About
My name is Michael Birkmose, I am 32 odd years old viking from Denmark. I am a geek, a traveler and a passionate photographer.
Ever since I got involved with student exchange during my university time, I have been fascinated with the world and its different cultures. Since that period of my life, I have always sorounded myself with internationals and been busy roaming the world – never able to stay at the same place for very long time, always having the itch to go roam the world. Actually it is a bit scary – the only times when I truly feel at home is when I am traveling!
In 2004 I purchased a digital SLR camera, but was not ever quite satisfied with the photographs I was able to produce. That was until I purchased an old Canon EOS 3 film camera and started working in the darkroom – it was one of those love at first sight encounters. I absolutely adore the beauty of a well crafted silver halide print on baryta paper. And working in the darkroom is a nice escape from modern everyday life!
Unfortunately I don’t have the opportunity to print in the darkroom any longer, but my passion for black and white photography still remains. Today I feel that digital cameras and inkjet printers have advanced enough to produce satisfactory prints, so I am quite pleased with the final results from this modern process. And of course I enjoy the increased possibilities with digital photography. But still in my eyes nothing beats silver halide.
So there you go – the constant itch to roam the world and my passion for photography, hence the name and purpose of this blog: Itchy feet photography. Here I try to share my stories and photographs from the road.
Some of the photographers that inspire me are:
- Henri Cartier-Bresson – I simply love his eye for composition and how he captures the moments of everyday life. He is the reason I purchased my Leica M6. And I love what his master printer was able to achieve with his well crafted prints!
- John Blakemore – I love his tullip work, and how he explores tonality. His creative use of the zone system is far more inspiring than Ansel Adams works in my opinion. When I was living in the England I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to print with him in the darkroom. It was like watching Yoda from Star Wars using the force.
- Eugene Smith – I love his dark prints and in my early days in the darkroom, my prints were inspired by his work.
- Kirsten Klein – A danish landscape photographer. I lover her painterly landscape photographs. She conveys a lot of emotion through her prints
- Alex Webb – I recently discovered his work, and I love his layered photographs and how he managed to capture every day moments in such an amazing manner.
I hope you will enjoy this website, the stories and the photography as much as I enjoyed creating them!