About me

What about me?

My name is Rense. I’m behind the content of this website and on this page, you’ll find a bit more about me.
I was born in 1967 and raised in a small town, Franeker, in the north of the Netherlands together with my younger brother Johan.
As a little kid, I loved the outdoors and you could find me on my adventures everywhere. My parents had quite some anxious moments when their oldest son was nowhere to be found. Of course, they were not looking in the, for me, obvious places.

Photography

When I was a kid, not sure at what age, I was interested in photography. I remember taking photos with old Kodak cameras and flash blocks on top of it.
Using black and white films until colour films became available.

At 17, I bought my first Minolta 300s camera with some basic lenses. Wow, I was proud of that camera
I spend loads of films, making photos of everything.
At some point, I even started developing the films and making the prints myself as well. It was just awesome to do.

Other interests

Besides nature, wildlife, street and insects you may find out that military aviation is one of my biggest hobbies. Especially choppers but any other military section is interesting for me as well.
At the age of 20, I was in the selection procedure to become a helicopter pilot in the Royal Dutch Airforce.
In the 90’s The Netherlands made their choice to buy the Boeing AH-64 Apache. Obviously, besides the current poule of pilots, they needed young blood as well.
So, here I was at the age of 21, in the meantime, in the selected group of 20 people. Imagine that we started with a group of over 1500 people who had the same dream!
Awesome right?
The challenge was to be the best, in what the KLu was looking for because they only needed 12 new young aviators.

The curtain fell for me when I was 24-25 years old.
It had nothing to do with my ability to become a pilot. Obviously, when your reach that point where you’re one of the last 20 persons, you know you’re fitting in.
There was nothing wrong but the choices were made. My world fell apart. (honestly)

I worked in the offshore oil- and gas industries so flying was not an issue. On a daily or weekly basis, I flew in a chopper to different locations.
The light in photography was almost out.

Until I saw it again.

A new beginning with photography

Yes, it is still about me!

I picked back up photography in 2016.
In the same year, I bought my first digital camera, the Nikon D7200.
Blood crawls where it can’t go. I was back in business again.

After a while, due to some inspiration from a friend, I started making my own free webpage to show my photos in galleries.
It was nothing special actually.
At some point, I decided to grab the bull at the horns and make my own website, with my own domain.
Obviously, this is where we are now. You can find my galleries by following this link

A bit later I started posting on several social media platforms, like Twitter, but also on several other sites. The site where you can find my photos as well as Viewbug.
Down on the left menu, you’ll find the different platforms where I post one photo daily.
After a month the corresponding gallery is published as well.

Aviation

With regard to my aviation history, I became a member of several organizations to keep close.
In the past years, a lot has changed in the Dutch military.
Maybe it had to be like this for me because politics have not been the best friends of the military in The Netherlands.
Cutbacks and the sale of important components were a bad situation for everything.
Fortunately, this is changing. Although that required a situation in Ukraine. (which is horrible)

Well, that’s a little bit about me.

I hope you enjoy my work shown on this website.
Please come back and have a look or follow me on one of the social media platforms.

You’ll take care!