MichaelZelbel

I am an amateur photographer operating a photo studio in Duesseldorf, Germany. I accept bookings for fashion and beauty and nudes. For fellow photographers who love beauty and nude photography I am posting all of my tricks and findings on my beauty photoraphy blog SmokingStrobes.com. My personal mission with photography is bringing together the cultures of East and West.

But why? Let me quickly tell you my story:

Way back in 2005 the cheeky me took a photograph of my new girlfriend in the bathroom.

On the picture she is taking a shower and the shower curtain attaches nicely to her round buttocks. I had no clue about photography at that time.

I was lucky that the camera I used was much better on taking images than I was, so the photo that we made turned out to be not too bad. My girlfriend and I really loved this photograph and we both wanted to do more of that.

Now we are already married for a couple of years, but photography is more fun for both of us than ever before.

For me it even has become a mission. I am from little good old Germany while my wife is from China. Of course our buddies, friends and relatives were asking us all sorts of question - some of which were rather strange. Do German people think that Chinese people are a sort of aliens? Do Chinese people think the same about German people? Well, some of them do - and they don't mean it in a bad way. My grandma is loving my wife like her own child and she is curious in an innocent way when she is asking my wife if they already have electricity where she is coming from (which btw. is Beijing).

So I started wondering if I could not build the one or the other bridge between the to continents by uniting them with a hobby that is a lot of fun, that is popular in pretty much all countries and which requires a good deal of openess and trust: nude photography. Guess what - it works! Being involved in nude photography people from both cultures all of a sudden develop a very good understanding for eachother. I'm loving it!