Fine Art Prints

I cannot sleep on flights unless they last more than five or six hours. So I watch. The ground below fascinates me — the geometry of it, the scale, the way human life looks from thirty thousand feet. On this flight back from Yerevan to München with Lufthansa, with about an hour left before landing, the sky did something I had not seen before. It arranged itself in bands of colour so deliberate they looked painted — orange, gold, deep blue. I had my camera on my lap. I raised it to the window without thinking. Some images choose you.

The cut face of this trunk was at exactly my eye level — about 160 centimetres from the ground. I did not have to kneel or crouch. I simply looked straight ahead, and there was a mountain in the distance. Snow-covered, vast, completely convincing. I pressed the shutter because my gut told me to. I often do not know why an image will matter until much later. This one I suspected immediately.

A spider's strength is constantly challenged by nature — wind, rain, the carelessness of larger creatures passing through. This morning it was condensed water from overnight fog, each droplet clinging to the web with its own quiet weight. I was outside breathing in the fresh air when I saw it. I went back inside, got my camera, and returned before the fog lifted. The web was still there, patient as ever. I have always admired that kind of patience.

I was travelling with a group of photographers through a village in the Narayani District of Nepal. The humidity was heavy, the surroundings vivid and alive. At some point I noticed a group of children following me — curious, open, completely unguarded. I was the only photographer in our group who had stopped to discover them, to slow down and connect with them for a few moments. I made a series of portraits that day. This boy is one of them. His shirt was torn. His smile was not. These children had very little in the way of possessions and offered everything in the way of presence. It put life into perspective in the way that only a child's face can. I carry these images with me.

I climbed to the top of the Hamburger Wappen rocks above Timmenrode and stayed there for a long time — far above the road, far from the noise of ordinary life. There was something meditative about the view. The road cutting diagonally through the forest below, the geometry of it, the stillness. I did not rush. I waited until the image in my mind matched what was in front of me. What you see is the result, with small adjustments made later in Lightroom — bringing out the harmony I had already felt standing there on the rock.

I was out before sunrise because fog and early morning light wait for no one. By 5:20 I was standing at the edge of a chives field in North Funen, watching the fog begin to pull away from the flowers. I had perhaps minutes before it was gone entirely. The light at that hour does something particular — it does not illuminate so much as suggest. I call this image Witnessing the Light. It felt less like taking a photograph and more like being present at something brief and unrepeatable.

This image carries both the best and the hardest memories of a single trip. I was travelling across Europe with my wife and her elderly parents — for what turned out to be the last time we would all make such a journey together. On our arrival in Brescia that evening, these two boys came flying out of an alley onto the main street, riding as if nothing in the world could slow them down. I grabbed my camera from my wife's lap with my right hand, turned it on in the same movement, and shot — panning instinctively with my Pentax K5. I had no idea what I had captured. It was only years later, after completing my photography course, that I understood the worth of that fraction of a second. The next day, my father-in-law fell in the city. We spent the following two weeks arranging his return to Iran. A few months later, he was gone. I have come to believe that joy and sorrow follow each other by necessity — that the contrast between them is what allows us to truly distinguish between them, and to value each one accordingly. I am grateful we made that trip. When I look at those boys on their bicycle, laughing and weightless, I think of him.

I was travelling alone in Southern Germany, staying at a hotel on the shore of Hopfensee. It was one of those heavy periods in life. My father — 89 years old, strong-willed, my father — was seriously ill in Iran. That year I had already travelled back three times. The repeated absences from work had cost me my job, but I had made my choice: I would be there for my parents. I was sitting by the lake that evening when I noticed the lily pads, grey and still, with these small flowers insisting on their colour. The original flowers were yellow. I shifted them to orange in editing — warmer, more urgent, more like hope actually feels. The grey stays grey. The colour stays. That is what that evening was.

I had been invited to photograph an event at the Central Library in Odense. It was a cold day outside. At some point this man walked in from the street, paid no attention to anything happening around him, found a seat, and began to read — a newspaper, I believe. He was entirely elsewhere. The light from the side caught his white beard and the lines of his face in a way that felt almost sculpted. This was the very first frame I took that day. I knew immediately. 1x.com later awarded this image. I think of him sometimes and wonder if he knows.

I had just lost my job after eighteen years in the same place — the library where I had built a working life, a sense of belonging, a daily rhythm. It was a hard blow. When life becomes difficult I go to nature with my camera. It is where I process things. On this January day I walked the forest around Langesø and made this image — the motion blur effect was applied deliberately in Photoshop afterwards, the trees dissolving into something between reality and feeling. It is not a photograph of a forest. It is a photograph of refusing to give up. Of the belief that one day you will stand tall again, even when you cannot yet see how. I call it hope with roots.