About
About
I’m Ethan Walker, a photographer and occasional filmmaker based in Germany. I make long, quiet series about places where weather does most of the composing: open water, high ground, fog, and cities in the hour after work.
I came to photography through printing rather than through cameras. For years the part I enjoyed most was the darkroom and later the inkjet — seeing how a file holds up at forty centimetres, deciding how dark a shadow can be before it stops being a place. That still shapes how I shoot: slowly, with the final print in mind, and with a strong preference for returning to the same location until it gives up something new.
Approach
I work in series rather than single images. A series usually starts as a single location that keeps pulling me back, and finishes when I can sequence twelve or so frames that say something none of them say alone.
I keep processing restrained. I adjust exposure, white balance and contrast, remove the occasional dust spot, and add nothing that wasn’t in front of the lens. If the light was flat, the picture is flat.
Short films came later, as a way of showing what a long exposure hides: the water moving, the fog drifting, a single car crossing a valley. They are made with the same camera and the same habits — tripod, one position, let the scene do the work.
Equipment, in general terms
- Cameras
- A full-frame mirrorless body for most work and an older one as a backup; both quiet and weather-sealed.
- Lenses
- A 24, 35, 50 and 85 mm, a 70–200 mm zoom and a macro. The 35 mm does most of the work.
- Support
- One heavy tripod for the coast, one light one for walking, and a geared head I wouldn't give up.
- Filters
- Six- and ten-stop neutral density, a polariser I rarely use, and a lens cloth for every pocket.
- Printing
- Pigment inks on matte cotton rag and baryta papers; everything is proofed before it's sold or shown.
Timeline
- First serious camera, bought second-hand; most of the first year spent learning to meter snow.
- Started printing at home and stopped sharing anything I hadn't printed first.
- This site goes up, with a single series and a journal that was mostly notes to myself.
- First group show, in a converted printworks; three prints from an early coastal series.
- Began making short films alongside the stills, starting with fog on the lakes.
- Moved to working almost entirely in long, multi-season series.
- Still Water and Dune Grammar; a small run of prints for each.
- Concrete Hours and Night Traffic, both made close to home.
- Snowline in January, Low Water through the spring; currently sequencing both into a book dummy.
Prints & licensing
Most photographs on this site are available as pigment prints in small editions, made and checked by me. I also license images for editorial and book use, and take on a small number of commissions each year — usually landscape or architecture, usually slow.
Get in touch with the series and frame number, and I’ll reply with sizes and details.