Interview with Martijn van der Nat

Hi Martijn! Tell us about yourself in two sentences - who are you?

I’m a Dutch landscape photographer, I'm 43, married, and father of three wonderful kids. Besides my work as a graphic designer, I spend my time taking and creating photographs. Sometimes commissioned, sometimes for a stock agency, but always for fun. My photographic themes are landscapes and architecture, but portraits take my interest as well. I try to have a minimal approach to create strong compositions. Less is more. My work can be characterised as graphic, colourful and dramatic.

QWhat's the weirdest situation you've found yourself in while taking a photograph?

A I was out with a client taking photographs of freight trains and we snuck into a railway shunting yard at 5:00 in the morning, just so that we could get awesome images of freight trains at dawn. There must have been over 30 tracks of rail and we frantically ran across the rails back and forth from one train to the other just to get as much out of the amazing light. Suddenly a new train came rushing in over the tracks. There were so many rail switches and tracks that we could not tell which track the train would go down. Luckily it missed us by two tracks… Later that day my client and I realised that we could have gotten into serious trouble if we had been caught. And we did not even want to think about what could have happened if the train had taken a different track...

QWhat do you shoot on? What's your favourite set up?

A I have a Nikon D90, my two go-to lenses are the ever-so-sharp Tokina 11-16 2.8, and the mister do-it-all Tamron 17-50 2.8. Most of the time I shoot from a tripod and with a remote control and mirror lockup just to get the maximum sharpness. I like to get it as good as I can in-camera. I use Formatt HiTech graduated filters to balance the sky. It's easy to make a good image great in post processing. It's not so easy to make a bad image better…

QWhat's your number one tip for an aspiring photographer?

AThink about what subject you would like to have, then imagine what light/conditions it would look best in. Search for the right location, wait for the light/conditions to be just right, and then all you have to do is show up there on time. If the results are not what you had hoped for then do it again and again and again. Learn from yourself till you get it right. But don’t give up.