short bio
Next to being an occasionally professional photographer and aspiring filmmaker, Iʼm a creative nerd with 15 years of work experience at the intersection of marketing, design, and software development. I donʼt believe in doing just one thing, and love to learn.
For as long as I can remember, Iʼve had this undying need to create stuff. As a kid I was always busy writing stories, drawing, model building, recording radio shows with my sister, or shooting little movies with our videocamera. Iʼve also always had this drive to want to figure out how things work. My parents were the best for encouraging me: Theyʼd always give me stuff like old VCRs or radios to take apart.
I spent most of my teenage years behind computers like a proper nerd. Obviously I missed out on some other stuff, but my love for visual effects and Star Wars got me spending all my spare time doing 3D animation. After a few years of that I discovered Photoshop (4.0), which in turn got me into photography. I also learned HTML before most people, and had my own web design company aged 16. Later got a degree in Computer Science, did lots of interaction design and programming for the web, and have supervised a small special effects department for a little while.
I live in Rotterdam with my amazing wife and our 1 year old daughter.
photography
My love for cinema was the driving force behind my interest in 3D animation and photo compositing as a kid, and it shines through in my photography today. To me it is about creating a view into a different world and telling a story. I love natural light and shooting on location. I shoot commercially sometimes, but most of what Iʼve done is personal work. The camera doesnʼt matter: I shoot the latest DSLRs but also enjoy shooting large format analog.
filmmaking
One of the internet startups I was involved in over the last few years was an e-learning company producing online courses. We built our own 100 m2 green screen studio in an old warehouse, created virtual sets in 3ds Max, and shot on cheap HD consumer cams hooked up to a Blackmagic recorder. All very guerilla style, and I learned a lot from supervising post-production and directing. Iʼm currently focussing on getting more experience with the language of cinema and directing by doing personal films together with other aspiring and professional filmmakers.
design, the web & business
Making a website for my 3D stuff in the mid-ʼ90s made me realise the importance of design in any user interface. I used 3D elements in my design to make buttons feel like real buttons, and learned HTML so I could make it look the way I wanted. My first company was born out of this!
During university, I ran another business: a webshop selling movie merchandise. Because of my user-friendly design and high-quality product images, within a year, I had the most popular webshop in that market nationally. I later sold it.
Since graduating Iʼve spent 10 years working on complex web applications, combining design experience with a deep knowlegde of web tech, standards and usability. My clients range from government to advertising. Visit my linkedin page for more info.