SI Photo Club Photographer of the Quarter, Dieter Lantin

I was born at the end of WW II and grew up in rural Lower Saxony, Northern Germany. Following graduation from high school, I left my home town to enter a culinary school and a language institute in Cologne. After successfully completing school and three years of hotel training, I moved to Switzerland to work at the Baur au Lac, an outstanding, internationally known hotel in Zürich. After a short visit to Lugano, the Italian part of Switzerland, I immigrated to Montreal, Canada.

Thanks to my command of German, English, French, Italian and later Russian, I embarked on a successful airline career. In my position with Air Canada I was responsible for the development and implementation of the first “In Flight Business Class” offered by an international airline worldwide. It was soon copied by the entire industry.

In 1994, I decided to create my own business and founded our family owned service company offering interiors components to new and independent companies of the former Soviet Union, including Russia. Recent events have impacted the company negatively since 2021.

Through our engagement with the Jaguar Club of North Carolina and meeting members in Seabrook Island, my wife Heidi and I finally decided to build and move to our new home in Seabrook Island in 2000.

I discovered photography in my fifth year of elementary school, with the help of a simple camera called AGFA KLack . It was a simple box with a twelve picture photo roll. I was always curious about the functioning of a simple camera and it did not take me long to advance to better cameras, which I took with me wherever I went. I photographed friends who were happy when someone took their picture and presented them with the resulting photos.

I concentrated on taking photos for friends and relatives, but the most interesting part for me became nature photography with all the beauty of many outstanding features like animals, birds, beaches and forests. There is a plethora of beauty to be found and protected in the nature around us, which is both challenging and satisfying.

The most important issue for me is my ability to devote and contribute to the protection of nature in as many ways as possible. Responsible photography is my choice to contribute.

Dieter Lantin