Home › About Michael
Your host and instructor
A romantic rebel in a world full of images and stories
Born in Amsterdam. Raised by the world. More than twenty five years a professional image maker, and since 2013 the man behind Cambodia Photo Tours.
- 25+ yearsprofessional photography, starting in magazines and advertising
- Since 2013photo tours in Cambodia, based in Phnom Penh
- Since 2018photo tours in Amsterdam
- 4 languagesDutch, English, German and French
Michael Klinkhamer, Phnom Penh.
I started in the eighties as a full time magazine and advertising photographer, shooting cars, portraits and reportage on Nikon and Hasselblad. Transparencies and negatives for print, and my black and white work on Kodak Tri-X and Plus-X, processed in my own darkroom.
Being a full time professional and a world traveller, it made sense to switch to digital and keep up. I still shoot both. I have nothing against digital and use a series of digital cameras daily. I just find the analogue process interesting to master, and more timeless. Not as perfect, not as sharp, more organic.
Since 2008 I have been working internationally, mostly in Asia but also in the United States and Australia. From 2013 I lived and worked in Phnom Penh and started taking visiting photographers out into the city, which turned into Cambodia Photo Tours. Since 2018 I run tours in my home town Amsterdam as well.
Along the way there were assignments I am proud of, including video and photo productions for NGOs such as Kinderpostzegels and Oxfam Novib. And there is the work that is only mine: the books and magazines, the exhibitions, the Art for Kep residency in southern Cambodia in early 2026 that became the Kep Raw book.
The photography we do on these tours is more personal and free than client work. No deadline, no brief, no fast delivery. There is time for reflection, time to teach, and time to enjoy it.
Photography is more than my job. It is my passion and a licence to do my own research and to show the world through the lens with special photos and stories.
Books and magazines
The work that is only mine
Special edition magazines and books, published through Blurb. They are part of the workshops too: we use them to talk about what we are after before we go out.
- Kep Raw 202684 pages of black and white from the Art for Kep residency, published March 2026.
- Portraits of Cambodia 2025Portraits in colour and black and white, with a section on the encounters in Buddhist temples.
- Noir Phnom Penh 2022Street photography in Phnom Penh from 2012 onward. A personal account of the years of living dangerously.
- #Cambodia Instagram 2020A visual diary: over a hundred photos posted between 2012 and 2020, when I lived in Cambodia full time.
Come and shoot with me
Cambodia or Amsterdam, half a day or two weeks. Tell me what you are after and I will tell you honestly whether I am the right person for it.