Michael Ballhaus was born on August the 5th 1935 in Berlin as the son of two actors. After a two-year apperenticeship, he first worked as a stage photographer, before he started his carrer as a cinematographer for German network television in 1959.

In 1970, after shooting numerous TV-productions and some feature films, Ballhaus teamed up with cinema prodigy Rainer Werner Fassbinder.Their immensely productive professional relationship, which lasted for eight years, spawned 15 feature-length films, among them seminal works like "Whity", "Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant", "Despair" and "Die Ehe der Maria Braun".

In the early 1980s, Ballhaus started working on English-language productions, including films by John Sayles and James Foley as well as Volker Schlöndorff"s adaptation of Arthur Miller" s play "Death of a Salesman".

Most importantly, it was his camerawork for Martin Scorsese (who collaborated with Ballhaus on almost all of his movies from 1984 on) which established Ballhaus as one of the most respected and sought-after directors of photography in Hollywood. Consequently, he moved with his family to the United States, and has yet never worked as DoP on a German feature film again.

Although being in constant demand by directors like Wolfgang Petersen, Robert Redford, Mike Nichols and Barry Levinson, Ballhaus still found the time to teach film courses at the University of Hamburg in the mid-1990s.
Celebrating his 70th birthday in 2005, Ballhaus to this day is one of the most prolific and respected German artists in Hollywood.

At the beginning of 2007, Michael Ballhaus announced his retirement from the DoP chair : At the age of 72, he declared that he would like to focus more on teaching and producing in the future. The same year, he incepted the "Ballhaus-Projekt", an environmentalist initiative campaigning for the responsible use of energy resources and the protection of the world"s climate.

In October 2009, Ballhaus , who over the years has taught at several film schools, and Achim Poulheim became co-heads of the camera department at the Hamburg Media School. Michael Ballhaus" second son Florian (née 1965), is also a successful cinematographer in the US.