Manuela Stelck

My photographic journey:

I’ve been taking photos “forever”, but not always. I got my first camera at the age of 12 and took pictures of my family on walks, on trips or in the garden. When I was about 16-17 years old, I had my first Minolta SLR camera and my subjects were children in playgrounds, my friends at school, on bike rides together and sometimes my hometown. Of course, I also had my camera with me when I started exploring the world during my studies. Although I always enjoyed taking photos, in the end it was just “taking pictures”.

The birth of my kids set me back technically, a small compact camera was always quicker to hand than the SLR. In 2010, Sony launched the Alpha 55 with the translucent mirror. Although I was pretty hooked, I didn’t really warm to this camera and so another few years passed until I found my camera in 2016: The Sony 6000. I loved it and it still exists. However, it has had several successors from the Sony camp, because when my kids left home, my hobby developed rapidly. I had time to get to grips with aperture, shutter speed and ISO, image composition, various popular photographers and, ultimately, image editing. I found friends via FB, with whom I met up mostly in Hamburg, but also in other cities, and from whom I was able to learn a lot. This is how architecture and landscape photography became an important hobby. Today I like to go on photo trips to get to know certain spots, for example last year I spent 3 weeks in Iceland.

Unfortunately, I now realize again and again that really captivating (landscape) photos are not only dependent on the subject, but above all on the “good” light and I particularly like the pictures where the photographer was “in the right place at the right time”. I hope to find the “right” time more often, because from the summer onwards, a new phase in my life will allow me to intensify my hobby further. I hope that I will then not only find time to try out other genres of photography, but also to take and develop more pictures in such a way that they captivate the viewer for longer than a second.

I am curious to see how the journey will continue.

My photographic philosophy:

Under Construction