My Story
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My interest in the natural world and photography goes back to my early childhood and by my early teens I knew that I wanted to be a nature photographer and writer. After some delays and detours which included dropping out of school, training as a kindergarten teacher and paediatric nurse and subsequently working for ten years with terminally ill children on an oncology ward which ended with a minor burnout, I moved to Ireland in 2002 and started to work as a freelance photographer.
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Four years later my first book The Fertile Rock – Seasons in the Burren was published and was followed by many others including Ireland’s Coast, Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way, The Wildflowers of Ireland, Ireland’s Heritage Trees, This is the Burren and the Crossbill Guide to Ireland. My first book in German Irland Fotografieren saw the light of day in 2019 and since then I have managed two more publications in my mother tongue: Licht, Farbe und Form in der Landschaft und Reise durch Irland. Although most of my books deal with the Irish landscape, nature and built heritage, I was lucky to also be assigned to projects very much out of my comfort zone: I dabbled in the world of food photography for The New Irish Table and portrait photography for Burren Dinners.
All those books led to a series of commissions in the Irish tourism sector for which I had the pleasure to work for clients like Tourism Ireland and The Burren and Cliffs of Moher Geopark.
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​While traveling all over Ireland and making pretty pictures for books and tourism brochures had its moments my heart was always set on working in nature conservation and I was the happiest when I got a chance to work on - mostly unpaid - conservation projects. I was the staff photographer fort the Irish Peatland Conservation Council during the development of the Bog of Allen Nature Centre, a contributing photographer and author for the Irish Wildlife Trust and I represented Ireland for the international Meet Your Neighbours biodiversity project. In 2020 I was appointed an AnTaisce Climate Ambassador and joined the writing team of Nature First. In the following year I was invited to join the Greensod Ireland Biodiversity Ambassador programme.
Everything changed in 2020 and 2021 when the Covid-19 pandemic put a sudden end to my reasonably successful commercial photography career. With tourism on hold for two years I found myself effectively unemployed and was forced to reconsider my livelihood. A new start came in the form of the local grassroots project Loop Head Together where I found myself planning and implementing community projects, first and foremost the Wild Loop Head programme. This eventually led to a position with AstonECO management. At the same time I was assigned to write a natural history guidebook for the Crossbill Guides Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation based in the Netherlands focusing on nature tourism and education, and after the book was finished I was asked to stay on to implement a partnership programme and help develop new guidebooks. On top of that I am still working on new book projects like Wild Ireland (published in 2023), The Whispering Land (published in 2024) and an as of yet untitled volume on Ireland's peatlands which is scheduled to be published in 2025.
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The year 2025 yet again brings changes. If there is one thing I learned from being almost five years away from commercial photography and workshops and getting a glimpse into Ireland's renewable energy rollout and community development, it is that everything is connected. We can't mitigate climate change without industrial wind- and solar-energy developments, we can't protect and restore habitats and the wildlife living in them without support and input from farmers, tourism operators, and rural communities. Instead of assigning blame, we all need to work together.
To that end I am back in the commercial photography game and launched The Atlantic Edge, a new long-term photography and writing project. In the Atlantic Edge Blog I will tell stories from Ireland's West coast, stories of wild places, stories of people, stories of wildlife, stories of change... and how they all interconnect.
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My Gear
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Over the years I have been working with a wide variety of cameras and lenses. When I started taking photography seriously in my late teens the Canon EOS 50 became my first “proper” camera. This was replaced a few years later by a Minolta Dynax 7 and Bronica ETRSi outfit.
I switched to digital in 2003 with the Sigma SD9 and SD10 but also treated myself to a Hasselblad xpan, probably the most enjoyable camera I have ever owned. After finishing my first book the Sigmas got replaced by the Canon EOS 5D and subsequent models which were my workhorses for over 10 years.
When mirrorless cameras appeared on the scene I tried out pretty much every manufacturer from Olympus and their Micro Four Thirds to the Fujifilm GFX medium format system but eventually switched to Sony. At the time it made sense, Sony’s high resolution sensors and AF technology made it perfect for any assignment the tourism sector could throw at me. Personally however I never really warmed up to Sony, their cameras were the means to an end but no fun to use.
Two years ago I came across the Sigma fp L which has a rarely seen modular approach to camera design. It's a very enjoyable and reliable camera to use as long as your subject doesn't move too fast. Long story short, this is what's currently in my camera bag:
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Sigma fp L
Panasonic Lumix S1R
Canon TS-E 24mm/3.5 II L
Canon TS-E 50mm/2.8 L
Canon TS-E 135mm/4 L
Sigma 500mm/5.6
Sigma 28-45mm/1.8
Sigma 70-200mm/2.8
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Plus tripods, filters, cable release, microphones and other bits and pieces.
To process the images and to write my books and articles I use a MacBook Pro with Lightroom, Photoshop, Luminar 4, Helicon Focus and Topaz DeNoise, Sharpen & Gigapixel.
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