MAURICE SMALE 1971 Since 1999 I have been living in Alphen aan den Rijn, but I was born and raised in Amsterdam. Since 2006 I have been the father of a daughter. As a child, I was already taking photographs, which I developed and printed in a darkroom. I was around 10 or 11 years old at the time. Much later, I bought my first DSLR, a Canon 350D. In 2017 I completed a basic course at the Photography Academy in Rotterdam. There I was introduced to studio work and model photography. This experience made me so enthusiastic that I started to focus more on this field. Shooting a lot and constantly experimenting has brought me to where I am today. Now, in 2026, I have had many collaborations with models, often experimenting with new ideas or techniques. It always gives me a real thrill when the results match the original idea. I also regularly attend events where collaborations between photographers and models emerge, which usually results in strong images. In addition, I have attended several workshops by Toonen & Wientjens, who are perhaps among my favorite photographers. I met Ki Tan several years ago. I had signed up for a workshop where we would be using a shooting table. Ki had no idea how to set it up, so it was up to me to figure it out. Afterwards, I attended more workshops and also regularly visited the Fotofair and the Schnitzeljacht. As a child, I owned a Praktica camera, but since rediscovering photography, I have been using Canon. I also work with Elinchrom flash equipment in combination with color gels, light modifiers, smoke, soap bubbles, and more. For me, photography is purely a hobby. In everyday life, I work full-time as a sales engineer at a technical company that provides energy solutions using gas engines—so something completely different.