About

Purpose of the site

I created this site to keep track of my own pictures and memories and to share them with my friends, family and everyone that has a heart for photography or travel.

Welcome :-)

Who am I?

You are interested in reading about me? I’m flattered really, I’m not sure how much there’s to say, I’ll start at the beginning and we’ll see how far we get…

I was born in a small city in Belgium named Diest, there I got the wonderfull but confusing name ‘Siel’ which is not a common name to get in Belgium or anywhere in the world for that matter. Don’t be confused like so many before you, Siel is a GIRLs name, and after years of spelling out my name to confused teachers and administrative personnel, my name seemed to work out better in the international community where in English the pronounciation is exactly the same as ‘Seal’; the singer, the animal, … there’s plenty of Seals in the English vocabulary to not get AS confused as the Dutch/Flemish speaking community.

Photography is a family trait from my father’s side, my grandfather liked it, my father likes it and now it seems I got the bug as well. I grew up with photography around me and got really interested in it in secundary school when going on schooltrips to Iceland and Istanbul with a quite decent camera for a teenager. I expanded and improved my gear and style when traveling through Suriname, Mali, Zambia and Namibia. Here I learned the importance of a good balance between the amount of photogear, the quality of the photos and being comfortable while traveling.

At the moment I’m 25 years old and obtained a Master/Graduate in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation through an international program in which I lives and studied abroad for 2 years. Living in several different countries the past years have made photography more of a daily occupation rather than a travel hobby.  I’ve also recently started to experiment with underwater photography to capture the creatures of the deep (well at least as deep as a rec. diver can go, around 30m/100ft). This site is a good outlet to share my adventures in a creative way, with few words and lots of pics!

My passion in a few words

Travel, Photography, Biology, Geology, Ecology, Environment, Oceans, Hiking, Nature, Vegetarianism, Singing, Thinking, Diving, Yoga, Languages, …

I’m also part of a travel blog with a few friends, here you can find actual stories of my journeys. Go check it out: http://pinchofadventure.wordpress.com/

My father just started a photo site as well: http://bartwellensphotography.wordpress.com/

Thanks for your interest and hope you enjoy the site.

Siel

PS. The rest of this site is virtually without pics of myself, so I put some down here. Sometimes it’s kinda fun to see who’s behind the blog I guess! ;-)

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