FROM EVENT PHOTOGRAPHY TO INTERNATIONAL MODELS - My photography journey
I didn’t plan a career in portrait photography. I just needed some money. When I started photographing, there was no grand plan. I was a student. I needed money, but I also wanted to have fun, go out, meet people and enjoy life. Then someone asked me: “Do you know an event photographer?” I basically thought: „Sure. Why not?“ I had a camera. How difficult could it be That was my level of confidence at the time. I picked up a cheap camera, put it into automatic mode and went to work. And somehow, that was the beginning.
01 – I learned by doing
I didn’t go through some perfectly structured photography education. I learned because I had to. I photographed events. People. Nights out. Whatever came in front of my camera. And I made a lot of mistakes. But I also learned something incredibly valuable: „How to react.“ You don’t get to stop an event because the light isn’t perfect. You don’t get to ask someone to repeat a moment because you weren’t ready. You have to see it. React. Shoot. Move. And do it again. Looking back, I think those years taught me much more than I realized at the time.
02 – Somehow, black and white was already there
Even then, I was drawn to black and white. I often photographed my images that way. I didn’t have a sophisticated reason for it. Maybe I simply liked it. Maybe it was already part of how I saw. I wouldn’t understand the importance of that decision until later. But when I eventually looked back at my work and asked myself what felt genuinely mine, there it was again. Black and white.
03 – At some point, I knew I had to change
There was a moment when I realized I wasn’t going anywhere by simply continuing to photograph the way I had been photographing. I had developed strong technical skills. I was experimenting. I was working with colour. I was creating more and more elaborate images. But something felt wrong. I wanted to move forward. So I made a decision. I would stop trying to do everything. I would focus on portraits. And I would focus on **black and white**. No safety net. Just: „Let’s see what happens.“
04 – It was hard
That part is easy to forget when you look back. I made the decision. Then I had to live with it. I had to photograph and photograph and photograph. Learn. Try. Fail. Try again. There was no overnight transformation. For months, it was simply hard work. I had to keep going before there was much evidence that it was going to work. And then, somewhere around half a year later, something started to change. People began to notice. They started looking at the work differently. They started saying: “Okay. This is actually pretty good.”
05 – Then the door opened
Eventually, I got invited to work with a model. And suddenly, I was photographing something very different from the events where I had started. I had a person in front of my camera. A professional model. A completely different environment. And I simply had to deliver. So I did. And then something happened that I hadn’t expected. Almost overnight, the work started moving. One photograph suddenly had around 14,000 likes. People were seeing it. Sharing it. Talking about it. And suddenly, it felt like: „Okay. I’m in the game.“
06 – From events to international agencies
That one moment didn’t create my career. The work did. But it opened a door. And that door led to more portraits. More models. More agencies. More people. Eventually, I started working with professional models from international agencies and building a completely different kind of portfolio. Looking back, the contrast is almost funny. The student with the cheap camera. The guy who started in automatic mode. The event photographer who was just trying to make some money. And then, years later, standing in front of professional models and creating photographs for agencies. I couldn’t have planned that path.
07 – Maybe that’s the point
I think we often imagine that careers are built through one big decision. Mine wasn’t. It was hundreds of small ones. Saying yes to an event. Taking the cheap camera. Learning on the job. Trying something different. Listening to criticism. Looking back at my own work. Realizing what felt like me. Choosing black and white. Choosing portraits. And then refusing to stop.
08 – I didn’t start with a vision
I started with curiosity. And maybe a little bit of stupidity. Because sometimes you need enough confidence to say: “Why not?” before you know whether you can actually do something. I still think about that when I look at where photography has taken me. I didn’t have the perfect camera. I didn’t have the perfect plan. I didn’t know where it would lead. I just kept moving. And somewhere along the way, the event photographer became a portrait photographer. And the portrait photographer became the photographer I am today. Not because I knew exactly where I was going. Because I kept going until I found it.
