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Daniel Reuber
Landscape photographer based in Germany
Driven by his passion for art, Daniel started his journey as a landscape photographer in a really particular way: editing photographs. For many years Daniel edited the photos that he found to be appealing online. He dedicated many hours painting raw moments, always adding his own mark to each of them.
Eventually, around 2011, Daniel decided to capture as well unique experiences. After shooting all types of photography in Thailand, a trip that was a tipping point in his life, Daniel chose to focus on landscape photography.
His vision (which is around 10% of the vision the average person has due to a disability) played a role in this regard. Landscapes stay mostly the same, so this is a great opportunity for Daniel to elaborate his art.
Even if exploring new places is quite motivating for him, what Daniel enjoys the most is the editing process. This is because he can zoom into every detail of the photo and discover things he did not see on the shooting location. The raw photograph is his canvas, where he applies the lights and colors while his creativity runs wild.
Today Daniel works as a freelance art director, but every time he gets the chance, he travels to explore the most exciting sites around the world. This allows him to do what he loves the most: create art to inspire people!
Welcome Daniel! Your first picture on Instagram was posted the 14th of April 2017. So not that along ago actually. Yet, you have been sharing some amazing content! Can you explain us where does your passion for travel comes from and when was the first time you captured a photo with a DSLR camera?
There’s a lot of things to say about this one. Firstly, my Instagram journey started in 2014 on another account, but I was doing photography for even a longer time and never had the idea to connect these two things – so my Instagram was more of a personal feed of memories rather than the portfolio it has become nowadays. To start at the very beginning of my journey, I began my photography journey on the other side – with Photoshop. I had a lot of fun editing images from the Internet and giving them my personal look. Later, I thought about trying to capture some cool images myself instead of spending my time editing other people’s work. I think this was around 2011.
Since then, I switched from basically photographing anything I found visually attractive to portraits, street and candid before I discovered my love for landscape photography. I realized that when I spent my semester abroad in Thailand. After shooting portraits there for some time I started to enjoy the beautiful beaches, cityscapes and rural areas.
Why did I stick to landscape photography since then? I guess for several reasons. One of them might be that I am nearly blind. So, due to my low vision (which is around 10% of the vision the average person has) I can’t shoot things that move very fast or are small. Landscapes stay the same (at least for long enough time for me to capture them as I prefer) and are wide, you can capture a whole scene where a lot of things happen. This also motivates me to roam new places and challenge myself over and over again. The fun part for me starts when I edit these shots: On the one hand, I can zoom into every detail of the shot and discover things I did not see when I was on that location in person.
"On the other hand, I can let my creativity run wild and I like to see my raw shot as my canvas to paint on with light and colors."
You have a clear and well-defined style that is pretty distinctive in my opinion. How did you develop such style?
Thanks for the kind words! Editing is quite important to me, so I really appreciate this feedback. To answer your question, by trial and error. As I said, I started the photography game on the editing side and so I was used to just try things out and see where it takes me with my shots. Starting with Photoshop and later changing to Lightroom – nowadays it’s a mixture of both. I also use Lightroom Mobile a lot, especially for my Instagram shots, all running on a variety of Apple devices. For some more advanced retouching I also have a big Wacom tablet (which I use far too little) to paint on which makes my workflow easier. I think that’s it for the gear porn part of the question!
Talking about my personal style, I think it just came from a moment where I edited a picture and thought that this certain colorway suits the image very well. When I find a nice palette of colors, I usually grab some older shots and try to apply it to them as well – and I guess that’s where it started to become something like a “signature” color, the greens and blues that dominate most of my landscape shots. This “monotone” look leads to a good consistency throughout your images so people might connect images to you just from the editing style. I guess this is something that has become quite common among Instagram photographers and it’s just the way things work on that certain platform. What I often do is to re-edit shots especially for prints in books or canvas, to create some more variation in my imagery.
Can you explain to us your editing process with an example?
By creating presets, editing has become a lot easier, so you can apply a basic “style” to an image and then start tweaking all the sliders to a good point that makes sense for the individual shot. This is the short version.
To go further into detail, I usually have these 5 or 6 shots that are my lookbook. When I start editing a new shot, I think of which of these 5 or 6 images’ styles would suit the new shot best, to have like a “goal” in mind I want to work towards. I then usually do basic adjustments. All that follows now is done in Lightroom or Lightroom Mobile adjusting the white balance, which I tend to abuse a lot during my editing process constantly switching back and forth. This is mostly because I do a lot of local adjustments with masks and gradients to adjust tones only in specific area. This often changes the overall look of an image, so I need to re-adjust the global settings over the whole process.
For example, I like to keep my white balance more in the negative area which brings us some cold tones and then do local adjustments and add some warmth, especially in the green areas while I do the opposite thing in the blues to strengthen that contrast of the two tones. In the end I work a lot with light, brightening up certain areas of interest and darkening others that distract the image or subject (often resulting in a vignette-like look). And I have some little secrets which I use here and there but won’t share with everyone, because no good magician ever told his best tricks 😉 But you can achieve great results with the above-mentioned workflows!
How do you sustain a life full of travels? Is there any trick or tip you can share with us?
At this point, it gets a bit depressing for me. Because a life full of travels is not what I am living, disappointingly. For me, travels are rewards to myself for the hard work I am doing most of my lifetime. It is a thing that motivates me to save money and invest it into new equipment or the next adventure. However, from time to time I find a way to take a break from my job as a freelance art director (or at least a way to spend some days abroad taking my laptop with me and working remotely).
I guess it’s just a question of how you set your priorities. Do I have an endless list of insurances? No. Do I go out a lot to restaurants? No. Do I buy fancy clothes? Maybe. No, just kidding. But can I take this money and afford a five-day trip to the Dolomites? Yes. Do I have friends I can share costs with? Yes. Is sleeping in a car or camper the better choice than the 5-star hotel? For me, yes!
I guess in a world where I can fly from Cologne to London for 10 bucks or rent a car for 150 Euros a week, there is no excuse not to save some money to do these things. Unfortunately, I don’t have a driver’s license because of my disability, but fuck that!
What is your approach when it comes to planning your trip and finding your ideal locations?
This varies a lot from trip to trip and depending on how much time I have from the point I decided to do a trip to the moment it starts. My trip to Norway this year was very well planned. We rented a camper, I researched a lot on what to bring, where to go, and what to consider on longer hikes. I also created a personal Google map where I pinpointed all the locations I found interesting and tried to create routes that we could drive – something I really recommend for a trip where you know that you will have Internet service most of the time. Otherwise you can also download these maps. As I am working a lot in the digital world, I really like using such tools. So, overall, this trip was very well planned and thus we didn’t spend too much time on decisions where to head next right at the spot. This helps a lot making the most out of an adventure.
On the other hand, I went to the Dolomites recently. And this trip wasn’t as precisely planned as the one mentioned above. I went on this trip with two guys I’ve never met before (and this is a part of Instagram that I really like – find people who share the same passion as you do) who picked me up after I took a train for 5 hours and went straight towards Italy. I had basically no idea what the guys had planned and just started researching on my train ride what awaits me. So, we had a lot of spontaneous decisions that made this trip the complete opposite of my Norway trip – and I loved it! Somehow it worked out very well and we had a lot of fun together and one of these spontaneous decisions even lead to me meeting one of my old roommates in the middle of Italy at a lake super randomly.
So I think as a conclusion, there is no perfect recipe for a trip, but being with the right people and knowing how to organize things is very important.
I am curious about the drone shot from Mardalsfossen. Suddenly it was everywhere, and I am sure that many accounts discovered your gallery through this shot. Can you explain to us the story behind it?
This one was my break-through shot I’d say that opened my photography to a larger audience. In numbers, I guess from all the pages that shared this shot I got 4-5,000 new followers. I didn’t like this in the beginning, as I thought they’re only here for that one shot and not really interested in my overall work. However, I think only a handful of those people are now ones I interact with on a regular basis. But for sure, I am thankful this one had such a viral success.
Mardalsfossen is a popular waterfall in western Norway that was definitely on my bucket list for our road trip. Even standing at least 200m away from the waterfall, I still got wet from the mist of the water racing down into the valley.
"To capture this shot, I really had a battle with my drone as I lost the transmission signal of the image and so I had to shoot blindly."
Luckily the GPS signal was still working, so I was able to fly the bee back to where I lifted off. Unfortunately, there isn’t really anything in frame for a comparison of size to give you a feeling of how huge this waterfall is – it is actually one of the biggest in Europe! But let me tell you I had to fly very high to capture this image and, without seeing what I was shooting at this point, this one turned out very well and I think it was worth taking the risk.
From “regular” Instagram user to “influencer”. What is the one thing that people don’t see along this process?
I am not sure if I can tell something about that as I would consider myself still a “regular” user. I’m not getting paid for anything, no sponsored trips or products and to be honest I don’t like the term “Influencer” as it is mostly used. I don’t want to influence other people, I want to inspire them. Photography is my passion and my hobby that’s where I want to keep it for now. I’m not really looking to monetize my photography on a big scale, maybe selling some prints here and there but nothing really business orientated. I really enjoy it as something you can improve in and that motivates you to go out, learn new things, get to know new people and places, but without any pressure to deliver a certain result. This is what I want to share with the people. Of course, numbers count as well to me as they kind of make the value of your work measurable without selling it. So I try to interact a lot with people who do good work (in my opinion) to “pay” them for it with my attention, my feedback or just with a like. The far more important part to me is to create connections with other people who are in this specific niche of photography and to share experiences, tips, and maybe create memories together. This can take quite some time but is worth it. So, I try to interact with my “audience” as much as I can.
For those who want to know the cool Instagram hacks: Use good hashtags, some more popular ones, some more specific ones. Don’t do that follow/unfollow shit, post AND interact on a regular basis so people know that you are really interested in their work and not just attention-whoring. Keep your feed consistent when it comes to content (not a mixture of car porn, selfies, nice landscapes and some cat videos that your aunt sent you) and you have a good basis to make your account grow – if your content is relevant and good, may it be your posted images or your way of interacting with others through comments, DM’s or whatever. Not that I’m an expert in this, but this is what I did and still do.
As a photographer, I am sure that you feel attached to all your photos. All your pictures represent unique moments of your life. However, among your works, do you have any picture that you really like? Which is your favorite photo?
I have one picture that I really like. But it has nothing to do with my Instagram or landscape photography at all. It is a portrait of a man in Thailand that I shot during the big demonstrations in Bangkok at the end of 2013. I was really interested in the political situation in this country during that time and went to a lot of protesting sites – sometimes that was very stupid and dangerous as there were several shootings, violent fights between police and political activists and a lot of destruction in the city. I’m telling you this in detail because I think these are reflected in this shot of an old man I captured on a protest site.
"I chose this one because it is the depiction of a memory that you will find nowhere else but in my head."
In landscape photography, it is easy to recreate images to a certain point and this happens often. Find the spot, go there, hope for some good conditions and shoot. In street photography, this is not the case. Nothing will happen the same ever again and you must capture that moment. That’s what I am really proud of because I am – as I said – not too good at shooting moving subjects.
What is the most beautiful thing that travel has allowed you to do?
hmm that’s a hard one. I think meeting new people sounds a bit obsolete, but there have been some good friendships I made in Thailand. That’s a big reason why I still go there from year to year. But lately I have travelled more with people that I somehow knew and focused more on the places, rather than the people, which is okay for a so-called landscape photographer. So the waterfalls in Iceland or the huge mountains in Norway definitely were some candy for the eye. But I think the mix of both is what really makes travelling so amazing. It creates stories that you can tell your friends and to the world. It makes you a more mature person for overcoming the challenges that you might face and forms you as a person when you have to leave your comfort zone from time to time – physically and socially.
Imagine yourself at the beginning of your professional career as a photographer. What four pieces of advice would you give to yourself?
So, let’s make it a list here.
(1) Future Daniel, sell your Nikon equipment as soon as you change to Sony cameras. It will decrease in value drastically and it will make you angry you didn’t sell it earlier. And in general, don’t waste your time thinking that gear makes the shot. There will always be someone with a Canon 1000D and a broken kit-lens who takes far better shots than you do.
(2) Get to know Max Muench before he becomes this famous landscape photographer he is today. So he will answer your comments and offer you a spot in the German Roamers team. These guys rock!
(3) Start using bookehlicious foreground elements before anyone else is doing it – this will become a huge trend on this platform called Instagram. Trust me!
(4) If you really like photography and it makes you happy – do it. Even though people might wonder or tell you that you will never be a good photographer, in whatever genre, that you should maybe look for another hobby that suits your physical abilities better, show them that they are wrong.
Is there any artist/photographer who has inspired your art? Can you name three?
I’m a very big fan of Max Rive, because he takes amazing pictures and has a great style in his editing. All his photographs are from places I’ve never seen before and always surprise with a unique angle, great light conditions, and beautiful colors.
Another name to mention here is Gregory Crewdson, with whom I first got in touch in my art classes back at school (not in personal, of course) but I really like the way he uses light in his scenes and makes them look super dramatic and cinematic.
Last, but not least, I think said man Max Muench gets the spot. His pictures are very similar to my landscape stuff, but just a lot better. And from what I have seen and heard on interviews and podcasts from this guy, I assume he is a kind person, too.
Any new projects coming up or countries you will be visiting soon?
For this year it’s only Ireland with my girlfriend who lived there for 5 years, probably in mid-December. Next year I will start off visiting Poland, then I really want to go to the Faroe Islands around my birthday, which is in May. And in the summer, we are planning to go to Iceland again with the guys I recently went to the Dolomites with. So, you see, I made some real friends here! And maybe to Thailand in the winter. I haven’t gone there for two years now!
Can you fix the world in one sentence?
Ok, this one is for all the German people out there who know the culture and language from Cologne, my hometown:
“Et hätt noch immer jot jejange.”
Which can be translated to mean something like:
"Fate will do whatever it wants and you can’t do anything against it. So, keep calm and chill. Everything will be alright!"
