#tbt 1985 I’m six years old and live in the town of Haarlem, Netherlands. My dad allowed me to take his camera out. Me and my friends where exhilarated and we roamed the streets. And so my first session of street photography was born ..
All my life I've enjoyed very much taking pictures. Luckily I got also inspired by my parents that created albums of all our trips. allowing me to practice all along the way.
My early life in a nutshell went to school in Haarlem, worked aside for pocket money, travelled, later also for long periods of time like in Australia & Argentina, studied social cultural science in Amsterdam, worked in marketing as a people manager, got tired of that and spent 7 months in east Africa in 2008.
On the brink of the digital era I started posting photos on my Africa trip on Picasa (now google) and Facebook. People seemed to appreciate following my adventures. Back then I had no clue that I was doing would become daily practice of a todays' travel vlogger/ digital creators' But slowly the idea arose that this might be fruitful for a way of living.
So eventually it would take a quarter of a century after my first streetphotography session (2010) before I understood it might be a way of living that pertains to me; combining income with passion..Sowe started http://storytravelers.com together with Koen van Seijen at the age of 30.
Farmer John: This was one of the first pictures that I had been paid for. A tiny budget though, but anyway. Our first project in this case featuring a biodynamic farmer. Much later (2019) I would make documentaries about Regenerative farming.
In 2011 I went to Italy for a exchange project for 5 months, I ended up staying for almost 9 years. At the time I had no clue what I had jumped into, a true rollercoaster of a life journey; a decade of cultural storytelling around the world. All this from the most photogenic town I can imagine: Matera
We started working with tourism entities: first local tour operators and later for national tourism boards all over the world, promoting their destination through so called visual storytelling campaigns. I gathered likeminded filmmakers in a collective, talked on TED about how I had been able to creae my own legend and produced a travelseries for Aljazeera. And so along the way I built quite a library of images from taken all over the world.
We started working with tourism entities: first local tour operators and later for national tourism boards all over the world, promoting their destination through so called visual storytelling campaigns. I gathered likeminded filmmakers in a collective, talked on TED about how I had been able to creae my own legend and produced a travelseries for Aljazeera. And so along the way I built quite a library of images from taken all over the world.
Interestingly I’ve never promoted myself solely as a photographer. I was fully focussed on fimmaking and would often provide my stills as an add-on to the films we made. There was no need for a website. Maybe didn’t know what category I fit in or didn’t believe I could turn solely photography into a fruitful business. Notwithstanding I got chosen to be among NatGeo China's most favourite travel photographers in 2015.
I had been feeling it under the surface for a while and suddenly I was done with travelling. Also because the latest experience with Aljazeera turned out to be quite a though one, the stress took some toll from which I needed to recover. Then also I lost my appetite for taking pictures, like I'd had already several times and stopped. I didn't have a goal with it anymore.
I even did another TED talk about seanonality in life, that there's also a autumn and winter, about embracing not always having a goal.
When pondering those days I asked myself what and who it matters to... taking another picture.. what does that for world and the direction is going into. Maybe a product of a new phase in life, a midlife crisis? soulsearching or some misplaced form of fatalism, who knows! Anyhow there was this feeling of uselessness regarding photography and it got worse over time watching all this amazing, but also ever more repetitive, visual content being created nowadays. "My eyes got numb for pictures and so got the eyes of my audience", I told myself.
In between there was our famous pandemic that put everything ahold, but it allowed for some reasoning leading to some useful insights. I got to understand I don’t need to fit into a category, nor I need a perfect instagram account. There's no need compare myself to all the amazing creators in the world. No need to worry whether I can make a fruitful business of it and not every image necessarily has make the world a better place.
Sometimes it’s enough just to enjoy doing something and get inspired. I rediscovered within me the little boy in the candy store. Excited again when I’m in a place or meeting someone interesting with my camera, trying to capture the soul of it.
Then also new project start to emerge that I found really worthwhile telling about came on my path with purposeful theme's like Regenerative Agriculture, biobased building, personal growth, sustainable tourism etc. and I found also a new direction. Everything makes sense again.
So looking back I’m just grateful for everything that came on my path, having been able to play around and craft my personal angle of the world; the opportunities that have taken me around the planet to capture it in all its forms and colours. I wouldn't do right to my pictures not giving them my personal digital portal. Moreover, without photography I would never have had the amazing family I have now and all the friends I made along the way. I'm just grateful :)
So looking back I’m just grateful for everything that came on my path, having been able to play around and craft my personal angle of the world; the opportunities that have taken me around the planet to capture it in all its forms and colours. I wouldn't do right to my pictures not giving them my personal digital portal. Moreover, without photography I would never have had the amazing family I have now and all the friends I made along the way. I'm just grateful :)
