The photography bug bit Andreas Detzer hard and quick.

“I’d never had any interest in photography and then, in 2011, I was out on a yacht with some friends,” he said.

“I snapped a casual photo through double glass of some houses across the water.”

The 52-year-old restaurant manager was fascinated by how the houses appeared to be floating in the clouds due to light distortion through the glass.

“My mind started working, trying to figure out how that had happened,” he said.

It let him to start taking photos in a serious way, and read up on the craft.

“I showed some of my images to Masterworks,” said Mr Detzer, manager of the Fourways Inn.

“Within six months I went from being unknown in the art world to having my first solo show, Underwater Rainbow.”

He celebrates another photography milestone next month. His work will hang overseas for the first time, at Art Fusion Galleries in Miami, Florida.

“I have only been to Miami once, for two days,” he said. “I wanted to see how my work would be received overseas. The gallery in Miami wrote back right away and said they really liked my work.

“I was so excited. It was one of the first galleries I approached because they have an emphasis on promoting new talent.”

He has had some success with portraiture but is focusing on surreal water reflections.

“It was something other photographers weren’t doing,” he said. “I didn’t want to compete. I wanted to do my own thing and set myself apart.”

His technique is a secret.

“I don’t want to give too much away,” he said. “At one point I started to write a book about the technique I use, but got distracted by my work in the restaurant.

“Few people come up to me knowing how I do it.”

In fact, the most common response he gets is, “nice painting”.

“Viewers often don’t know it is a photo until I tell them,” he said. “Then they are surprised.”

Although he photographs the ocean, he never gets his feet wet.

“I love watersports and scuba diving, but I take photos of the top of the water, never under it,” he said.

Mr Detzer believes his photography is an extension of the creativity he’s always shown with food.

“In the restaurant business the visual effect of food is very important,” he said.

“I have always been a very visual person and always drawn to colours.”

Mr Detzer was raised in Herrsching, Germany. He dreamed of being a pilot but his family encouraged him to go into hospitality so he could take over his father’s hotel.

The hotel closed before that could happen.

“I was very disappointed,” he said. “But I studied at a hotel college in Germany. I began to travel for experience.

“I went to Switzerland and then Turkey and eventually came to Bermuda to work as a waiter.

“I thought I would be here for one or two years, but 24 years later, I’m still counting. I feel like things worked out for the best.”

He is married to Dina and has a grown son, Maxmillian.

“My son is living out my old childhood dream,” Mr Detzer said. “He is a pilot on Lufthansa Airlines and I am very proud of him.”

So far, he has no plans to give up the restaurant industry for photography.

“The restaurant is my first love,” he said.

During his career with MEF he has catered to President George W Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth II.

“I love the interaction with the people,” he said. “The photography is just a hobby, although you never know where it might lead me.”

Some of Mr Detzer’s work can be seen on the walls of Fourways Inn.

“We have quite a lot of photographers in the MEF group,” Mr Detzer said. “Pierangelo Lanfranchi at Harbourfront is a very good photographer.

“We have a joke that now you have to be a good photographer to work at MEF.” One of Mr Detzer’s biggest successes was when he sold more than 50 of his photographs to the Wharf Executive Suites Hotel on Harbour Road.

“The hotel owner was looking for something different,” Mr Detzer said. “The colours of the photos really popped in the hotel rooms.”

Largely though, he takes pictures more for fun than profit. It can be an expensive hobby.

“Images have to be printed and framed,” he said. “Gallery space has to be paid for.

“You might take a thousand pictures and only one is good enough to sell.

“You might hang 19 photos in a show and only sell one. The sale to the Wharf Executive Suites was the first real money I’ve made on it.

“To make money you really have to go into things on a large scale and volume. But it is fun.”

He is looking forward to going to Miami for the show’s opening on July 11. It will run for three months at the 3550 North Miami Avenue gallery.

Visit pegleg1727.jalbum.net for more of Mr Detzer’s work. Check out Art Fusion Galleries at www.artfusiongalleries.com