Capturing the moments which truly mean something

Let me introduce myself. Hi, my name is Benjamin Sterz and I live in Aachen, a cozy city in Germany, right at the border to Belgium and the Netherlands. Currently, I study geography while working as a barista. Besides taking pictures, I also love playing the guitar, singing, and I am quite enthusiastic when it comes to coffee.

Growing up, I always felt comfort in expressing myself through art. This was probably the reason why I started playing the guitar almost 11 years ago. Since then music played a huge role in my life, so much that I started my YouTube channel in 2017 to share videos of me jamming to my favourite songs or even writing my own ones. However, the perfectionist inside of me strived for the best video quality possible, so I educated myself on how to capture professional video. This was also the moment when I started using my dad’s Canon 5D Mark III. He used to be a professional wedding photographer, so luckily I started my journey with great equipment. It didn’t take much until I stumbled upon terms like “cinematic“ and YouTubers such as Peter McKinnon and Matti Haapoja. I really liked the filmmaking process, and eventually, I deleted all of my videos 5 years ago to start sharing my little movies.

During that time, I also discovered Christian Mate Grab and the German Roamer Scene, which really motivated me to take my camera with me on my daily walks through the local countryside. I really enjoyed Christian Mate Grab’s cinematic travel vlogs, and I tried my best to copy his look and storytelling. But a good video is a lot of work, and it can get quite boring when there’s no story, which was the case in my projects since I didn’t travel a lot at that time.

This was the moment when I started shooting more photos. It was much easier to make the simple things look interesting through photography than it was through motion picture. But still, now I enjoy filming little short films every now and then.