Me
What I love: nature & trekking & technology & arts
About 10 years ago I tried to become more serious with digital photography. Very soon I realized that landscape photography is the perfect symbiosis of the things I love. And I really love everything in the whole process. From technical selection and taking care of my equipment, over the traveling to beautiful locations, getting up at crazy o'clock, being the only one and inhaling a beautiful surrounding, setting up for the perfect shot and finally post-processing the picture to a level that reflects my emotions when being on spot.
My family loves travelling and hiking in beautiful landscapes as well. And they do love viewing my photographs. They just get annoyed by waiting for me taking pictures ("come on daddy, let's move on") and the post-processing of the photographs ("do you have to stare into the computer all the time?"). ;-)
So I try to restrict myself to the photographers lonely daytimes of dusk and dawn and shifting the computer times to the night.
Inspiration
There are two names I wanna mention here since I feel they have been significantly bringing forward my landscape photography in the recent months:
When I first noticed Alex' pictures, I just got massively impressed by his style and way of showing simple but dramatic landscapes. And I strongly recommend his post-processing tutorials. Nothing for beginners but extremely inspiring for serious photographers. Check out Alex' site!
Accidently I stumbled over Thomas Youtube chanel. I immediately got amazed by his pictures and his very entertaining, informing and realistic insides into landscape photography. A lot of beneficial infos and inspirations. And always the feeling that even a pro is sometimes struggling with the same issues that I do ;-)
Gear
The further I get into the arts of photography the more I realize that everything is aboute the object, the light and the picture and less about the gear (which is pobably a trivial perception). Nevertheless good equipment can be an important factor and basis for the success of the shooting itself and it gives you the confidence that from technical perspective your shots are of very high quality which might be the dot on the i. So here is a list of my most important stuff:
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
- Besides a tiltable screen there is basically nothing I miss on this camera for landscape photography
Lens: Canon EF 16-35 mm f/2.8 Mark III
- I love this lense. It is the most expensive but best wide angle lens I've been trying so far
Lens: Tamron SP 70-200 mm f/2.8
- Affordable price and solid image quality. A bit of a hazzle to carry arround. But my frequency of using the focal length range for landscapes is continuously increasing.
Lens: Sigma 24-105 mm f/4 Art
- Really nice price to image quality to flexibility ratio. I feel the vignetting is very strong though. But usually I am very positive with the outcomes. Still sometimes thinking about switching to Canon 24-70 m alternative for image quality reasons.
Lens: Sigma 50 mm f/1.4 Art
- Oh man! This one is sharp as hell! I love it! Up to now I mainly use it for people portraits. Maybe I should take advantage of it in landscape photography more often...
Filterssystem: NiSi 100 mm filter holder system - robust and easy to handle
Filters: Pol filters from Nisi + a variety of ND and graduated filters from Nisi & Firecrest
Filterbag: Nisi - very handy, robust. Offers very easy and safe access to my filters
Tripod: Manfrotto 290 dual
- Affordable, robust, very high and still quite small in packing. Good one!
Tripod head: Manfrotto 496RC2 ball head
- Affordable, easy to handle, robust and very flexible. I'm missing the panoramic turning option. And Manfrotto becomes a pain in the ass when it comes to adaption of non Manfrotto equipment. No standard at all! See remarks at the L-Bracket.
Tripod bag: Manfrotto MBAG75N - easy to carry and keeping my tripod protected when travelling
L-Bracket: You gotta have this! Switching from portrait to landscape becomes so easy with it. But make sure it's fitting to your tripod head ( I annoyingly had to find an adapter for mine)!
Back-Pack: Shimoda adventure L
- Comfortable, very robust and well thought through packing system with a lot of space also for extended tours. Don't wanna miss it.