"A good photo isn't made in the moment you press the shutter — it's made in everything that happens before."
I picked up a camera for the first time at 16 — analog, back then. My earliest experience was with film cameras, and for several years I shot almost exclusively in black and white. I developed and printed the film myself, in the darkroom. That hands-on foundation still shapes how I approach a photograph today.
"Patience, craft, control over every step — that's what the darkroom taught me.
With the shift to digital, I moved to digital SLRs and discovered something that remains my great passion to this day: painting with light. That fascination with light and flash opened the door to an ever-widening range of work — product photography, high-speed photography, and model and sports photography.
"Light is my tool, not just my subject.
I love working with people, especially children. In sports photography in particular, you can see just how much passion they bring to their sport - and that's exactly the moment I want to capture. Footballers, handball players, swimmers, trampoline gymnasts, and dancers are regularly in front of my lens, as are the musicians of our local Musikvereine (community music clubs).
"I don't photograph the sport — I photograph the passion behind it.
My subjects are as varied as the people I work with: I've also photographed weddings and babies, and cars and motorsport are subjects that keep drawing me back. That range isn't a contradiction to me — it's motivation. Every genre makes its own demands on light, timing, and vision.
There's often far more work and preparation behind my images than you'd guess from looking at them. Some look like they must have been created in Photoshop — but they actually come straight out of the camera, exactly as you see them.
"What looks like Photoshop is often just preparation."
