Thomas Birke

Inspiration from My Bookshelf #1

TODAY: Floriane de Lassée - Night Views

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(this series is about books I have in my bookshelf that inspired me a lot)

A friend of mine once strolled through galleries in Bejing and told me, he saw a Photographer that was doing stuff like like I do. So I researched a bit. It was at the Paris Bejing Art Gallery and it turned out to be a female french urban large format photographer by the name of Floriane de Lassée. Apparently she is very young and uses a 4x5 inch camera. I found out that she had a book on sale at amazon and so I instantly bought it!

The book consists of 96 Pages, has been published by Nazraeli Press (ISBN: 978-1590052280) and contains 41 Images. It features an Introduction by Virginie Luc. The printing quality is not the best luxury thing you have ever seen, but it is ok.

What counts are the images! They have been shot from rooftops and balconys in New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris and Istanbul. That is what I love. And how sweet the spots are! I wonder how she managed everything, because this is my single most concern, how to get permissions for publicly unaccessible spots like Rooftops on office towers etc. To give you some impressions:

See more inspiring images at her website! http://www.florianedelassee.com/site/beijing-night-views-2008/ (this also contains images not in the book)

For a complete reference of contained Images look here and here.

And finally, an image I found on Flickr, that shows her during work. I always marvel when I see some fellow large format freak in an urban environment doing what I love. This seems so unreal, but at least it shows, that we are not alone!

If you would like to buy the book, it is still available at amazon.com - here

and I can’t do much about it. It just hurts and keeps me from doing important things. Hopefully this will be gone by the end of the week.

The list is sorted alphabetically by country, then by city. The Number indicates the Population within the metropolitan area, as found on Wikipedia. I can’t wait to put checkmarks on every single city on the list!

1. Algiers Algeria     Africa 3.500.000
2. Buenos Aires Argentina     South America 12.925.000
3. Dhaka Bangladesh     Asia 10.190.000
4. Brasilia Brazil    South America 3.559.000
5. São Paulo Brazil     South America 19.505.000
6. Rio de Janeiro Brazil     South America 11.400.000
7. Belo Horizonte Brazil     South America 4.810.000
8. Toronto Canada     North America 5.855.000
9. Montreal Canada     North America 3.385.000
10. Vancouver Canada     North America 2.080.000
11. Santiago Chile     South America 5.775.000
12. Hong Kong China    Asia 7.000.000
13. Shanghai China    Asia 14.655.000
14. Shenzhen China    Asia 14.230.000
15. Beijing China    Asia 12.780.000
16. Dalian China    Asia 3.315.000
17. Chongqing China    Asia 2.990.000
18. Guangzhou China    Asia 8.500.000
19. Bogotá Colombia     South America 7.755.000
20. Medellín Colombia     South America 3.195.000
21. Kinshasa Congo    Africa 8.540.000
22. Havana Cuba     North America 2.190.000
23. Guayaquil Ecuador     South America 2.645.000
24. Cairo Egypt     Africa 17.035.000
25. Alexandria Egypt     Africa 4.225.000
26. Addis Ababa Ethiopia     Africa 3.055.000
27. Paris France     Europe 10.480.000
28. Berlin Germany     Europe 3.700.000
29. Frankfurt Germany     Europe 2.295.000
30. Athens Greece     Europe 3.760.000
31. Budapest Hungary     Europe 2.055.000
32. Mumbai India     Asia 20.400.000
33. Delhi India     Asia 19.830.000
34. Calcutta India     Asia 15.250.000
35. Chennai India     Asia 7.400.000
36. Bangalore India     Asia 7.030.000
37. Ahmedabad India     Asia 5.265.000
38. Pune India     Asia 4.835.000
39. Patna India     Asia 2.235.000
40. Jakarta Indonesia     Asia 23.345.000
41. Tel Aviv Israel     Asia 2.655.000
42. Milan Italy     Europe 4.335.000
43. Naples Italy     Europe 3.020.000
44. Rome Italy     Europe 2.715.000
45. Tokyo Japan     Asia 34.670.000
46. Osaka Japan     Asia 17.310.000
47. Kuala Lumpur Malaysia     Asia 5.715.000
48. Mexico City Mexico     South America 18.585.000
49. Casablanca Morocco     Africa 2.925.000
50. Maputo Mozambique     Africa 2.060.000
51. Rangoon Myanmar     Asia 4.310.000
52. Lagos Nigeria     Africa 9.185.000
53. Pyongyang North Korea     Asia 3.355.000
54. Karachi Pakistan     Asia 9.665.000
55. Lahore Pakistan     Asia 7.005.000
56. Lima Peru     South America 7.915.000
57. Manila Philippines     Asia 20.075.000
58. Warsaw Poland     Europe 2.030.000
59. Moscow Russia     Europe    13.670.000
60. Saint Petersburg Russia     Europe 4.530.000
61. Wladiwostok Russia     Asia 600.000
62. Riyadh Saudi Arabia     Asia 4.650.000
63. Belgrade Serbia    Europe 1.630.000
64. Singapore Singapore     Asia 4.485.000
65. Johannesburg South Africa     Africa 7.500.000
66. Cape Town South Africa     Africa 3.175.000
67. Seoul South Korea     Asia 19.660.000
68. Benidorm Spain    Europe 65.000
69. Madrid Spain     Europe 5.370.000
70. Colombo Sri Lanka     Asia 2.050.000
71. Taipei Taiwan    Asia 6.610.000
72. Bangkok Thailand     Asia 8.330.000
73. Istanbul Turkey    Europe 12.600.000
74. Kiev Ukraine     Europe    2.565.000
75. Abu Dhabi United Arab Emirates     Asia 860.000
76. Dubai United Arab Emirates     Asia 2.335.000
77. London United Kingdom     Europe 8.580.000
78. New York United States     North America 21.295.000
79. Los Angeles United States     North America 14.940.000
80. Chicago United States     North America 9.430.000
81. San Francisco United States     North America 5.780.000
82. Miami United States     North America 5.625.000
83. Philadelphia United States     North America 5.550.000
84. Washington, D.C. United States     North America 4.380.000
85. Detroit United States     North America 4.150.000
86. Phoenix United States     North America 3.570.000
87. Seattle United States     North America 3.100.000
88. Caracas Venezuela     South America 2.645.000
89. Saigon Vietnam     Asia 7.005.000
90. Hanoi Vietnam     Asia 3.440.000

Why ain’t there a 100? Well, I want to leave 10 wild cards to fill later, because I simply can’t predict which other wonderful cities come in to my mind within the next three years.

Hello my dear readers,

as you read the title, you may think “what a pussy, I take a 1000 pictures on one day, so what kind of challenge is that?”. Well, as you know I shoot 8x10 large format, which requires analog film and a lot of caring for every single photo. (Read my last post to know what it takes).

So what is a 1000 published pictures in a 1000 days about?

Simply put:

I intend to publish 1 image every single day for a consecutive 1000 days.

What do I mean by publishing? By publishing I mean making the image available for sale through my gallery site. If you take a look at my current gallery, you might get an impression what I deem to be publishable. The image has to be tack sharp and with perfect colour. Ready to be printed at 72 by 90 inch. An image really has to go a long way to fulfill this claim.

Regarding that ambition, a 1000 pictures is a heavy batch to keep interesting for every single day! This means I can not take pictures of Potsdamer Platz every day - (where I live and which is one of the few urban places in Berlin). This means I have to get out. Travel the world and explore every single city I have on my 100 places to visit list. This will keep the quality high and my inspiration and motivation levels as well! And also this will be the key element for everyone to revisit the gallery and get thrilled again and again.

About the financial Aspect

I presented the math earlier: to be able to make an image that can be published, I consider I need to make 5 images - that would be a 20% success rate, which seems unreal in digital times. Anyway, that would mean to publish a 1.000 images I would need to shoot 5.000 - which amounts to 60.000€. This is an amount of money that takes me almost 2 years in my current job to earn, but I spend it all on basic things already - so there is no way in doing this as a hobby! I have written down the details within this post - this indicates that finally I have to make 12.000€ a month to survive and keep the rate of published pictures at 1 per day. Selling that much to people I do not know seems fairly unrealistic, I will work on that issue for the next few months.

The Scheduling Aspect

Let’s take a look back to get a better grip on my possible production rate and succes rate:

• I have been to Tokyo for three weeks in August 2008, for the sole purpose of taking pictures - I shot 67 8x10 images in total - thats a little more than 3 pics a day - see results here ( I have published 27 of these, so that is a 40% ratio!)
• I have been to Hong Kong for one week in March 2009, for the sole purpose of taking pictures - I shot 33 8x10 images in total - that’s almost 5 pics a day - see results here ( I have published 10 of these, so that is a 30% ratio!)
• I have been to New York for two weeks in August 2009 for Holiday - I shot 9 pictures and published none
• During other short trips and local sessions I shot another 20 images

This means that since I started 8x10 large format in the middle of 2008, I only shot 139 images! You remeber Cartier-Bresson, who told us “your first 10.000 images are your worst”? If I apply that to my 8x10 endeavours, that would mean another 140 years of bad imagery. That must not happen!

How much time will I spend on a published image?

• scouting 4hrs
• shooting 3hrs
• prescanning 10images 40mins
• final scanning (2hrs scan time, 20min attendance)
• remove dust and scratches 4hrs
• fine tuning in Photoshop 3hrs
• total: 15 hrs

That would leave me with 9 hrs left for the rest of my life including sleeping and travel, which I have to do quite a lot if I am to visit a 100 cities. Plus this leaves me with absolut no time for a daytime job!

So 1 image published a day is the absolute maximum!

I probably could outsource the scanning and de-dusting process, if I earn enough money - this would leave me with more time for scouting and organizing my online life.

I will put all weels in motion to start on 06.04.2010 so that Day #1000 is on 31.12.2012.

This post describes my process of creating an 8x10 image in urban surrounding in detail. It is not a quick read, but mainly a resource I can quote to answer the questions about my working process.

I will shoot a video for every single step in the future and put up a direct link here, so that you can see me work eye to eye.

So here we go:

1. find an area of interest - when I travel, I constantly make notes of interesting places, images and movies I have seen. I try to find out where the images and movies where shot, check on google earth and flickr - I am also randomly scrolling cities, looking for interesting building constellations, interesting shapes, highways, hills, water and bridges - I also check a lot of blogs and flickr streams for inspiration of places to go - the opportunities are endless!
2. Go out and scout the area - I usually do this at daytime, because I don’t like daylight for my pictures. So that time presents the perfect opportunity to scout - I ride to the location, usually on subway, sometimes by bus. I equip myself with a small digital point and shoot camera - I use a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2, which is a charm to work with. There is a follow up model - the LX3, which even is better. But it just doesn’t matter, as long as you can make custom adjustments to the aperture and exposure time, you’re fine. I then start wandering around, looking for interesting viewpoints and views, i checkout fire escapes, stairs, hills, plattforms, whatever could be of interest. I frame a lot with my small camera and try to imagine different shots with different focal lengths, make some wide angle images for documentation and then I go on. I prefer to scout by foot - I tried scouting by bike and by car, but I never found good places. You always have to find a parking lot or lock your bike if you want to examine something closer - and you stop from doing it after the 3rd time, because it takes so long in a city, especially finding parking lots!
3. Choose your subject for the night - Back home or in the hotel again I check the memory shots I made with my small cam and decide on the location to shoot. To make some informed decisions, I also check google earth again, to see the cardinal points and estimate, where the sun will come down or go up, because this is an important factor for the images I will be able to make. Then I check a weather website to see when the sun will go down or up, how strong the wind is, if there is rain expected etc. I usually refrain from going when there is more than 20 km/h of wind and heavy rain. If everything seems right, you’re good to go, just check for the nearest underground or bus station and the travel time and then start packing.
4. Packing the gear for the trip - You have a plan and are now able to pack your gear accordingly. Which focal lengths will you need? What film will be the best? Do you need one or two tripods? (I would recommend two tripods with more than 600mm of focal length) Which bellows would you need? On and on. This step for me is full of excitement, because it feels like preparing for a battle - remember - failing to prepare is preparing to fail! If you are not sure you have everything - write a list and take it with you. If you forgot anything in the field, add it to the list and check it everytime before you leave. I always forgot my loupe for example, which is a heavy burden for focusing. Check your list after ten successful trips and examine if you really needed everything - cross out things you didn’t ever need - makes your heavy gear a little more lightweight.
5. Getting to the location - Never underestimate the complexity of urban transport. Especially during rush hour your trip could take longer than expected. Loaded with heavy gear you are not as fast as with nothing more than a small digicam. I try to time my trips in a manner that I am at the location exactly at sunrise or sunset, because the interesting light usually happens 30 to 90 minutes after that event. This gives me some buffer and allows to conveniently assemble my camera!
6. Assemble your camera - try to imagine the perfect framing and decide what to set up, you should have thought about this already back home when you packed your gear. Since I have a monorail cam, i take the following steps to assemble: Tripod -> head -> rail clamp -> rail -> front standart -> rear standart -> bellows -> lens -> hood mask -> dark cloth - this generally takes about 5 minutes, including leveling the parts based on what the bubble levels tell me.
7. Adjust your Settings - Now it is time to crawl underneath your dark cloth and check the groundglass. Yeah, it’s mirrored and upside down and one of the best moments during the whole process. I use a loupe to focus, a 4x loupe by Rodenstock, and I feel this is totally sufficient. If you go higher in magnification, like with a 10x loupe, you see too much of the grain of the sanded groundglass und too few of the image. Check for straight lines, check if you don’t cut off anything and if the framing is as you thought it would be, close the lens shutter. Now it is time to decide on the exposure value. I mostly go with F22, since this is the best trade-off between abberation and the diffraction limit of most optics I use. To determine the correct exposure time I use experience a lot lately, since conditions are pretty standard all the time after the sun got down. Just to be sure I use my Minolta Autometer IV with a 5° Spot Attachment or my small digicam to make test exposures and reference the result to my f22 aperture. It mostly is between 4 and 16 minutes. Now to the worst part.
8. click and wait - not much valuable to say about this step. I hate it, since I am not a Zen person. Especially if it is cold or windy, because you always fear that your camera could shake and that’s the single most common source of ruined images for me. I tried to shield the wind with an umbrella, but I noticed very quickly, that you never have a constant wind direction in cities. During 4 minutes, the wind will come from every direction if you are among high rises. And I also blurred images with my umbrella, when a hefty blow came and I lost control and touched the camera with the end of the umbrella - how stupid is that! So all you can do basically is pray for slow wind for the whole time. To spend your time it is most advisable to check for other scenes and viewpoints during the exposure - behind the camera ;) .
9. change location - If I am done, I prefer to make a second exposure with another exposure time, 1 or 2 stops higher to enhance the chance of a good result, sharpness wise as exposure wise. To really exploit a location, you can take different angles on your subject or take images of different subjects in your view - play with the location of your camera and your available focal lengths. As a rule of thumb I always carry my assembled camera, if the next spot is not further away than 200m - if further away, I disassemble the camera, pack and get on to the next spot and assemble again. This can be motivating, but as you see the groundglass everything will be OK again.
10. get back home - you are done with the shooting process - hooray. I always enjoy the ride home, check for new locations on my way and just feel the city around me. You can flow since you don’t have a time constraint and relax a little. First thing at home is to change the film, mark the box and queue it for processing at the lab. I use a Harrison Film Changing Tent - perfect for hotel rooms that never have a perfectly dark room. I would advise you to take the largest, I have the 8x10 version and it is too small for 8x10 to change conveniently!
11. develop the film - I can not imagine developing 8x10 colour film by myself. There is too much precision, space and chemicals required for my taste. E6 is such a standard process, I never had problems with any lab developing it - neither in the US, Japan or Germany. The only difference is in the placement of the hook marks - which have been the most careful in Japan and the most rude and disturbing in the US. You always have to remove the hook marks with a cutter prior to wet mounting for scanning, so the amount and size matters. The price is between 4 and 8€, depending on the purchasing power of the Euro in the country you are in. I always prefer to develop film at the location I am at, to minimize the Risk of X-Ray Exposure while flying.
12. scan the film - I have an Epson V700 for prescanning - I just throw the slide onto the glass, do a quick 600dpi scan and get on to the next. That allows me to check for the sharpness and the overall potential of an image - which is hard to grasp on the light table for me. The ones I deem publishable are then queued for drum scanning. I think the only reasonable way to do drumscans is doing it yourself. I have seen a prepress house in New York, charging almost a 1000$ US for the scanquality I want out of an 8x10 slide! I Paid 3000€ for my scanner (a Heidelberg Primescan D 8200) and pay less then 1€ for consumables per scan. So my scanner amortized after just 6 scans, go figure! Since drumscanning is such a delicate and complex process, I think I will write an extra post about that in the future. I usually scan a 1,6GB File, which is the maximum my scanner can process at the moment - resulting in a 16Bit file with a dimension of 18.000 by 15.000 - or 300 very useful Megapixels. That file is then ready for the final touch.
13. postprocessing - Working on a 1,6GB tiff file is a boring thing - if you add adjustment layers you will soon get to 10GB and your RAM will melt faster than that Ice cone in the sun. I have 16GB installed and only one history step in Photoshop, and still it is paging all the time, taking up to 10 minutes for basic actions like colour mode changes. So what I do is resize the image to a manageable size, like 25MPix, and then record my actions, so I can process the large file with these actions later automatically overnight. This works. What I have not found a workaround for is the tedious task of removing dust and scratches. My record is 40 hours on one single image. This feels so unnecessary…but when it is done, I am happy and have the perfect image ready for printing. What do I do in Photoshop? I do not alter the image content. I only work on the colours. So I balance the light and contrast between areas, change the curves a lot, the saturation and the colour balance, so that I receive a result that resembles my imagination. When I am done, I leave the image open for a day, recheck it on my monitor if it is realistic and repeat this until I find the colour perfect for 3 consecutive times. Then I am done, I have an Image I can do whatever I want to do with.
14. Printing - I prefer printing on a large format laser printer - the OCE Lightjet 500XL offers the widest width at 72 Inches - and there is nothing better than an 8x10 image to print at 72x90 Inches. The result is simply breathtaking. The quality is unmatched by any Inkjet Printer print I have ever seen! Fortunately there are several printshops in Germany that use a Lightjet - I work with GIGANT in Berlin, perfect Service and Quality!

Phew, what a long Post! If you have any further Questions, feel free to post them, I will be glad to embed the answer into the description.

After reading my theory on what is a good photo, it is quite interesting to find how different one can perceive a picture. For myself, I love shapes and Colors of many forms, whereas the meaning is often irrelevant or the picture transforms some feeling of tranquility at best. Other people love meaning above everything, see the lomo lovers, they dwell in feelings allone.

See my favorites or my galleries on flickr:  hail to the laundromat, light and colour, elevated roads and rails, urban photography, tender is the night.

These images have been collected over more than three years. They have an astonishing consistency regarding the amount of meaning, colour and shape. These images inspire me and push me with my own photography.

It is obvious that quite a lot of them have an urban background. I have been asked often by people, what it is I connect with urban scenes. I never knew a good answer other than “I think it looks cool”. Now that I really think about it, I might say I know.

Most people only see chaos and noise and feel unsettled when viewing urban imagery. Example:

(c) by *toki - http://www.flickr.com/photos/toki_dub/2919145344

But what I see is tranquility. The movements are frozen, you have a good viewpoint and can see the big picture. (That is why I spend such a great deal of time finding good viewpoints for my own images - to create that feeling of remoteness) You can let your eye wander, gather the proportions of the city, try to fathom the content and purpose of buildings. All of that without any disturbance. You can think about what people might be doing as you see the scene.

Or this is what I do most of the time: you can lose yourself in the astonishing colour and shapes that the millions of lights of a city create. The overwhelming complexity and interaction of human made structures can be glimpsed and felt - a feeling that is quite strong for me. And I know that there are other people out there, that feel the same about urban photography! I know it by the comments and discussions I had, and that makes me very happy.

One other important aspect for me is the level of detail an image provides. The larger the resolution, the more details you get, the more you can loose yourself in an image. That is the reason for me to go large format 8x10 at least and why I can’t settle for anything less! This kind of technology gives me the opportunity to have 600 Megapixels and 2 meter printouts at 300dpi. Most people say technology is not important for a good picture. And if you remember my last post - they are right - if an image evokes enough feelings, it doesn’t matter with what camera it has been shot. But the feeling I want to create requires a great deal of detail and doesn’t allow for blurred images, so there is no absolute answer to the question if the tool matters - it all depends - for me it matters, ‘cause I need MPix!

I will try to improve my own imagery and want to create thousands of pictures with colour, shape and a feeling of tranquil complexity in cities. Stay tuned and watch me progress.

Photography is everywhere. When I walk through the streets of Berlin on a saturday afternoon, I have the impression that half of the population owns a digital SLR and the other half some kind of point and shoot camera. And everyone is snapping happily away. You can see the results on flickr.

Most of these images don’t mean anything to me. They may mean something to the people that have been shooting them or that are involved in some form.

Then there are images, that mean something to many people. What is the difference?

In my opinion it is not some form of golden ratios or a specific set of rules that has been followed each and every time religously. It is not entirely a visual thing as well. For me a good image is the result of meaning + shape + colour. An image doesn’t need to include all three elements, but it might be easier to reach a high result of emotional connection to any given image, if it incorporates every one of the three qualities.

Meaning - Meaning is something that an image can transport by evoking feelings, memories or desires. This is because our brains associate, reflect and process the content of an image based on experiences, knowledge and values that are the core of every personality viewing an image. Every image can transport a message to some degree. Different people have different minds and perceive different meanings with different intensity. Nevertheless I would say that pictures involving humans evoke the strongest and most consistent emotions among most people.

Shape - Shape is all about geometry, vantage points, lines, angles and proportions. We perceive certain forms as harmonic, while others don’t please our eyes.

Colour - The colour of an image is the third important ingredient. Is it in balance throughout the entire image? Are there contrasts, that lead our eyes, that feel good or bad?

Let me give you some examples here (it doesn’t mean that the specific images lack  one or the other quality, it does only mean that the mentioned qualities are so dominant, that I feel these are responsible for me beeing connected to the picture)

meaning + shape + color

(c) by Rivo Sarapik - http://www.flickr.com/photos/rivos/448267405

meaning + color

(C) by alex magalhaes - http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexmagalhaes/2999176086

meaning + shape

(c) by Robert Doisneau

color + shape

(c) by Doruk Bayer - http://www.flickr.com/photos/dorukbayer/389637881

shape

(c) by Charlie Xia - http://www.flickr.com/photos/charliexia/510781144

color

(C) by Edward Olive - http://www.flickr.com/photos/edwardolive/2142418106

meaning:

(c) by robert capa

The selection is from some of my alltime favorites and reflects my personal view on photography that I can connect to.

After reading my last post about how to become a millionaire, I think the most important aspect is, to never start the process with the number in mind in the first place. So my goal is not to become a millionaire. What for, it’s just a number - if I reach it one day, fine, if not - it depends.

My primary goal is to be able to do what I want in my life. I don’t want to be forced to cancel things I fathom, just because I don’t have the money. Currently I am in such a phase of my life - I want much and have too little. But staring at that million Euro border is limiting my thoughts - the amount is not important.

The only thing that is important for me personally is the amount of money I need in a month to live the lifestyle I want - so let’s take a look at the figures to get a more differentiated picture:

• for basic living, I currently need about 2.700€ a month, including rent, insurance, food, transportation, entertainement, debt repayment and other common stuff - I can cover that by my salary from my current job, but that would not allow me to do much more

now to the financial backing I need for the fulfillment of my desires:

• I want to shoot 10 large format (8x10) images a day - that amounts to 4.500€ a month for film and development
• I want to travel half of the time, so I need approximately 1.200€ a month for hotel fees and 3.000€ in airfare

One time investments:

• a Gitzo GT3541 LS - 700€
• Arca Swiss Cube C1 Head - 1.400€
• Arca Swiss Monoball P1 - 450€
• Schneider-Kreuznach APO-Tele-Xenar 600/800mm - 4.000€
• Schneider-Kreuznach Super-Symmar XL 210mm - 3.000€
• other small things - 1.000€

This would amount to 10.550€ - since I intend to make a 3 year plan, this would amount to 350€ repayment for a loan.

The final math looks like this now: 2.700€ base + 8.700€ desires + 350€ investment repayment = 11.750€ per month I need after taxes.

To earn such an amount of money with my daytimejob as an IT consultant for one of the largest IT companies in the world would easyly take more than 20 years to achieve if I work my ass off and don’t do ANYTHING else. So this is inacceptable.

But it is a revelation too: to live the life I dream of, doesn’t require me to become a millionaire, but only a mere 12K€ a month!

So here is my plan of how to achieve this:

I will pursue my dream of taking 10 large format images a day. I consider 10% of my images to be quite good enogh for hanging on a wall and 1% to be potential killer images that sell massively. So after doing the math one can easily see, that at the given rate I could publish one image per day for sale. Let’s assume a month has 30 days - this would mean that I would only need a profit per image of 400€ - this seems so much more realistic to achieve than some abstract goal of earning 1.000.000€.

I even have a plan of how to cash in on these images - I will create a shop, and sell one new image every day in 3 different editions, all highly limited and every sole edition making at least 400€ of profit, if it’s a better image it could make 1.600€ in profit and cover 4 days, taking out pressure to succeed, and if killer image, it could cover 14 days of profit. For Example:

• 10 images at a smaller format / of a simple make, 40€ of profit per image
• 6 images at a large format, like 1 meters in width, making 200€ of profit per image
• 1 image at a really large format, like 2,25 meters in width, making a profit of 4.000€

I consider the market for my imagery to be quite endless. Many people want original images on their wall, no 10€ posters that everyone has. But original artwork of photography masters is damn expensive, so they shop the midmarket of limited but not overpriced originals. The success of midmarket galleries like yellow korner or lumas that cater the 100€ - 1000€ range is proof enough. The best thing about that market is, that not the name is the key purchasing trigger, but the perceived quality of the imagery, and that is an arena I have no problem picking up fights for attention. Further nurtured by the evergrowing importance of social networks and the fact that open web personalities can gather lots of attention. So I make my venture public, open my accounts and motivate everyone purchasing my photos to see the person behind the lens and do something good and fuel my desire pursuit. I hope this also motivates people to do their thing respectively. The tagline could be: independent images for independent minds.

I can’t wait to start, and will talk about the transition from wage slave to knight of desire pursuit and about my photography philosophy during my next posts!