"To learn something and become more and more skilled in it, is this not a joy? Then, when congenial persons come from far and become friends, is this not a joy too?" - Konfutse

The period of my life that I call "Adventure with the Photography" began rather late.

About 20 years ago I started my professional life as a technician in the Polish automobile industry. In order to counterbalance my work I began to paint during my spare time. This was something free, wild and creative, just good for the other half of my brain.

A few years later I married my wife Lydia. After our son Christoph was born we emigrated to Germany.

When Christoph was a small boy he discovered nature and began to bring home bugs, ants, grashoppers, mushrooms, wild flowers etc and asked me to draw or paint them. It was then that I realised that my gift for abstract painting did not suffice to reproduce such specimen adequately.

Therefore I took my camera, bought a macro lens and kneeled down in order to investigate the microcosm and to document it for my son by means of fotos.

I have always been strongly attached to nature. When I still lived in Poland, where the nature is wilder and the national parks are larger and more lonely than in Germany, I used to hike, climb and canoe a lot. But when I saw the microcosm through the viewfinder of my camera I discovered a new world. Suddenly I saw details that I had never seen before, a variety of forms, patterns, lines and colors. I also discovered what Eliot Porter wrote in his "Nature’s Chaos":

"When I photograph, I see the arrangement that looks orderly, but when you consider the subjects as a whole or on a larger scale, they appear disorderly. Only in fragment of the whole is nature’s order apparent".

There came a time when I wanted to order this chaos around me; that was the beginning of my "Adventure with the Photography".

In the course of years I read everything that the masters like Ansel Adams, John Shaw, Ernst Haas, Eliot Porter, Andreas Feininger and many others had written about photography. I learned, learned, learned and consumed many hundreds rolls of film.

Now I know that I see nature with different eyes as before, with the eyes of a photographer, to whom a rock is more than a rock: it is a photographic subject.

..."to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock but be more than a rock" - Edward Weston

The chapter "Professional" in my "Adventure with the Photography" has not yet been written. However, it is not a blank page either: it contains several regional exhibitions and pictorial publications.

"Slow down, stay a little longer, just wait and watch" - John Shaw.