Click on the title of the blog post to view the entire entry.
We had a great time in London! Unfortunately I had to leave earlier because I will shoot a wedding tomorrow and I will miss the exhibition of our workshop images at the Jago art gallery in London :( Nevertheless I enjoyed the flight back home to Switzerland.
—–
Posted via iPhone
I’m in London right now, attending a workshop by famous US wedding and portrait photographer Scott Robert Lim. Yesterday the weather was quite rainy, but today we were lucky to shoot four models on a sunny day near the London Eye. Image showing Bandele posing a model on the street at yesterdays night shoot. Model simply lit by a video light.
—–
Posted via iPhone
Recently I updated my iPhone to the new software 2.0. Although it’s still the old iPhone (hardware), it can do now what the new version can do. Except that it doesn’t have GPS of course and still is 2G and not 3G. But that doesn’t matter for me, I always use wifi to surf the web anyway. That’s hispeed and even for free! And now that everybody is raving about the new iPhone I like my old version even more. It’s a bit old faishoned and outdated. And that makes it waaay cooler ;) Or boring for other people. “Oh, that’s the old one…” I like that. Because I never bought it to be cool. I bought the iphone because I thought it’s a great business tool. And I still love it for that. I mainly use it as a PDA and for watching my video podcasts. It was worth every penny.
Imagine that in Switzerland more and more cities provide free wifi internet access. I mean they cover the whole city! Not just McDonalds and Starbucks :) Like the capital Bern where I’m based. Or Lucerne where I have been today location scouting for an upcoming wedding.
The best thing the new iPhone software 2.0 has to offer, is the appstore to install additional software. Try my favorites: MyStreets, ZIPcodes and Fahrplan. Or the WordPress application. Now it’s not only possible to send a post to your blog via e-mail, but to fully manage also older posts on your WordPress blog through your iPhone. Write, categorize, preview and publish posts. Edit and unpublish, set the publication date and time. Add photos etc.
Really a great application to use when you are on the road and have some spare time. Like me right now, riding on a train back home to the capital :)
—–
Posted via iPhone
When I visited my godchild last weekend, she told me that she really loves to watch the wedding album of her parents. With the images I photographed – 16 years ago. Wow, how did I feel old!
[Note for prospective clients: You see how important a wedding album is. Your children will enjoy it many, many years later!]
Above is a page from the album (sorry for the poor image quality, I shot the proofs with my iPhone). Actually not that bad. I would say quite acceptable for my early years. At least I used the sun as backlight. As I still do today if I can’t find open shade.
At that time I was still in school and in my spare time I made some money by selling pictures to the local newspaper. They paid me 50 Swiss francs per image. I saved the money till it was enough to buy another lens. Or the winder I wanted for my Canon A-1 body (“winders” were used to transport the film in the camera, if you are grown up in the digital era). I had my own black and white lab in the laundry room. My parents gave me the permission to install it there as a gift certificate for Christmas. That was the kick-off for my photography business. Start small and grow.
I’m still very thankful for that support from my parents, even if later they still couldn’t imagine that being a photographer is a “real job”. So they insisted that first I had to learn a “real job” before they would allow me to try this photography thing. Remembers me somehow the story of Gary Fong. And a lot of other photographers I guess :-)
From time to time I photographed weddings. But I really didn’t like it. I preferred to shoot concerts or sport. I didn’t feel comfortable photographing weddings with a lot of people I didn’t know. So I just did it if some family members or friends asked me for a favor. Because I didn’t want to be rude I accepted the “assignment” and made it my wedding gift. So at least I didn’t have to worry to find a present.
Today I don’t photograph weddings just because I don’t have other assignments, just to fill my calendar. I specialized in wedding photojournalism because I wanted to. It became my passion. I can’t imagine doing something more special for a living. If a couple shares these moments and emotions of their wedding with you, you are blessed. It’s a gift if you can live that as a profession. And the crucial part of it: You only work with happy people. What could be more fun?!
To give you a laugh here’s an old polaroid showing me in my hippie years. Yes, the guy with the long hair is me. Cheers!
It’s always nice to see where you come from. And important to remember.
While my old blog on www.danielzihlmann.blogspot.com served me well for more than a year now, I was getting bored of investing a lot of time in post-production and finally finding my images automatically resized and blurry on my blog. So I decided to invest some time and built a new blog that shows the images in it’s full beauty :-)
A special thanks goes to my good friend Jeanine Linder who is an awesome photographer and always helps me a lot! She knows just everything. All the cool gadgets, all the great web services that are out there, whatever. If you have a question, ask Jeanine!
Please leave a comment and let me know what you think of my new blog!
