Martin has been an enthusiastic amateur astronomer for over 30 years. He has photographed 9 total solar eclipses and many other celestial objects, including many comets. From his countless trips abroad he brings back photos of the nightsky with fantastic scenery. His main passion, however, is volcano photography, for which he mainly travels around the world. His absolutely inspiring pictures can be found on his private website www.mrietze.com, one of his volcano pictures even made it to NASA APOD. Together with his colleague Michael Risch he has written chapters for "Color Foto" for the books Fotoschule (Photo School) and Extremfotografie (Extreme Photography).

As a trained electronic engineer, he is responsible at Baader Planetarium for the dome electronics and computer installation in observatories and research stations worldwide and has planned and built domes in the North Polar Circle and Antarctica. He is also very familiar with the CCD technology of DSLR cameras and all kinds of optics.