Night Photography nominee

Uttakleiv, Lofoten (2018)

Zigzagging aurora over the beautiful but slippery Uttakleiv beach. I slipped and broke my filter holder here, but it saved the 14-24mm that was used to shoot this. Also bumped my head on the rocks while hosting a workshop, but it was all good fun. At least everybody else went home safe.

I wanted to illustrate the use of foreground subject matter in aurora images. Too often we see photos of just the sky when we could see so much more. These shots are technically challenging, as focus stacking at f/2.8 requires you to take a lot of images for a successful stack. This is not a composite though. The sky did actually come alive here at that very moment.

I'm a professional landscape photographer from the Netherlands, passionate about conveying ethereal qualities through both photography and post-processing.

Photography started when I was about nine years old and held my dad's Pentax for the first time. I focused on landscape photography specifically about a decade ago, as a means to keep my turbulent mind occupied in the outdoors in order to appreciate nature even more. My dark and moody visual style sprung for an appreciation for The Lord of the Rings films and the art of card game Magic: The Gathering. Getting lost (sometimes literally) in the few remaining bits of wilderness we have in Europe, is always on my mind and I create art that suits that fantasy-fueled wanderlust.

Most of my life, I felt I am different. I care not for politics or cars or having the latest gadgets. I care (worry) about the environment, look forward to human settlement on Mars and hope that artificial intelligence cares enough about its creator. But small things matter to me as well. As I'm writing this, there's a happy cat purring on my lap and my loving wife is cooking the best vegan dinner.