The beginning of our love

We met and fell in love as young people 21 years ago. We met on the train, and we saw each other every morning. That was the beginning of our love.

We were both born in northern Germany, near the city of Greifswald and grew up near the baltic sea. We have been living in Aachen since 2003. Ten years ago, I married my girl. Now we have three great children (all boys).

We are not photographers, and we don’t do it professionally. We have ordinary jobs.

We both became interested in photography very quickly. My muse is my muse, my model, inspiration and therefore also my main motive. Primarily our photos are like a diary, documenting our own life. We also do it because it gives us something special, holds us together and of course, is a lot of fun.

We started with some cheap digital camera. We ended up with analogue photography relatively quickly. I do the process, preferring analogue photography to digital. Some thought has to be given to the subject and the photograph. I also like the imperfections and the grain of film.

The first film camera was a Pentacon six TL in 6×6 format. With this format, in my opinion, it is easy to learn to take pictures, and we still like medium format to this day. In the course of time, various digital and film cameras were added and then left again.

My wife has also been taking analogue photographs for about 2 years. She mainly does self-portraits with her Yashica Mat 124G and her Minolta X700.

I still like to work with the Pentacon six TL in 6×6 format and also in 35mm with my Canon AE-1. But I love to take pictures with my point to shoot cameras (Contax T2 and Olympus Mju II). They are small and have excellent picture quality.

You can take these small cameras on trips or always have them with you in everyday life. We often don’t plan any shootings at all, which just come about when we find a nice location or have peace and quiet at home.

We like especially portrait photos and also nudes. But I also do landscape or street photos again and again. We particularly like being on the water, and that is probably because we grew up by the sea and the river.

I wasn’t interested in digital photography anymore, and then our children came. To capture their growing up on film alone would be utopian expensive ;-). That’s why I bought a Ricoh GR in 2015. It’s small, fast, easy to use and has fantastic image quality.

I missed the analogue touch with this camera, which is why the Fuji X100F was added a few years ago. It unites analogue habits with very good digital image components. The image quality is great, and I love its film simulations, whether in colour or black and white.

We work almost exclusively with natural light and the things we find on-site, as I like simple and light luggage.

For post-processing, I use Lightroom and my MacBook, as well as some tools on the iPhone. I develop the black and white films myself at home. Colour films go to a laboratory in Aachen. Then scan the things myself with on Epson V600 scanner, and that’s enough technology for our needs.

We exhibit our pictures online because we keep getting to know interesting people. You can exchange ideas and learn from one another.