I inherited the attraction of the camera from my father. Before World War II, he was one of the very  first amateur photographers in the Netherlands to be a proud owner of a Leica, the Rolls Royce of cameras. I was 10 years old when I received my first Kodak box. With that camera I was already able to make night pictures. Soon I bought  my first second-hand camera with my pocket money, an Exa with a Tessar 2,8/50 mm.

Other second-hand cameras followed: Agfa Optima, Rolleiflex Tessar 3,5 and Planar 3,5, Leica 1C, IIC, IIIF etc. I was able to buy my very first brand new Leica IIIG during my studies with extra pocket money I had earned making wedding and other reportages. Nowadays an amateur (or professional) photographer is able to make color as well as black-white picture with the same digital camera without any problems. In the analogue period one needed special cameras for this. Often I made trekking tours with three cameras: black and white, color negative and color slides.

Over the years I started to collect old Leica cameras and with the help of my friend Hans Ploegmakers in the Netherlands I was able to purchase some real nice and beautiful collector items.

Until 2010 I took all my pictures with my two digital Leica cameras: the M8 and the R8 with the digital-modal  R. The R8 I liked very much as an ideal camera to take pictures  of wildlife with tele-lenses. Unfortunately almost overnight, the firm Leica, decided to stop the complete production and software support for the R-system (camera and lenses). In fact, this was the very first time since 1924, when Leica started the production and marketing of 24×36 cameras, that a whole system abruptly was stopped and the owners of the R-system were left orphaned. Not receiving any updates for the software and not getting any new digital R-cameras, I shifted to Canon. These days I am very pleased with the quality and the possibility of my Canon 5D Mark III body and the three professional zoom lenses (16-35, 24-70 and 70-200).