Since I was about 15 years of age photography has been a serious hobby of mine. From the beginning I have been interessted in matters like composition, shutter time, diaphragm, focal lengths, lighting and depth of field. So I was very interrested in the technique of photograpy as well as  the beauty of it. My first camera was a Canon EF (probably one of the first SLR cameras with an automatic diappragm). I had to work for months as a paper boy to be able to afford this.

I started diving in 1990 with Derek Chircop and Raymond Ciancio in Malta (in those days Derek's Scuba School) en now I have an IDD assistant instructor and CMAS 3* diving qualification. So far I have made about 1000 dives. I started underwater phontograpy somewhere in 1992. Of course then still with analog equipment (Canon EOS 650RT in an Ikelite underwater housing) because digital photography hardly existed (if at all). The Canon and Ikelite combination eventually turned out not to be the ideal for me (although I certainly don't complain about the price to quality ratio) and I started looking for a better alternative. First I thought to have found it in a Nikon F3 and then a Nikon F4 camera, because of the large exchangable sports viewfinder on those camera's. Unfortunately for a long time I didn't have the means to extend this to a usable underwater set, for which I wanted an Aquavision (now Aquatica) housing, that I finally found second hand through Ebay. Although eventualy I hardly used this combination, I decided in 2006 to say goodbye to the analog age. The Nikon F4 and Aquatica housing (as well as the F3 with Hugyfot housing) are stored in a cupboard as 'curiosa' now.

Nowadays I use a Nikon D200 for which in 2008 I bought a Hugyfot housing. Since April 2010 I had an Inon Z240 flash to complete this set. Recently I replaced this by two Ikelite DS161 Movie strobes, because the combination of the Inon Z240 with the Nikon D200 in the Hugyfot housing structrurally failed to work on TTL. The Ikelite strobes work perfectly in TTL mode. The lenses I use under water are a Nikon 60mm micro, a Nikon 10.5mm fish eye and my newest asset: the Nikon 16-85mm zoom. Personally I still prefer the quality of slides over digital images, especially for projection, but eventually I got convinced by the enormously fast and cheap way of photographing on a digital medium, not to mention that you hardly ever "run out of film" during a dive and the fact you can assess the result almost instantly, which is also a huge advantage. The first pictures with my D200 I made in Bonaire (Dutch Carribean) in april 2008. The "Groene Heuvels" (green hills) in Bergharen (NL), La Gombe (Esneux, Belgium) and Hamata (Egypt) were next.