About
Hi, I'm Thomas.
At the end of the journey, stillness.
A self-taught Swiss photographer. The rest of the week I work in wealth management: numbers, screens, and a fierce urge to go far away.
It all started with my older brother: he won a DSLR in a photo contest and gave it to me. I was 23. Since then photography has taken up more and more room (and budget). Funnily enough, a contest also earned me my first award, in 2025.
Landscape, wildlife, astro and drone. What am I looking for in a picture? Beautiful light, a sense of scale, and often a lot of waiting, for the light or for an animal.
- Practice
- Landscape, wildlife, astro, drone
- Places
- Switzerland, Norway, Safari, Iceland, New Zealand, Sweden, Greece, Seychelles, Japan, France, Italy, London, United States
- Award
- 1st prize, Concours du photographe voyageur 2025 (Le Tigre Vanillé)
- @thomas_birbaum_photography
How I work
Prepare, then wait.
I leave little to chance. Before each trip, a spreadsheet lists the spots I scouted on Google Earth. Plan It Pro tells me where and when the sun, the moon or the Milky Way will line up, and Clear Outside gives me the cloud cover hour by hour. For the drone, permits are often needed: that takes planning too.
I usually travel with my partner, and lately with our one-year-old daughter too. It has changed the way we travel quite a bit… and the weight of the camera bag.
1st prize 2025From the field
Fagradalsfjall, March 2021
We held our wedding ceremony in Iceland. A few months before, we went there for the final scouting and planning, in the middle of Covid, with five days of quarantine on arrival. The volcano erupted just as we arrived. As soon as quarantine was over, it was the first thing we went to see.
The mood was surprisingly calm, no fear at all. You could hear the earth purring, and the landscape was literally changing before our eyes. We stayed until nightfall.
Walking back by headlamp, in the snow, on icy ground with no trail at all (the site was barely a week old) and our crampons left in the car, was quite something. Unforgettable pictures and memories.
The photo that won 1st prize at the Concours du photographe voyageur in 2025 was taken on this trip. And for a sense of scale, this is what the crowd looked like that day.
In my bag
What goes on the trip.
- Cameras
- Canon EOS R5
- Canon EOS R7
- Lenses
- RF 16mm F2.8
- RF 24-70mm F2.8 L
- RF 70-200mm F4 L
- EF 100-400mm L II (+ 1.4x extender)
- Drones
- DJI Air 2S
- DJI Mini 3 Pro
- Planning
- Google Earth
- Plan It Pro
- Clear Outside
- A (big) spreadsheet
- Editing
- Lightroom
- Photoshop
- DxO (noise reduction)
Before: Canon 550D, 5D Mark III and 7D Mark II, DJI Mavic Pro and Mavic 2 Pro.
Like a picture?
Prints are made to order, gallery quality. Write to me and I'll reply personally.