Photography has always been part of my life. My father was an avid photographer, and as a child, I found it fascinating to join him in the darkroom, where he mainly printed colour photos from slides. I received my first pocket camera, a Minolta for 110 format films, on my ninth birthday and later inherited my father's Canon AE-1. In the early years (perhaps decades),  I primarily took photos to document holiday trips. This changed with the beginning of the digital age, which I embraced with the purchase of a Nikon D70s. During this time I discovered the world of online forums which offered the opportunity to learn quickly and connect with other passionate photographers. I was encouraged to experiment with various styles, such as landscape or marine photography, concert photography, shooting portraits in a makeshift home studio, street photography, and even a phase where I returned to black and white film, which I developed in my kitchen at home. This was a lot of fun and enabled me to acquire a range of photographic skills quite rapidly.

However, being part of an online community also had its downsides, as it proved to be significant time sink. Eventually I realised that I was often imagining the reactions of my forum colleagues in my head before pressing the shutter button, which increasingly influenced my choice of subjects and compositions. Somewhere along the line, I lost my passion for photography and stopped taking my camera off the shelf as often.

It was during the COVID-19 pandemic that I began rediscovering  the nature around our home and took out my camera  to shoot again. This time, I did it solely for my own satisfaction. I didn't share any picture online and only a few selected ones with family and friends. Going for a walk with my camera was an experience and satisfaction enough, and bringing home a few usable photos was just a bonus. It's always a little difficult to say something like this about oneself, but I think that by photographing "for myself" over the last few years, I've come much closer to developing my own style. I now know what I like and am much more focused on refining that style of photography instead of trying to emulate various genres and trends to receive positive feedback.