I’m a middle aged man.
The first pictures that I found fascination were macro-photography of minerals, which was the hobby of relatives. Minerals of the size of a few millimetres are hard to appreciate with the naked eye, but showing some dias with these macro photos to friends triggered their interest. These underestimated wonders of nature have great unexpected shapes and colours. I helped setting up the gear and was allowed to take some pictures too. At that time I had not even reached the age of 10.
For about 10 years I had national geography at home. I was mainly interested in the pictures, less in the stories.
My last fascination is portrait photography.
I will not point to a single picture, but rather to a series of photographers:
Ban Barker, Braca Nalezdic, Bruce Gilden, David Bailey, elio Elisofon, Francesca Woodman, Francesco Zizola, Giacomo Brunelli, Hanne Van Der Woude, Jacob Merkelbach, Jimmy Nelson, Llona Szwarc, Phillipe Halsman, Ron Galella, Rudy Archuleta, Terry Richardson, Vee Speers, Vivan Keulards & Weegee
I try to shoot with the gear at hand, which could range from old second hand Konika equipment (once upon a time; still have it sleeping in my cellar) to a cellphone or my current Nikon D7100 (travel zoom & some primes). I sincerely believe that light and creativity make the difference and are more important than the gear.