Since the most interesting days are also the most hectic, often followed by several more days of post production with tight deadlines or -in some cases- a couple of days of pure laziness, I often end up not writing about some of those more interesting jobs. And once a week or two have passed, the moment has passed as well and I lack the energy and excitement to go back and write about it.
So in order to share more, I started a little Tumblr blog featuring iphone snaps and other little snippets “from the road”.
Feel free to take a look, i’d love to see you there!

Cheers
B

Just stumbled upon this “The Best Jobs Ever” series on CNBC:

“Unless you’re a Powerball winner, or you’ve inherited a large sum of money, chances are you have to wake up every day, go to work and make a living. For most people, a job is just a job, little more than a way to pay the bills. But what if work were more like play? What if, instead of living for the weekend, you lived for Monday morning? There are people who feel that way; you just have to find them. We did.”

Now I don’t regularly shoot for Victoria’s Secret and my savings account wouldn’t drive most people into a jealous frenzy. But I do get up on most Monday mornings with a smile on my face looking forward to another week where I can do what I feel I’m supposed to do in life. And while on most days I tend to take this for granted, finds like the above article remind me how lucky I am and that I should be much more grateful much more often…

Knowing why an image works is a fundamental requirement for being able to make decent photographs without having to rely on blind luck. Still, sometimes I take photographs that get to me although I have absolutely no idea why they work. They just do. I shot a wedding a couple of weeks ago and amidst all my usual shots I found the above hip-shot. Now by all technical accounts this isn’t a good picture. It’s not sharp (well the window does seem to be sharp…), exposure is neither here nor there and the composition is not exactly textbook to say the least. Still, I keep coming back to it. Sometimes I guess you don’t take a picture, you capture a moment. Send a thank you to the photography gods and enjoy…

I shot a casting for an upcoming advertising campaign on monday. The basic premise for the campaign was a young family (mom, dad, 2 children). The client needed portraits of the “parents” as well as action shots of the kids jumping on a trampoline, everything on a white background.

In the studio I had free pickings of the rental gear they had available, so I went for a huge 7-foot umbrella, mostly because I’d never gotten the chance to use one so far and I always like to try out new stuff when I can. For the background I used another two Profoto heads and shot them into large reflective umbrellas for an even illumination. As for the 7-footer, I have to say it’s almost disturbing how you don’t have to know anything about lighting and still get a great light from it… as long as you put it up in roughly the right direction you get a decent beauty light. Maybe not too defined and lacking a little attitude, but a great soft light nonetheless!

For this shoot it was perfect anyway, since I had to photograph women and men as well as kids. The kids also had to be shot jumping on a trampoline which would have been harder to light with a more directional light source.

Shot on the Nikon D700 with the 24-70 2.8 and triggered the lights with PocketWizards. The PocketWizards I only bought recently and I have to say, they may be expensive but they simply work, no questions asked. Shot more than 3000 images (exactly 3333 in fact) and I got two misfires which may or may not have been the PWs’ fault… impressive.

Had fun as well of course: (left to right, me, my assistant Tom and Sandra (casting agency rep))

Mostly a post to test a new blog/twitter feature I’m trying out, I thought I’d post a shot I made assisting for interiors photographer Bodo Mertoglu at the Bulthaup showroom near Munich. Who need’s a 5d?!

Decided that this blog could do with more pictures and finally worked out how to directly post shots from my iPhone… assisted for fashion photographer Michael Munique yesterday. Spent all day in the sun by the lakeside, according to Annie I looked like a lobster when I got home…

I have to admit that the blog’s been far too quiet these past couple of weeks, even though there’s plenty of material to post about. Not surprisingly, that is also the reason why I haven’t been posting much recently. In the last 2-3 months I’ve become more busy than I’ve ever been and while that’s great, I still have to get used to the fact that I’m not sailing along on a two- or three-hour work week anymore. Anyway, I’m confident that a lot of reasonably interesting material will soon be finding it’s way onto this blog, so stay with me!

One of the things I’m personally rather excited about is the Hasselblad 500 CM medium format camera that I simply couldn’t resist buying. While I do love my Mamiya RB 67, it is a beast. It weighs a ton and with knobs and levers protruding everywhere, it requires a certain amount of fanatism to lug around as a street camera. The Hasselblad by contrast slips pretty easily into my standard shoulder bag and for the last two weeks it has been with me pretty much all the time. I’ve actually found the Hasselblad to be a fantastic camera for street photography, mainly because of it’s waist level viewfinder, since most people either don’t identify that box-like thing as a camera or else assume that you’re still fiddling around with the controls and not actually about to make a picture…
I’ve also shot a little series on last week’s bouldering world cup finale with it and I’m pretty happy with the results. That one’s getting it’s own post, so -again- stay tuned!

Oh and we’ve made it into children’s television! I assisted for photographer Bodo Mertoglu on a photoshoot for a children’s TV programme to illustrate what an advertising photographer does for a living. Click here to watch the clip! (in german)

I guess it’s a good sign that I had considerably more trouble clearing my desk before this year’s vacation than I had the last year. Seems my business is doing OK. But I have to say, the last two weeks were kind of stressful. Between shooting, filming, editing, assisting, book keeping and a load of other items on my To Do list, there were a lot of things I just didn’t get done before leaving. Such as keeping this blog up to date. Anyway, since Annie found a nice café here that offers wireless internet, I can at least take care of that… won’t be checking my emails, though, sorry…

Wouldn’t want to lose that vacation spirit now, would we?!

Wish you all a great time, see you in two weeks!

Having a busy couple of days, so here’s me letting other people provide content for my blog once again… great video and I love the final pictures. Plus I like the whole Mamiya RZ + Fuji 6×9 thing…