Behind
the lens.
Henk Reinicke
A life spent looking closer.
One of my earliest wildlife photographs showed little more than a yellow dot. I still remember the encounter clearly.
My father and I had just come out of the woods when I noticed something golden moving at the forest’s edge. It was a yellowhammer. Until then, I hadn’t known that a bird with such vivid colours lived here in Germany.
I had spent much of my early childhood walking in the forest with my father. We encountered deer, foxes, birds and toads, and I became increasingly fascinated by the animals around us. When I was nine, I began wishing I could keep something of those encounters. For my tenth birthday, I received a small point-and-shoot camera. My father bought one around the same time.
The photographs gradually improved, but that first sense of discovery stayed.
Further afield.
The same curiosity.
Eventually, we began travelling together specifically to photograph wildlife. Estonia was our first destination abroad. We returned four times, drawn to the quiet landscapes around Matsalu and encounters we still talk about: a golden jackal watching us beside a hay bale, and our first owl, a Ural owl in the snow.
Later journeys took us north to Norway and Finland, then to the Seychelles. Each place brought unfamiliar species, different light and new ways of looking.
My father remains part of this story. Many of the encounters behind these photographs are memories we share.
What began with a small camera and a distant yellow bird continues with every journey — including the ones close to home.
