Inspiration Heaps // Blue Hour Picnic

I will write you how it really went. Manuel and I have been planing to meet up for a photo session long before meeting in person. Sending each other pinboards with inspiring photos of wonderful photographers via messenger we seemed to be planing a huge thing there - with body paint, with plants, with glitter, with smoke, mirrors, blankets, coal.. But when the day came to meet up (after postponing or cancelling it for a great amount of times) I got all indecisive and that said - simply lacking any inspiration or focus at all for the kind of scenery I wished to produce. Last second we decided to get the bus to the riverside and combine our artistic evening with a picnic. Until we got to the right spot, the perfect sunset hour just slipped out of our sights, though not stopping us from playing around with the light leftovers.There were bike riders passing by the place we sat at the water, the big field of meadow got all silent, fresh and moist after the dew had fallen. We took the given freedom - in no rush having a french style baguette-cheese-tomato dinner between the tall grass, then running around the empty fields, experimenting with smoke bombs, LED lights. Back then though I thought "what a pity - I have this beautiful evening, wonderful people but no ideas in my head". But the way my friend models were relaxed changed the flow of the evening into a magical result, at least for me.

I realised just shortly before the session that it's a very different thing all together to photograph a man as the main subject. I have rarely done it for a variety of reasons - women tend to join me in a session faster or on more simple ways than men, I guess. Also, it's a different message when you combine let's say flower blossoms with a girl than with a man (see, there's no link there for that kind of a session because I simply haven't done it yet, and I wish I had! though it was hard in the past - I remember I once tried placing an ex-lover in front of a blossom bush. He gave me 3 minutes. And after never again.)

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It was wonderful - a closing session like this of the warm sleeveless season and birkenstocked feet in the fields. Inspiration isn't always there, sometimes you have to gently invite her to come over, no force though. It's like a campsite cup: you hold it up, maybe it'll be filled with something delicious, maybe not, come anything - be grateful. Only when you don't have the right time for her - inspiration is aggressively there, annoying and teasing. Sometimes you just need this one shot to get your artsy ego happy for the night. At least we were more picnicking, laughing and joking than forcing anything. And after all - things just happened. And I'm thankful to the Fairy of All Beautiful for putting the right props together for me in the one right shutter speed moment.

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Thank you my two older and newer friends. By the way - Manuel is a starting out model and Maren is the heart of her fox band. Some tech details: shot with Nikon D7000 + Sigma Art 35mm f1,4

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Focus!

There are so many things that I wanted to create and share on this blog since ages. So many - I don't even know where to start. I have a very impulsive mind and I rather suffer from the many ideas that come into my head than make and actual profit of it. All of them, the ideas, really want my attention and to get materialised one day, or rather just right now, and if they don't - some of them start nagging me till I cry, can you imagine? And then they get angry and pretty cruel! I tell them to stand in line and wait for their turn, and what most of them do is just roll their eyes, start taking long loud breaths to show how 'patient' they are, one starts tapping its foot to the ground, eventually start moaning. I get soft and when I turn to the most impatient one somewhere in the middle of the queue, kindly giving her a warm hug and offering to go to the front of the crowd, despite all the other ideas that are there in front  of her already. And I kindly ask what can I do to make her existence come true, but what she does is getting all bitchy, stops talking to me at all and turns her eyes away.. Apparently, I've been neglecting her for so long and she's so heart broken now, it's too hard for her to talk to me anymore. Our relationship is ruined forever. With lots of patience I have to start guessing, offering her a cup of tea and somehow trick her into sharing her life-changing existential goal with me. Maybe she'll still give me her blessing and I can create something beautiful out of it.

And that's everyday. Multitasking, managing, dealing, staying patient yet vivid with all the ideas that pop into my mind and scream for attention. And I better recognise the best ones fast, and I better get on doing what they say, 'cause no matter how genius they are - they won't be standing there for ages waiting for their turn in line. They are very undisciplined, you know! They are like little babies, little untamed kiddos. But that's why they are amazing at the very same time. A creative idea, just like a kid full of phantasy, won't be sitting there, killing off all its energy, just to be able to play 'on its given time'. Ideas, like kids, grow if you give them the time and space to grow into something amazing. They might become your inspiration well, your best friends, an amazing part of your identity. Now, I don't know how this turned into some essay about how a child becomes your identity, but that's what it's all about right now. What I want to say is - be careful with ideas that pop into your head. Take a good first scan and decide on just a few which will stand in the queue to become realised. As shiny and sparkly some of them might look - they will have to be sent away in order for you to built just a few bigger stronger projects at a time. Some might eventually come back again, maybe even more developed and advanced by the time.

So stay focused.

The photo shoot is from July last year on a beach on Helgoland, one of the photo experiments which my friend Indre Winterrain helped me to work on. Born out of another idea which was luckily standing in line with a little bit of patience. Luckily, I didn't let her stand there in the never ending queue for too long.

Photography Adventure #1: Blue Smoke

a few years ago i discovered Tumblr (for those who don't know - it's a blogging platform for all sorts of media, but mostly used for images. this platform is used a lot to re-blog other people's images on the own tumblr blog; and so at the end you have a blog mainly with a collection of images from anyone who once shared an image on the web or on another tumblr blog). those image collecting tumbler blogs - which offer an on-growing collection of images dedicated to a certain theme, or colour, or mood.. - those are addicting. since i was writing my Bachelor theses, and then later my Master thesis, i kept on looking for tumbler blogs like this on the web just to distract myself and get lifted up a little bit from the grey studying monotony. i would say around 60% of the time that i actually had dedicated for my studies that day went on jumping from one image blog to another. just watching, scrolling, getting one inspiring moment after another. at that time i was admiring and observing and thinking 'oh wow! oh wow!.. oh wow....'. there were photographies and drawings i had never seen in any album, in any exhibition, any photography book. it would be images of dreamy meadows, girly things, flowers, witchcrafty details, mountains.. its hard to just describe.  today i can say this activity pretty much shaped my eye for what i want my photography to look like. the aesthetics, the compositions, the mood and colour combinations. at the end of this post i will put a few link examples for what i mean.now after have said all of this i am very happy to say that since recently i started creating more and more images on my own. usually in the past and of course still with a pleasure today i captured images on my travels and weddings the way i found them or the way i saw them. today more and more i try to put things and people in a scene and challenge myself with certain uncontrollable conditions. these images bellow are a result of one recent experiment: putting a person in a scene in a pre-defined outfit in a pre-chosen location at a certain time of a day. adding a requisite to all of that, like a colourful smoke torch that i don't know anything about but had seen it on many of the tumbler blogs mentioned above . i am starting to feel deeper satisfied with the fact that i am getting closer to the image aesthetics which i have admired so much once. i can actually be a creator of one of those dreamy image.

now these are a few of the images i created together with Indre when she recently visited me on my current home - the island Helgoland.

as promised i am sharing a few of my most influential imagery blogs:

http://fiebre.tumblr.com/ http://shawnlowe.tumblr.com/ http://www.carissagallo.com/ http://juliatrotti.tumblr.com/ http://cabinporn.com/ http://madfuture.com/

now of course todays Pinterest and Instagram had made it a bit different and i mainly scroll through those sites today instead of Tumblr. yet it's just a little tribute and a thankful thought that i dedicate the creators and participants of Tumblr ,-)