Abra Traffic at Dubais Creek

Frank De Luyck, a Belgian national residing for the last 10 years in the United Arab Emirates, commenced photography at the age of 18, but only started pursuing it more seriously 5 years ago (already 35 at the time)... initially starting off with a simple 35mm camera, he was quickly talked into changing to a digital system.

Dubais National Bank

He however noticed that the ease of digital capture (and its associated "chimping") did not quite pay off: instead of going up, the percentage of "on-the-money" shots actually went down. Therefore, after about 1 year of shooting digital, he was longing to go back to the familiar feel and results of slide film. He decided to move up to medium film and more particularly the panoramic format : specializing in nature, land- and cityscapes, it has become the perfect ratio to portray his view.

Petras Colonnase Street

"I purchased a Fotoman 617 and a used Fujinon 90mm lens in September last year. I immediately got hooked by the spectacular results of the camera: the immense slides show enormous amount of detail which I never saw with my digital system.

Petras Monastery at Dusk

The fact that the 617 system squeezes only 4 exposures out of a 120 medium format film, forces one to slow down, look at the scene, set up properly and only then take the picture - resulting for me personally in superior pictures.

Petras Siq

The Fotoman 617 camera is my primary system, and follows me everywhere. I even took it up into the remote Tien Shan mountain range of Kyrgyzstan - the lack of batteries meant i never had to worry about having to find electricity plugs, which by the way, were not available at these heights (3,000m and more) anyway.

New Years in Dubhai

Once back from a shoot, slides are being developed and scanned using an Epson Perfection V700 photoscanner. The resulting digital files are then being forwarded to Stock libraries.

AbuDhabi Emirates Palace

My pictures are respresented through Alamy, Gallo and Getty Images - from the moment I started submitting panos my sales started climbing".

Phira on Santorini Island

Frank's portfolio can be viewed on his website www.frankdeluyck.com, while his more recent photo-adventures can be followed at his photoblog www.frankdeluyck.com/photoblog.