From my early childhood on, I was always interested in drawing and painting. My grandfather introduced me to classical painters, sculptors and art history at quite a young age. When I was older and studied Media Design, One of my subjects was photography and I enjoyed working with analog cameras and creating black & white prints in the dark room. Although at that time I didn’t focus on photography as my main creative output, I quite often had a camera on me and was always taking snaps, of anything that caught my eye.
“There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.”
-Ansel Adams
When I invested in my first full frame dslr, back in 2007, the hobby became a passion, something I actively wanted to pursue and improve my skills in. Perhaps it was purely because of the huge contrast to my upbringing in a small town, but when I moved around a lot for work, I found myself more and more drawn to large scale urban scenes and cityscape photography.
Something about the vast structures, the architecture, lights and buzz of cities along with the unique feel that every single city had, which I try to capture in my photographs, had me hooked. Since then I’ve let my camera be my guide, taking me to different countries and leading me to search for the photographic intrigue in a variety of locations.
It would be hard to choose if I had to my favourite cities, as I’m aware that my favourite city I might not even have had the chance to visit yet. Who knows? Today it’s New York or London, or Hong Kong or Shanghai. At the moment, my favourite cities to shoot tend to have some similar features.
I like the bustle of Metropolis type cities with skyscrapers. My wife my daughter and I are currently living in London, and I have enjoyed shooting in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Vancouver amongst others. These kinds of cities give me huge opportunity to find different compositions and visual elements in my photographs, and they give me a lot to play around with. For instance, street scenes with strong light and shadow contrast and the multi level heights you can shoot from, with different angles and POVs. The possibilities are endless which has to excite any photographer.