My photographic summary for 2010

The year 2010 is not over yet, but the contemplative days are always a good time to look back. So I'd like to use this blog post for some navel-gazing and answer the question of what the year 2010 actually brought me from a photographic perspective.

To be honest, I have to admit that I stumbled into some areas of photography quite by accident this year. At the beginning of the year I did almost exclusively sports photography. And since I was the only sports photographer in Hamburg for my agency at the time, Action Press, for the first three and a half months, I had more than enough to do with it. At this point it was already clear to me that sports photography alone would not satisfy me in the long term.

Then Sven Jacobsen asked whether I would work for him or his wedding photography agency Wedding Picture want to work and on the other hand an ash cloud that is my best friend and wedding photographer Johannes Leistner forced me to spend an extended stay in Mexico and put me in the fortunate position of photographing two of his weddings as a replacement. Presto – I was already in the middle of wedding photography. I photographed my first wedding in 2007, but suddenly the whole thing took on a different dimension. If I had made mistakes at weddings for friends or business partners, it would not only have reflected on me, but also on good friends or business partners. That's a different kind of pressure, but I can deal with pressure well: it focuses me.

The second very lucky coincidence was that... Sven Wiesner as well as a Gadget Night brought into being. A fun after-work social web meet'n'greet just around the corner from me. I registered normally, but Sven immediately via Twitter asked if I would like to photograph the event instead. Well, sure – why not? The response to my pictures was extremely positive. I just did what I wanted to do and everyone in attendance thought it was great.

I had a really busy year in 2010 - the approximately 130000 shutter releases of my two cameras weren't done out of boredom - and I would like to thank everyone who simply trusted me and my abilities, even without examples in my portfolio, for example Beebop or Viva con Agua. The conversations with were particularly valuable for me Steffen Böttcher.

At some point there came a point where I wanted to be more clear about where my photographic journey was actually heading. Here I came across a book recommendation from Mike Larson again: "Fast Track Photographer“ by Dane Sanders. The book explains very impressively which areas there are in the photography business and which skills a photographer needs to have. The highlight of the book is a detailed online test that you can use to test your personality to determine which type of photography business you are most suited to. At first I didn’t really believe in the test, but then I read the results and found myself in a very high percentage of cases. The result of this test is “to blame” for me having the project "Hamburg's Bloggers" started – and I think the phenomenal response speaks volumes.

And a more casual conversation with Michael Hein completed my photo puzzle for 2010. His words completed my photographic direction. Thanks, Michael!

The response to my work and my pictures so far has shown me that I am on the right path. The realization I gained at the end of 2010 is that, as a sports photographer, I have learned over many years to anticipate situations and adapt events. Being aware of how to use my photographic equipment safely, when to use which technology or which lens, gives me the space to create images from special angles. The idea of ​​saying goodbye at the end of a wedding with the highlights of a day works for me, as I work under the principle of avoiding subsequent image editing if possible.

This is my personal summary of my photographic activity combined with the motivation to perfect and professionalize this path in 2011. With a lot of joy when taking photos, which comes across to the people in front of my camera. With other exciting projects and tasks. Also here in my blog. Let yourself be surprised.