy stuff, but when I see the MF Velvia slides projected on the 2 x 2 meters (7 square feet) screen or the penguin and albatross pics, it has all been worth it.

In 2002 I went to Iceland on a winter trip and though it was very impressive that trip is tainted for me because I had a sudden and serious loss of hearing. Though it recovered a bit when I was home again, my hearing was permanently damaged. Strangely enough, I had a similar experience when we visited Svalbard (Spitsbergen) in June 2008. Though the ENT specialist doesn't know why, the far North doesn't seem to agree with me. That makes me a bit sad because those regions are very close to my photographic heart.

The digital revolution had passed me by until I bought a Canon Powershot for my wife in 2006, our first digital camera. I was stunned. That camera has changed my life. Not because it was such a great camera but through it I discovered the enormous potential of digital photography. Digital photography for me is unlimited photography: I can (and do) take pictures all the time; I can (and do) manage the whole photographic process from capture to print and get every single pixel exactly as I want it; I can (and do) share my photos with the whole world thanks to sites like Flickr and Dyxum. The only limiting factor is time. A man has to work, sleep, see friends and family, ... Photography has always been in my blood, but in the analogue days was limited to holidays, trips and special occasions. Now it is part of my everyday life. There is no day without photography.

The Sony A100 was my first DSLR. I bought it in March 2007 and I discovered Flickr and Dyxum and became a member of these unsurpassed communities. I owe my growth in digital photography to Flickr and Dyxum and am very grateful for that. The A100 wasn't bad but the release ot the FF A900 made me really happy. I'm a FF guy!

Nowadays, I mainly use the Sony A7 series.