“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” Oscar Wilde

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The Excellent Adventure of Nicholas & Christina’s Venture Photography

Dr. Nicholas Roemmelt is a German pro landscape and adventurescape photographer living in the heart of the Alps (Tyrol / Austria) together with his wife Christina their two dogs. His occupation during much of the week is a dentist in his own dental office during the week and a photographer over the weekends. As Nicholas says, he swaps “offices” as often as possible. The mountains of the Alps (and of the world) have become his second “office” when he tries to capture those very fleeting moments when “you are most exposed to nature.”

Nicholas Roemmelt of Venture Photography

Since 2003 he has been creating adventure and landscape photography during the night. His work has won accolades and is featured on the Venture Photography website in Austria. As Nicholas says, “My photographic work especially focuses on starlit landscapes with the Milky Way or the dancing Aurora above. To emphasize the dimensions and to put the landscape in a scale you will often find a small ‘human element’ in my pictures. This is my way of telling the ‘story,’ to let you ‘see’ what we were seeing and let you ‘feel’ what we were feeling on location, in order to let you become a part of the adventure. In my opinion at no any other time of the day you can be more exposed to nature than during the dead of the night.”

Christina Roemmelt

Often, the human element in his stunning photos is his constant hiking partner and wife Christina. As Nicholas says, “Christina my wife, climbing partner, best friend and photo model. She is responsible for the logistics of our adventures and journeys although she is working as a dentist for children and is senior partner at our dental office. She is not only a motivator and knows how to tackle any kind of problem, she is my hardest critic, too. When she is not occupied in climbing an exposed rock or handling our two dogs on our hikes she is a photographer, too, running her own Blog, hiking and traveling with the dogs.”

Two well trained hikers and mountaineers.

Nicholas’ photos have been internationally awarded and published in many books, magazines and calendars. Nicholas also guides workshops and photo adventures. Nicholas’ photos and books are available for sale. To view his a portfolio of his stunning images and learn more about Nicholas and Christina, visit their the Venture Photography website in Austria.

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Notes

Like most of my videos, this one was made in just a few hours. It all started just the morning with the link to Nicholas’ website sent to me by friend Mike in San Francisco founder of Larsen & Pomada Literary Agency, the oldest literary agency in San Francisco. Thanks again Mike for picking something beautiful out of the smoggy, dreary, daily haze of the Internet. Not another rabbit hole to lose yourself in for a few hours but one of those rare uplifting experiences. Here, uplifting into the glory and majesty of the Alps that surround Nicholas and Christina.

Being a photographer myself – with a preference for landscape photography – I was struck by the article Mike sent and the spectacular night photos of Nicholas. Many featuring a great night sky of stars hovering over the Alps at night.

I visited his site and read through things on it. Nicholas didn’t say a lot about himself. Somewhere I read his father died last year and Nicholas said (somewhere) he looked for his father in the stars of his photos. He is not a big fan of words. There is really no need for him to be. His images speak for him much louder than words ever could.

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The website is an experience by itself and I recommend anyone interested in the images and philosophy of Nicholas spend a little time on the site. For me it was time very well spent. Time spent doing something that seems (in retrospect) more important than anything else I could be doing at this time today. One of those rare moments in time when you feel you’re spending time exactly at the place you should be spending time at. No one is yelling this into your ears. You simply – quietly – feel this rather than know it.

The thing that moved me the most was what Nicholas wrote about his wife Christina. Not only did she manage his dental office but she was also the constant partner with him on all of his photo shoots. This fact – husband and wife confronting these images together – had an effect on me. Muir and Emerson had always gone alone to confront nature. But here, a couple confronts nature as evidenced in the smartly photos of Nicholas.

I pulled many images from Nicholas’s website into my film program. I had many spectacular images. The software in the film program allowed each image four seconds. A few got eight seconds. This was fine for me. I wrapped the images in a beginning and end and then went looking for music for the film.

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As usual, I sorted the music library on my music library on my MacBook Pro. The images and the beginning and ending of the film came out to just around four minutes. I scrolled around a few pieces in my music library at the four minute level but the one that matched at the time of the film I’d made was the famous Bee Gees song “How Deep is Your Love.”

A song in 1977 at the height of the Disco era might just be a song delivered through the forces of simply being lazy and the its expression in synchronicity. More than all the thinking and pondering around this all. But for me, a song that fits against Nicholas’s amazing images is OK for now. Maybe there is better sounds or music to juxtapose Nicholas’ images against?

However, when all is said and done, the video above, made in a few hours after the post from Mike this morning, feels good to me. I mentioned above that those few hours seeing the images of Nicholas gave me an important perspective on life. As I observed, it consisted of a special time outside the regular daily time of reality in our modern world. In effect, it was a reminder of the powerful presence of nature in our world. And, importantly, the power of confronting this presence with a partner in life rather than the loneliness of Muir. Or Emerson.