Kouta
I was born and grew up in Finland, I spent my summers among lakes and forests. I feel privileged to have inherited a strong relationship with nature from my parents. From the age of eleven years, I made an annual wilderness hike of about one week with my family in Finnish Lapland. However, the nature of these wildernesses is tundra or open woodland, and I have always been fascinated by the thickest forests possible. More southerly Finland has a lot of forest, but it is almost entirely influenced by forestry. So, as soon as I was able, I started looking for virgin forests in other countries. Since 2006 I have lived in Germany, where there is less forest, though the forest is more densely wooded than that in Finland. After some travelling in distant countries, I became more and more attracted to the virgin forests of Europe, and the combination of Finland and Germany has given me a good opportunity to get to know and compare both boreal and temperate forests. Participating in a project to find and measure the tallest European trees by species has allowed me to explore many reserves otherwise off-limits.
I have tried to put some effort into the photography of virgin forests. In my photos I mostly try to truthfully show what the forest looks like. I have taken most of the photos with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLR camera and Canon EF 50 mm f/1.4 and EF 24–70 mm f/2.8L lenses from a tripod. The older images were mostly shot on Fuji Provia 100 film. In some locations, the lightness of the equipment has been important and I have used a Nikon Coolpix B700 superzoom compact camera, which has also helped me to identify tropical tree species.
Thomas
Grown up in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, between the valleys and mountains of the Eifel and the Moselle, I have lived in the Bavarian Forest from 2007. Here I also discovered my passion for virgin forests and old trees, which I have since explored in many trips. A focus in recent years have been the temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, which fascinate me particularly, but also the virgin forests of Europe and eastern Europe inspire me. From the beginning, photography has played a central role for me and I am always in search of the perfect virgin forest photo. I prefer landscape shots with a classic composition, i.e. a prominent foreground emphasized by a wide-angle lens that leads the eye into the background. I also take detail shots of special structures and patterns, e.g. in dead wood, but rarely.
I use Nikon digital SLR cameras, currently Nikon D850 and lenses from Nikon and Zeiss between 18 and 200 mm focal length. All my photos are taken from a tripod, I usually use a polarizing filter and develop the RAW files in Lightroom. My photography is positioned between documentation and interpretation while I do not follow any documentary demands in my pictures. Nevertheless, it is important to me not to artificially create a mood that was not there on location and therefore I reject, for example, Orton effect, Luminar light rays, etc. in the image processing.
Christoph
My name is Christoph Hase (born in 1973), I use the web for work. Together with my friend Kouta we launched baumzaehlen.de back in 2009. We canceled the domain later. If you are interested in why the domain was called baumzaehlen.de: here is a link to the old site. In the meantime, we have created the current page together with a lot of joy, (Kouta’s) effort, work and fun.
Don
Born in England in 1941, I visited Finland for the first time 1964–1966 on what had been intended as a brief holiday, but stretched somehow to 18 months. I returned here in 1971 and again got stuck – been here ever since. Nearing retirement I moved to live in the country, and ”discovered” trees, leading to a serious case of dendrofever. Now approaching my 82nd birthday, this has to some extent diminished to manageable proportions, having borne fruit as about 350 woody species growing in my 2 hectares.
Some years ago Kouta contacted me via e-mail and I was happy to join his team, checking the English texts he – and more recently others – have written.
Dominic
I was born in America in 2001 within the state of Louisiana, where my father worked as an Oceanography professor, and my mother as a research scientist at Louisiana State University. As Croatians, they had immigrated from former Yugoslavia in 1990s, when the war there had begun. Spending my childhood’s summers back home in Croatia among the incredible landscapes of the Balkans, I do not recall a time where I was not fascinated by the wildernesses around me. Aside from Croatia, many trips around the United States made me appreciative of various landscapes and biomes. My parents nurtured my nature, and I had always imagined and hoped to find something incredible out there. Whether it was a bend along a trail obscuring what lay ahead, a distant valley far from all civilization, or a towering peak so insurmountable that it covered the horizon, curiosity has always kept me going forward towards the unknown. I was obsessed with what lay hidden in every forgotten and wild corner of the world. In my mind, it is as close to the source of life as one can be.
To see the Earth as it truly was before changes inflicted on it by humankind is a rare privilege in the present day. And what is a better representation of pristine than an old growth forest? Mountain or coastal vistas with giant peaks, cliffs, islands, and incredible waterfalls or lakes are a sight to behold, but these landscapes may still appear relatively unchanged by human influence. In contrast, forests are highly sensitive to any changes in their environment, making them ideal to determine how intact an ecosystem is. Visiting many different forests in America inspired me, especially the primordial forests of the West Coast with their gigantic conifers and endless mysterious expanses. I took the time to broaden my focus towards all beautiful things in nature, whether they are a hidden intricacy barely visible to the naked eye or an endless vista of incomprehensible scale.
My interest in recording and studying trees and forests began when I was a child with simple games between my parents and I where we would compete as to who could spot the largest tree of a certain species first. As I grew this interest became more focused, and I eventually started learning how to conduct objective measurements of tree dimensions and forest structure. I have spent extensive time in the wilderness amongst highly experienced guides, hikers, and explorers who could survive alone for days on end. Through their help I was taught to reach remote locations and I experienced revelations I never would if I had I stuck to the trails alone and never bothered to see what lay beyond. To me, finding and documenting these primordial remnants of forest in their true state is about adventure, discovery, and the ever-elusive dream of “what if?”.
Regarding photography, I am unfortunately limited to a simple Samsung S21 phone camera which requires certain types of lighting for quality photos, which I do my best to capture. I use a TruPulse 200 laser for height measurements.
Alberto
I was born in 1984 in Madrid and lived there until I was 27, when I decided to move to run rural accommodation refurbished by my parents in Camariñas, Galicia, a town on the northwest coast of Spain. Since I can remember, I have been passionate about nature and animals, as well as the rural world and old things with history, such as hundred year old trees. In the loneliest and wildest places is where I feel most alive.
