At the age of seven my uncle gave me a camera for a present. At once I was fascinated by the medium of photography and less then a year later I was developing and printing my own pictures. In the mid eighties I started taking my camera to the rock concerts that I would attend, and by the age of fifteen I was taking pictures for numerous magazines. After completing art academy I specialized in music photography, shooting loads of concerts and portraits of artists like Kurt Cobain, Iggy Pop and Metallica , and record and magazine covers for the likes of Rolling Stone and NME. For a while I shot music videos and commercials, but I am still more fascinated by the still image than the moving image. After having traveled all over the globe, left and gone back to Amsterdam many times, and having lived in Los Angeles and New York, I am currently living in Bogota, Colombia shooting ad campaigns for anything from Chevrolet to Coca-Cola, and in my free time doing projects such as my ‘Photo of the Month’ (www.niels.com/month) and an ongoing project which is a homage to Colombia and its people (www.niels.com). Also I have a company (www.flasherz.co) that rents and sells photo and video equipment and is importer and distributor for brands like Hasselblad, Leica, Zeiss, Profoto etc. (http://www.facebook.com/flasherz.co) And I organize a photography congress in Bogota, with workshops, lectures, demos, expos etc for and by national and international photographers (www.foco.com.co). Oh yeah, and I build customized medium format photo solutions for aerial photography (www.foco.aero).Specialties: Portraiture, Music, Advertising, Fashion, Reportage