ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER | ||
Travel photographer Hans Hendriksen (1957) from The Netherlands became addicted to travel from the moment he made his first flight to Mallorca at the age of 15. He is advisor rail at engineering consultancy Grontmij Netherlands. In an interview Hans explaned his passion for travel: "Besides letting myself be continuously surprise about other cultures and people, travelling is for me the best way to discover my own identity and keep an open-mind attitude. Travel experiences always increase my tolerance and confirm my most essential values in life: one should be lucky enough to be able to learn every day, discover unknown places and people and follow the path of your deepest passions". In 1991 he began to take pictures while travelling using a Minolta Dynax 8000i. From that period he travels through Asia, South- and Middle America or Africa every year. Soon travel photography became his deepest passion in life. He learned himself better travel photography by continuously trying to raise his target quality level. As a result of this, in his opinion your last work should always be your best. Hans prefers to shoot colourful daily-life scenes. After shooting travel photos for 15 years, he decided to start-up his own travel photography company. On this site, which includes 44 photo galleries from countries on 4 continents, you find a selection of the most unique moments he witnessed during his world-wide travels. Hans characterises his work as follows: "I'm a great admirer of the famous French photographer Henry Cartier-Bresson and think I use a similar style. Like him I'm always searching for contrasts and try to capture 'The Decisive Moment'. I also like to put some humour in my photographs and will never cut in the original composition. In my opinion Cartier-Bresson gave the best definition of photography. He described photography as the virtual point where eyes, heart and brains meet. For me travelling feels like watching adventure movies from which I pick out the special moments intuitively. I take the best photographs almost unconscious, like being in a state of trance. It often happened that I "woke up" after shooting impressive moments and kept asking myself: did this really took place?". Nowadays there is a lot discussion about manipulation of digital images. Although Hans Hendriksen uses digital equipment now, he still works "analogue". In his opinion each travel photograph must be 100% identical to what he saw the moment he took it. The only Photoshop tools he uses are basic corrections for contract & brightness, saturation and colour balance for the entire image. In rare cases he allows a marginal crop or rotation. He will however never crop more than 5% from the original composition. Images scanned from damaged photo negatives are cleaned using the smutch tool and sometimes using the dust & scratches tool. In his point of view, use of any other Photoshop tool or filter should be called "visual art" and not "travel photography". Hans Hendriksen is convinced that the direct link to the witnessed reality is essential for his travel photography. Some people will find this an old-fashioned or even idealistic principle but it is his basic rule he will never break, no matter how his collegues work or will working. | ||
Bottom photo: ©Ellen van Vinken (NL) |
PUBLICATIONS |
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During the last 10 years Hans Hendriksen's travel photos have been used for numerous newspapers, magazines, travel brochures, books, billboards, TV-commercials, postcards, calenders, video productions, fashion shows, CD-covers, exhibitions, product presentations, wall decoration for hotels and even for foodtray sleeves on airplanes, puzzles and toilet tile decoration! You find a selection of his published work including TV-commercial on the publications overview. Should you also want to use one or more photographs for publication purposes or want to order a photo print please check out the orderpage. Hans Hendriksen is a firm believer in a free internet. You will always get his permission to use his work free of charge on your site when credits are given and a backlink is placed to www.hanshendriksen.net
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EQUIPMENT | |
After working
17 years with several analog CANON camera´s |
Hans uses the CANON EOS 1Ds Mark III as his first spare body. Key features of this camera are: |
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During
his travels he uses the following CANON lenses:
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On the road Hans uses the CANON Media Storage Viewer M80. All images are stored in RAW format on the M80 which has a total available hard disk space of 74 GB an holds a 3,7" TFT screen. In his equipment are always two SANDISK Extreme CF memory cards 32 GB - 160 MB/sec and two SANDISK Extreme SD cards 32 GB - 95 MB/sec (for additional back-up).
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HOME REGION IMPRESSIONS |
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Hans lives in the Achterhoek, an agricultural area in the eastern part of The Netherlands. To give you an idea about this Dutch region, he selected 64 daily-life and nature impressions for a special Achterhoek Photo Gallery. Translated into English, the word Achterhoek means something like "Back Corner". Maybe you understand this name looking at the photographs Hans shot the last 12 years. |
EXHIBITION | |
Hans Hendriksen presented his work during the photo exhibition "Sabaidee! - Precious Moments of Thailand and Laos" which was held in the City of Zwolle (NL) during May and June 2001. You will find detailed information about the exhibition including photo impressions of this event here.
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