Private website of Achim Baqué

During traveling doing time-lapse photography is pretty time consuming, but has a very nice side effect: While doing time-lapse photography you recognize many processes in nature, urban life etc. which most people will never notice.

Clouds are a good example. Real-time movement can be very nice, but most of the time the movement is too slow to see what is going on. But in a time-lapse even ordinary cloud formations look spectacular. Notorious famous time lapse videos are being made in cities like New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo etc.

Many people have seen one of the best-known spot for time-lapse on tv, in movies etc: Diagonal pedestrian crossing in Shibuya Tokyo / Japan.

Sometimes I see a potential time-lapse scenery and get more and more engrossed, minutes turn into hours. I remember I had planned an hour or so to spend at some places, and end up staying for hours or a whole day. For example: The Shard London, the Peak Hong Kong, any skyscraper in NYC, Wills Tower Chicago etc.

Most satisfying are time-lapse of nature. I can’t get enough of it. Never.


Traveling with equipment for serious time-lapse photography is not easy. Sometimes I carry between 20 and 30 kg camera equipment with me, but on average between 15 and 20 kg. I take at least 3 different cameras only for time-lapse while traveling. Sometimes up to ten. Yep, it sounds pretty mad. But it is very rewarding!


Just in my first 10 years I got a 100+ TB collection of several thousand time-lapse videos and millions of pictures.


I was lucky to reach some very remote and amazing areas. The highest altitude for a time-lapse was 5,800+ meter (19,000+ feet) at Cerro Uturuncu in Bolivia. This mountain I drove up by myself in a Nissan Pathfinder. Some of the best scenery I found in Antarctica.

Urban time-lapse are fascinating as well. Big cities offering enormous potential for time-lapse. Sometimes combined with dramatic settings.

The restless traveler gets countless impressions and experiences. Even negative experiences enrich what you have experienced and seen as a human being. Nobody takes these impressions away from you.
Many people in affluent countries do not appreciate the standards they enjoy. And not only in terms of money. Also, in terms of freedom, security, education, food, etc. Those of us, who grow up in a prosperous country and enjoy the freedom to travel, will learn to appreciate this and these privileges through intensive travel.
The dissatisfaction and negative attitude of some people could vanish quickly, if they would travel a few days to the many corners of the world that are not doing so well. It would broaden their horizon and could be very educational. The confrontation with friendly, warm, intelligent people who are denied this opportunities is humbling.

Through fortunate circumstances I was able to travel to many countries. In addition, many not everyday destinations.

When I think back to various journeys, my head is flooded with impressions. So many indescribably beautiful places, culture and people I was lucky enough to encounter in person, and saw with my own eyes.

Many times, I was asked how many countries/places I have visited?
More important for me is what I have seen, the impressions and experiences. Many countries I have visited multiple times. The goal is traveling itself and not counting countries. But sure, I do count. The total number depends on your standards or what you call a country or a 'place'. For example, the USA: Is a visit to the mainland, Hawaii, Alaska, American Samoa, Puerto Rico one visited country or maybe two to six countries? Or what about France, Réunion and New Caledonia? One, two or three in a travelers list?
Antarctica is not listed in the UN list of countries. For example former GDR (East Germany) is not listed anymore. In 2019 by counting UN listed countries I have been to 122 of 193, 5 non-members and 22 Dependencies. My own counting considers areas not listed or separated from the mainland which results in 184 destinations. For ex. Antarctica, US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Svalbard, Réunion, Canadian Arctic etc.
The Covid-19 pandemic started at the time I was on my way to Micronesia. Micronesia was the first country to close the boarder. Even with the permission I had from the office of the President of Micronesia, I was denied entry. The world has changed dramatically since 2019.

First name:
For most people Achim doesn't sound very German. But it is the German short name for Joachim. Most native English speaker associate Achim with an Arabic country because of the pronunciation. Many pronounce it 'Akeem' (yes, like main character in the movie Prince of Zamunda). The “ch” sounds for those very harsh and is at least as hard to pronounce as the “th” for Germans. In German, it sounds soft.
Wikipedia about Achim. There is even a City in northern Germany called Achim.

Last name:
Baqué does not sound German either? Well, it is a French name. My ancestors left France 1789 in a hurry, eventually escaping the revolution on a float and settled in Germany. For more than 200 years this family branch lives in Germany. The other half of my ancestors can be traced back living in Germany for at least 900 years. According to my genetics I am 99,9% European, mostly German, the rest is British and broadly Northwestern European.

After that came chemistry. I had a huge collection of laboratory equipment and chemicals one could only dream of. Rockets and explosives were a big thing for a boy, and today you couldn’t do this without getting into real trouble. Back in school, my chemistry teacher allowed me to work in the laboratory during every school hour. I didn't need to attend classes, but I needed to make a chemical presentation during the last 5 minutes of class with something 'entertaining' (colorful, burning or exploding). Today it would be almost impossible for a private person to have the chemicals I had.

Many members of my family worked at the house of parliament. During my childhood, I have spent some time at the parliament buildings in Bonn (former German capital, nowadays it is Berlin).
For two years, I was in the nursery of the German Parliament. That was the time of terrorism in Germany (RAF). People armed with machine guns were in front of the primary school and the parliament. Nearly all children in school had parents in the government. We were driven with an armored Mercedes 600 and even for half a year with a transport tank (Fuchs) between school and parliament's nursery. It was great fun for us because we didn't see the threat. The terrorists had threatened to kidnap children. After school, I would usually sit at Ossi's Bar in the parliament. Every day I saw the members of the parliament including some famous ministers and the chancellors Helmut Schmidt and Helmut Kohl. I was sitting next to both chancellors while having Lunch. One time, a convoy came to a halt with Ronald Reagan on the road B9 in Bonn. My mother and I stopped right next to his car in a convertible with loud music. He laughed and waved. Usually the convey never stops getting so close was very unusual.
My paternal grandmother, together with a scientist, founded the company ORBIT and Helatronik after her time at the parliament. They sold rocket technology, telemetry and other stuff, especially to ESA and NASA. It was even used n the Space Shuttle. I wish I'd been older at this time. At least I was able to see the latest satellites, rockets and helicopters at Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm" in Ottobrun near Munich. They showed me the final assembly of three-axis stabilized satellite. I think, it was EXOSAT. Because my grandmother played some important role in parliament's history, she gave many interviews to German magazines like 'Stern' and 'Spiegel' and many times she was a guest in the famous TV politics magazine 'Monitor'. She used to do business with Israel and Saudi Arabia (and both knew that at the time). She was invited to the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin as a guest of honor.
My maternal grandmother did something remarkable. She hid a Jew during the second world war in her basement, and therefore he survived. Over the next decades my mother and I visited him many times. I thought all the time he is my uncle, until my family told me the truth when I was an adult.
As a teenager, I was lucky to work at the Max Planck institute for radio astronomy (mm laboratories).

But my main focus changed to programming. I used to work with hex-display-computer, Apple II+, Apple IIe, Basis 108 and later the IBM PCs starting with IBM 5150. My very first own computer was an IBM 5160 with a gigantic 20 MB hard drive. Today a single image from my SLR would not fit onto this hard disk. But in early days I thought this hard disk would be big enough for the next 20 years. I had and have zero interest in computer games and only used computers for programming.

During my first year of contact with computers, I wrote for computer magazines about softwares and utilities. The "Markt und Technik Verlag" offered me a contract for the distribution of one of my programs, which competed with Norton Utilities. At the age of 17, too young and inexperienced to recognize this opportunity, I had little interest in this. I just wanted to keep working on it only for myself. Years later, I realized that it was a multi-million dollar offer.

A friend and I founded a software company when I was 18, for which I stopped my university studies.

Since the 80's, I have developed a software for court bailiffs / the foreclosure/judicial office in Germany. This software became the market leader and, since the 2010's, its market share is over 50%.

During the early 1990's software for food-delivery came into focus. I developed a software called foodserv that was able to show menu lists with pictures (we are talking about DOS-time) and it was even possible to add a BBS for online orders and companies could place aggregated orders. That time wasn't right, however. That software was sold to just about 100 people. This type of software just became a pretty big business in the 2010's with smartphones.

My vintage computer collection started with some computer parts and large hard disks in the late 80’s. In the 2000's collecting vintage computer became a serious hobby. By 2018 I owned more than 1,000 vintage computers including many pretty rare and unique items. Since 2018 I am the curator of the Apple-1 Registry and I stay in contact with many Apple-1 owner.

During late 80's and the early 90's, I was running one of the largest BBS in the fidonet, the nibbelbox (spelling of nibble is different in German). A BBS with 25 lines and 20+ GB data, during a time when even 40 MB hard discs were big. Even the full file list was bigger than an average hard disk. The system was running Novell and I programmed my own FOSSIL driver and the BBS software with enhanced file browser and a graphical interface. If users demanded files to download, my software would automatically switch the servers and provide the files. The interface of this BBS was capable to show graphical characters on DOS PCs thanks to its own terminal program. File list browsing allowed it to go backwards, which was very unusual at this time. The BBS had thousands of registered users- long before the Internet was popular.

In 2006, I started to produce time-lapse videos with self-developed circuits and SLR cameras. After the first ten years, I had a collection of several thousand time-lapse videos and millions of pictures on 100+ TB. Including all backup hard disks in a bank vault more than 100 high capacity hard disks are used.
Some time-lapse videos and pictures are for sale on microstock companies (for example footage at Pond5, shutterstock, fotolia). Several thousand time-lapse videos and pictures were sold in the first years and were used on numerous websites, for press, television and movies mostly used in the USA.

The stock market is another hobby of mine since the early 2000's.

With the rise of drones, aerial photography became a new hobby. I used different ready-to-fly drones with modifications, a self-built hexa-copter and had some very unique opportunities to fly over very special places. For example, while sailing to the South Georgia Island and Antarctica and I received the first ever permission from the Commissioner of South Georgia and an Admiral of the British Navy to fly several drones I carried with me. The result is a very unique footage, including some from over 1.200 meters = 4,000 feet high (at this time it was legal). On this expedition, we even helped the administration to spot and count rare seals.