About

"There's a haunting quality to his work that makes even familiar images feel eerily new"
Irish Independent


Carsten Krieger is a professional landscape and nature photographer based in the West of Ireland. His unique images are highly acclaimed and over the past decade he has become one of Ireland’s leading photographers.
Conservation naturally plays an important role in his work. He has been working as staff photographer for the IPPC (Irish Peatland Conservation Council), was the picture editor & photographer for the environmental magazine Rocky Road and is currently working for the IWT (Irish Wildlife Trust) and is part of the international Meet Your Neighbours biodiversity project. Carsten is also part of the IWDG (Irish Whale and Dolphin Group) strandings scheme and is a rescue driver for the Irish Seal Sanctuary.

Carsten has to date published four books, including the best selling “The West of Ireland” and “The Wildflowers of Ireland”, and is currently working on several new projects. Carsten has had several successful solo and group exhibitions and his work also appears regularly in print and online magazines.
Beside his landscape and nature work Carsten also undertakes a limited number of commercial assignments each year, mainly for the tourism industry, and he is also an accomplished wedding photographer.

Photography and Nature have both been playing a part in my life from a very early age. I remember vividly rambling through the local forests and meadows of my hometown in Southern Germany, camera around my neck. Most of the times however photography was only an excuse to get outside and chase after all kinds of wildlife. More often than not the exposed film ended up in some drawer, undeveloped. Experiencing nature and enjoying the process of framing a shot was all I wanted.
Only in my late teens I discovered that a picture can be very powerful and that the right image at the right time can actually change things. Through the works of the late Fritz Poelking, Germany’s godfather of nature photography, and the American photographer Jim Brandenburg I started to take my own photography more seriously and see it as a possible career path.
However life got in the way and I ended up as a fully qualified pediatric nurse working on a ward for bone marrow transplantation. Looking back on the decade I spent working with terminally ill children I can only say it changed my life. Once you held the hand of a dying 5 year old you start looking at things differently.
Working in such a demanding job naturally left its marks and in 2002 my wife, also a pediatric nurse, and me decided its time for a change. Sometime later we found ourselves in the West of Ireland and I started calling myself a professional photographer.

Since then I have enjoyed the roller-coaster ride of a freelance artist. During the past decade I have learned a thing or two about the art of photography and became a better photographer in the process (I hope...). I switched from film to digital capture, mutated from a zoom lens enthusiast to a user of tilt & shift prime lenses, explored the secrets of colour and monochrome photography and discovered the triumvirate of successful image making: Beauty, Simplicity and Mystery. But most importantly I enjoyed countless thrilling and humbling experiences in the great outdoors.
For me being a photographer is more than a job, it’s a way of life and I never know where this journey will take me next.