michael's blog

and then the new decade starts with thousands of exciting, funny and rewarding photo shoots. They will be responsible for lot of happy and smiling faces. It's going to be very cool!

Good light!
-- Michael

Last minute so to speak, I was finally able to check off another goal of mine for this year: Writing my little eBook on photography. Wow, a lot of work. But fun. The eBook shows how to do a successful glamour photo shoot. From the first crazy idea until postproduction. Everything included. Have a look at the video that I just recorded in order to take you inside the blueprint:

Christmas is coming! I did a quick photoshooting taking a portrait of my wife Emily for a Christmas card which the two of us send out as a seasons greeting. This is the making of video. I also explain the lighting in detail. Like pretty much always, we did the photo shoot at our home.

Yeah, I did it. I've turned the planning of my recent photoshoot in Bejing into an ebook. And I added more. I also drafted how to's on how to come up with such a planning. And I wrote together a Making Of of the shooting. It's all in the eBook now. It also comes with a Fill-in-the-Blanks template that enables you to quickly plan an organize your next shooting.

I just read through Gary Vaynerchucks book Crush It! Boy, that's superb content. It's a very quick read but the information he provides is golden. It teaches how social media and publishing services are used for personal branding. I think this is a very important thing for us photographers.

This is one of those very nice charities, which I really love to support. The German FotoTV team around Marc Ludwig published a photo calendar with really warmhearted images of Indian children. A very decorative, photographic Christmas present.

One thing I recommend warmly to street photographers is the Chinese new years festival and particularly the lantern festival . The lantern festival marks the end and a highlight of the Chiense new years celebrations. The streets are decorated colorful, millions of lanterns are shining and a giant firework is done by the people. Details of the lantern festival are available at Wikipedia.

Dear photography friends,

we toast to my first little photo exhibition – you got a choice between champagne or a really killer cup of coffee! the first time there is somebody who puts multiple of my photos up onto her wall. And it is somebody, who I really value highly: