...finally!

It was a huuuuuge lot of work, but we made it - and we´re proud to announce that our website, our logo - simply everything has been relaunched.

So the bad weather in Mai/June had some good - we couldn´t shoot, but at least we could work a little every now and then on the new sites.

We also reworked our Model Concept. While we have been looking for everyday people and offering them photoshoots as a countertrade for modelling to increase the size of our portfolios at stock agencies, the counter value of the models too often didn´t meet ours. We will now start to look actively for models out on the street and won´t take any applications online anymore.

...a little different

Three female music students contacted us for a photoshooting. We immediately had the crazy idea to go into an Austrian forest.

What looked like an easy task in the beginning, turned out to be the opposite. Since the austrian federal forests ask for a fee of 400€ for shootings (can you feel me hiding my anger here?), and neither we, nor our musicians wanted to pay that rediculously high amount. So we had to find a private forest. But which part among those many trees is private, and whom does it belong to. And finally: which forest is suited for our needs?

Finally we found one and packed all our equipment on carts to carry it up the hills into the forest. In the end it was way worth the effort. We had great fun and shot some amazing images.

...aren´t we in reality well off?

Menschen für Menschen, the charity organisation of former actor Karlheinz Böhm helps people in Ethiopia, one of the pourest country in the world. It´s people like him we owe our deepest respect so we donate every once a while.

In the course of the austrian ladies run 2010 in the Vienna Prater, we had the luck to accompany a ladies relay who were carrying a 20l canister of water per person along their relay leg. In the boat were prominent and sympathetic women like Kate Allen (Olympic Champion in triathlon in 2004) and Sabine Petzl (Austrian actor). To explain a little further why 20l: that´s exactly the amount of water, ethiopian children are carrying day by day for long distances to keep up the water supply for their family. Women accompanying the children carry 40l. I remember my day in the army where our rucksack weighed way less than that, but still it was exhausting to carry it around for longer. Remembering it wasn´t hot at all those days - so think about doing that in a hot climate.

A sposor of the ladies run, Neuroth Hörgeräte - donated 1€ per partcipating women in one of the two competition runs (5km and 10km) to the organisation Menschen für Menschen. It´s great such companies exist. We ourselves were able to contribute a little bit by offering our service free of charge. Hopefully the media will cover this event with the pictures we took, creating awareness in the population of our contry.

We would be happy if this blogpost reaches the one or the other blog reader and makes him do a little something to help others subsequently. Because we shouldn´t forget - all of us who can read this blogpost are favoured by birth, not (only) by the things we do.

Find more info at: www.menschenfuermenschen.at

...one of many?

Our first stockfoto businessshooting 2010. Hopefully some more will follow. Brilliant models and a great location were responsible for an awesome output. The themes were widestretched - especially for a half day. Starting with coffeebreak to standard office scenes and playing football in the lobby. Quite stressful, but it was way worth it.

Thanks to everyone who participated!!!

...not often enough.

Once in a while we have a few days without contract work. It´s those days that we enjoy most in our photographic career. Then we start shooting ideas we long have in our minds and test new equipment thoroughly.

These are the days when images like the one on the left sprout.

New Equipment: Mola Euro Beautidish and two Elinchrom Skyport remote triggers. Being dissatisfied with our Pocket Wizards for a while - they did not trigger at 3 out of 10 shots and outdoors sometimes even more, we decided to give them a try since their price range is pretty neat. The Mola on the other hand is perhaps one of the best light formers you can buy. He has a wonderfully soft light, but at the same time nice accentuated shadows.

A tip for those of you who like to get really close for shots like these: clean your object - and do it thoroughly. Otherwise you´ll end up with hours of retouching dust in Photoshop. Especially if your object isn´t new out of the box: take a testshot and watch it on your big monitor. There are things our eyes just don´t see - even though they are there.

...just on time for the FIFA Worldcup.

When, if not now will designers and marketing experts need a picture of a soccer ball. Since we hardly ever produce standard images, we came up with something unusual. We produced a huge image of a flawless soccer ball, using a Sinar Large Format Camera along with a modern digital SLR. The image is 150 Megapixels big. Compare that to the worlds highest resolution in a digital Camera, the Hasselblad H4D with "only" 50 Megapixel. So our images is 3x as large.

The image will soon be available as stockimage. If you need it immediately, just give us a note.

Well, and finally our tip for the FIFA Worldcup 2010: AUSTRIA!!!