PURA VIDA
Hi how are you?
Nice to meet you. I'm Marcus, a professional people & portrait photographer located in stunning Ireland who is originally from Germany.
Like the Ticos in Costa Rica, I live by the maxim "Pura Vida." Enjoy life and express gratitude for what you have.
My Inspiration
Leonardo Da Vinci | Albrecht Dürer | Art | Nature | Architecture | History | Science | Books | Traveling
The first artist to utilize a logo and establish a brand was Albrecht Dürer.
He created the monogram that is globally recognized by using the first two letters of his name.
Dürer's overall aura, the subliminal meanings he placed in his artwork, and his obsession with perfection fascinate me.
His self-portrait, which is on display in the Pinakothek in Munich, is unquestionably his most well-known work.
Sadly, I have never seen the original, but my seven-year-old daughter proudly send me a picture of herself in front of it. “Look, dad, I got to meet Dürer in person!" she exclaimed, smiling.
MY HISTORY
Press Photography
In the late 90s I started my career at a local city magazine called „BREMER“ in my hometown Bremen in Germany.
The majority of people are familiar with Beck's Beer, which is brewed beside the Weser River, the soccer team Werder Bremen or the tale of the "Bremer Stadtmusikanten".
A couple of years later, I found myself in the editorial office of the "BILD Zeitung", Germany's largest newspaper. It was an exciting time that greatly influenced my life. Many reports, faces and photos remain in my memory to this day.
PAPARAZZI
While working for „BILD“, I stumbled into a much more lucrative business. I shifted my attention to taking pictures of celebrities, and soon I became one of the top German paparazzi.
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However, Germany quickly grew to be too little for the young lad who yearned to travel the world, so I spent my summers pursuing celebrities in Saint Tropez / France, Porto Cervo / Italy, Puerto Portals / Spain, or Monaco. In 2010 the German TV network RTL filmed several reports with me, for a brief period of time and I also gained a little amount of notoriety.
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Soon the summer months were no longer enough to satisfy my hunger for hunting. I wanted to go to the metropolises and the big wide world lured me to America.
L.A. calling
In the meantime I had teamed up with a video colleague and we first tried our luck in Miami. A year later we went to L.A. and rented an apartment in Beverly Hills.
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But the lavish lifestyle, West Hollywood's parties, the smell of cash, and the pursuit of exclusive images all left their mark.
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I experienced a kind of burnout at one point and finally decided to put an end to the crazy paparazzi period.
Thank god, the reason has triumphed. With the birth of my daughter I returned back to Germany to be with my family.
Photo shooting, behind the scenes. Model makes fun with her bra.
Photo shooting, behind the scenes. Model makes fun with her bra.
Photo shooting, behind the scenes. Model makes fun with her bra.
Photo shooting, behind the scenes. Model makes fun with her bra.
Back in Germany
Of course, my small family now resided in the foreground, but I never put my camera down. I resumed my former profession as a photographer and even dug out my vintage Mamiya RB67 medium format camera, which was built in 1976 and the same age as me, to start developing film once more. Customers demanded for authentic images, and the scarcity of photographers still shooting on film increased with the digitalization craze.
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My history occasionally caught up with me. Periodically I was asked to talk as a guest lecturer on the topic of ethics at a private university in Hamburg about paparazzi, their methods, their morality and the power of photographs which can ruin an entire life with just one single shot.
New life in Ireland
What am I expected to do in a place where it just rains and people sit drunk in the pub, I wondered when my wife initially lured me to Ireland years ago. She had already arranged for us and our new born little princess to take a flight to Ireland as I had just arrived in Germany from sunny Los Angeles.
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I had no idea that I would fall in love with this island only a few miles from Knock Airport. It was anticipated that the trip to Doolin would take longer than expected. There was so much to learn about and take pictures of that I had to stop every few kilometers. Sometimes an old ruin, a graveyard, or the sky's light, which created strange new patterns every minute. We agreed that we would give up our life in Germany and plunge into the adventure of Ireland.
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Today we live here and I can't get enough of the beauty of nature and I look forward to possibly welcoming you as a new customer in the near future.
Thanks in advance Marcus
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