A very good friend of mine named Stefan owns several aquariums and from time to time I like to take photographs of the new inhabitants.

Well on the 6th of march 2021 Stefan and I planned on photographing some street art but the light was not good at all, so we ended up at his home and he started to prepare a new home for some shrimps and slugs and small fishes. Meanwhile I checked on the creatures aroung me and I got fascinated with the small "Tetraodon Schoutedenis" immediately, that's a pufferfish native to Africa's Congo Basin. I unpacked my camera and started to take images. Quite soon I felt as if I was in a world written by H.P. Lovecraft, so I decided to process the images later with a look to express my thoughts and feelings.

I used only natural / available light to photograph the creatures through the thick glass, because I was keen on creating images that don't look like they were taken inside an aquarium.

The camera of my choice on that day was the Canon EOS-1D Mark IV and the lens the Canon EF 100mm f2.8L Macro IS USM. The images were later processed with Lightroom and the NIK Collection.

Some good friends, who like my work, were really amazed and Marcin said he checked on my instagram-account on a daily basis to see if there was something new about this series. His response made me very happy.

I learned more about my camera and about shooting fishes and other beings that live in the water. You have to be very slow, otherwise you will disturb them and hardly succeed in taking any good photographs.

Perhaps one thing. Don't be afraid of high iso in your camera. Most images you take will not be printed in very large sizes and it is not important to have a very clean looking image at all times. Check on older images that were taken with grainy films, perhaps you end up loving them and start shooting film yourselves.

Wanja Wiese

Wanja Wiese got his first camera in 1990, at the age of ten, a "Fujifilm DL-180 Tele", as an christmas present from his father. About 90% of his images were photographs of eating and sleeping dogs.

The following years Wanja's finish grandfather Jali borrowed him his camera, a"Minolta Freedom III" every time his grandson visited Finland. Wanja finally took his first steps in landscape photography and tried to capture the beauty of the land of a thousand lakes.

​In december 2011 he spent all of his money and bought his first DSLR, the "Nikon D5000". He was able to carry a camera everywhere he went, and his love for photography grew day by day.

​In summer 2014 Wanja was incredibly lucky to start working as the assistant to Ivo von Renner, a well known artist, who made a living with commercial photographer for several decades. He stayed there for a year and learned a lot from his mentor.

​Wanja started shooting mostly animals, landscapes and flowers but became more and more interested in shooting architecture and people, after switching to Canon's "EOS-System" in 2014.

In 2017 he came up with digital manipulations, another good way to express himself.

​Although Wanja still enjoys shooting dogs, he realized that taking portraits of people is great fun too.

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