"When you photograph people in colour, you photograph their clothes.
when you photograph them in black n white, you  photograph their souls"

 ted grant

Prequel:

Photography and cinematography have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. 

My plan before becoming a chef was to study photography & media design at a design & art school in berlin. But my finances didn’t let me.
So it was a casual job apprentice, I thought, as I got the positive response

“You can start next week in the kitchen”

I was fundamentaly wrong.
Due to my professional career I was forced to hang up the camera for a while. Not only the focus for the beauty of things was lost, also the creativity and the courage to dare new things. it all went into my dishes.

The realization that I have to live out, beyond the kitchen, creatively and above all absolutely free, was a big step towards satisfaction and happiness .

"Créer des pensées"
fr. “Creating thoughts”

Of course it's a hard way but to be honest which change is not hard, I think we’re ment to change, otherwise, in my opinion, we stuck and isn’t that even worse?

 "my head carries my body".

Self portrait - pyrenees - 2023

How it started

On hot days we went as kids often in the city or in the mountains in winter. I especially remember this one summer, it must have been around 2010, when a good friend of mine, brought her parents camera. It was Canon bridge model, from that moment I held it in my hands this I couldn't put it down.

That was the moment it all began.

A few weeks later I called my aunt and explained why I wanna use a large part of my father’s legacy. I bought some equipment and my very first camera: A Lumix GH1, I was so overwhelmed, I never spent that much money in my life before, so far. From that point on, we met up just to take pictures, in the city, at parties but eventually I was mostly asked at the snow or skate parks.

There was only one problem, I didn’t have any passion for photographing sweaty dirty dudes falling on concrete or people jumping three meters and not even do any trick. In my Imagination I wanted to photograph the big players the famous dudes but I had no idea how to get there. Naive, I know. But hey, it was a young mans dream.

I was disappointed, why wasn’t it how I expected it to be now that I finally have my big, cool camera. Of course I was bad at photography. I had just started and of course the people I knew weren’t as skilled as the pros we admired. On top of that I started to realize, I was beeing used. People expected me to be there with my camera, not as a friend, but as “the photographer.”Worst of all, I accepted it.

The frustration was real.

Out of all those early experiences as a “Photographer,” I began to take fewer and fewer pictures. Especially once I started working full time in the kitchen. After a week of 14 hours a day, there wasn’t much left: just sleep, food or maybe a few drinks with friends.

From pans to pressure

At some point, photography faded into the background. The kitchen demanded everything.

When I started working full-time as a chef, the long hours quickly became my new normal 14 hours a day, 6 days a week thing. After shifts like that, your world shrinks. You eat, you sleep, maybe you grab a drink with someone if there’s any energy left. But the camera? It started to gather dust. Not because I didn’t love it anymore, but because I had nothing left to give.

For the first years, I actually liked the pressure. It was brutal, it was pure and it was hot, but there was a rhythm to it, a system. In a weird way, it gave me purpose. You work hard, you push through, and then you get up and do it again. There’s something strangely addictive about that kind of routine when you’re young and trying to prove something.

But over time, the cracks started to show.

You stop feeling your body. You forget birthdays. You laugh a little less. There’s this moment, it sneaks up on you, when the fire you used to have in your chest starts to feel more like smoke.

Portrait

One of the biggest mistakes I made early on was trying to fit in, driven by poor life choices and the need to belong. I ended up photographing styles and situations I didn’t even like, just to be part of a group or scene. Looking back, it was never worth it. No one, literally no one is so cool, so talented or so important in the beginning, that you should reshape your whole lifestyle or give up what truly brings you joy just to follow them.

After a few more bad decisions, I hit a phase, I now call awakening.

It’s like standing at the edge of a cliff right before the silent, heavy wind pushes you over and suddenly you wake up. I didn’t fully understand it at the time, but I was deeply thankful. Something had changed. And I could feel it wasn’t small.

During my first long trip in a self converted Van in 2022, I realized that just taking photos with my phone wasn’t enough anymore. So I bought my first professional camera gear.

And this time, I made a quiet promise to myself:

Only shoot what feels true

Portraits became my language. Not because they’re trendy or technically impressive. Even when it was at first from animals. Because they slow things down. They ask for presence. They give space for honesty. And, most importantly, they helped me to reflect something I was on the search for in myself: truth, serenity, connection.

With every person I photograph, I try to see more than just a face. I want to understand who they are in that moment not the version they show, but the version that appears when things go quiet for a second.

Seeing again

Through my lens, I was able to open my eyes again, to the beauty and the extraordinary things that surround us every single day.
“Overwhelming” doesn’t even come close to the feeling I had in that moment.

Small flowers. Distant birds. Sunsets and then more sunsets.
The way light moves through a city street. The quiet moods of people passing by.
It became all so obvious things I had missed for years while chasing the next kick or working under constant pressure in kitchens, cooking for other people.

Photographing people wasn’t just something I liked. I was deeply passionated, almost obsessed with interesting faces, their expressions, their emotions… and I still am!

I wanna photograph them and best case scenario, I will wright about them too.

This feeling, this clarity, didn’t turn me into a high-end professional photographer overnight. But it gave me something better: a reason and direction.

Everything else and that’s a thing I know very well, I can and I will learn step by step.

Thank you

Thank you for taking the time to read a part of my story.
If any of this resonated with you and you're curious how I navigate life as both a head chef and a photographer feel free to follow along.

You’ll find me on YouTube, Patreon, or Instagram the links are just below.

And if you’d like to share your own story how you came to photography, or what keeps you going I’d love to hear it. Really.