silvan wick
I was born and raised in Switzerland. The urge to see places far over the horizon is one that got to me early in my youth. At age of 16 I traveled to the US for the first time on my own. Helping my uncle on his dairy farm for 6 months ingrained my first and lasting impression of the American Midwest.
Four years later I completed my Chef Training in Switzerland and that led to more travel and working in different, sometimes exotic locations. For such a trip, I was hired on, on a early 20th century style square rigged sailing ship (Tea Clipper) as a Chef. On board and especially up in the rigging, I got to use a friends Yashica SLR camera to take pictures. The view through the finder with a fish-eye lens was something else. The curvature of the earth was exaggerated even more by the lenses distortion. I believe it set the hook in me to get my own camera. Armed with my first SLR film Camera I started to shoot, mostly slide film...
On a trip from Bermuda to California in the early eighties I put a Canon F1 to use, at the time the F1 was the best Canon builth SLR. It became a faithful companion on many trips, like cruising on the Sea of Cortez, east of the Baja California peninsula. Here I got to photograph jumping Dolphins, breaching Humpback wales and nesting birds on many isolated islands. It is a magical desert- like place, full of life, but it's mostly in and around the sea!
I relocated to the Caribbean in late 1989, more precisely Cabarete, a small but growing resort town on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. Cabarete is now one of the top 10 destinations for water-sports enthusiasts around the world. I lived there for 20 years. Over 10 years I ran a Windsurf & Kitesurf Center. The next 9 years I worked as a freelance photographer.
Shooting water sports became a passion, fostered by the ideal environment: Surfers, Wind- and Kitesurfers as well as small boat sailors, tropical warm water, strong winds and an unpredictable Atlantic Ocean, all paired with great light.
I currently live in Switzerland in the town of St.Gallen. It is located in the north- eastern corner of the country near Lake of Konstanz.
Portrait, Travel, Lifestyle and Landscape photography dominate my work right now...