I started photography around the year 2000 as I was also getting into going to concerts. A friend of mine was doing concert photography and I quite liked that idea. I was never that much into the compact camera’s, but when I saw him with a SLR camera, it clicked (pun intended!). The control you had over creating an image like that was thrilling! First I tried an old Olympus OM10 with fully manual lenses. That didn’t quite work out as focussing took about a full turn of a heavy lens and as it turned out the light-metering system of the Olympus just didn’t work well anymore.
So I sold it and bought a Canon EOS300 with an all-round zoomlens and from that upgraded to an EOS33 and finally an EOS3 as my main. Also in lenses I buight myself into more and more professional lenses to improve results. The 300 had gone by then, the 33 was my backup and an easy way to switch between color and black&white (my preference). But digital was getting better and shooting tons of film got expensive, so I got myself a digital Canon and over the years expended lenses and bodies until eventually I had myself a full bag of gear running form gig to gig and festival to festival.
During this time I didn’t give up on analog photography and have tried just about all the systems. I’ve shot a Hasselblad 500C, Rolleiflex, Mamiya, Polaroid SX-70 (not functional unfortunately) and as a back on the Hasselblad and Leica M6 with a bunch of Leica lenses (what a gorgeous camera that was). I’m somewhat sorry to have sold them on again, but I did learn a lot from those camera’s too. And in the end right now digital photography is -for me- simply the best way to go (I would however love, Love, LOVE to get a good Rolleiflex or a large-format camera though)
I’ve sold of all of my Canon gear some years ago and at the end of my concert-photography career I shot Fujifilm exclusively. But after 20 years of concert photography I started getting weary of that. A lot of driving, taking photos, having to edit them as soon as I got home (often until 02:00 at night) and then back to the regular job the next day… it was enough. Also my Fujifilm X-Pro2 camera had been used soo much that it just gave up. And with that I retired and had had my fill of photography for a while.
But in 2024 I started getting the itch again and bought a Fujifilm X-T4. The lenses were all still there, I only sold a few and bought a couple of others that better suited my current desires. And so I now have a good camera setup again. There are no plans to get back into the concert-photography area again (although… never say never), I just want to get back to enjoying the process of photography. And with that I also needed a location (and drive) for the photos again, which is this website.
